More and more A+ is where guys start seperating themselves instead of AA.

Wally I’m sure will be great with whichever young kids he has and maybe the more the merrier.

Collins job is to detox the clubhouse, integrate well thought out and inexpensive newcomers and change the attitude from one of entitlement to one of competition from within and below.

Trust me there are numerous landmines lurking beneath Citi Field.

Toxic waste removal requires experience and restraint. When the job is done Wally can come up here and devote all of his attention to winning baseball games, the new manager has other things to take care of before that can happen.

You all know my feelings on Backman. He needed to get more experience in the minors and the players there need a guy like him to instill that comepetitive work ethic which was what made Wally as good as he was.

Lets be honest with ourselves here, Backman was never a HOF type, Hell I don’t think he ever made the All Star game! Yet he was and is loved by the fans to this day! Why?

Because of HOW he played the game!

It’s something the current team lacks, and it is doubtful Backman could get that out of the current lot who may or may not survive one more season as a met.

SO he is in the right place at the right time teaching and moulding the right players who are likely to make up the roster two years from now.

If Collins fails then Backman will not only be ready to manage he will have a bunch of players that already play the way he wants them to and will follow him through fire and brimstone when needed!

Now I am not saying Collins will fail nor do I want him to, but Collins’ problems are going to be more about what he has to manage than how he actually does manage.

If we have a firesale this year then I don’t care who your manager is you are going to have problems winning ballgames and that spells trouble and calls for firing in the press!

Oberkfell had nothing to work with at all talent wise in 2009 and still the record wasn’t that bad, last year he had quite a few AAA and AAAA types.

He also did a GREAT job managing Escogido to the Caribbean World Series so I would say he’s a very capable manager, maybe not the manager of our future but a great guy to have in the organization for developing players and also for just in case at the ML level.

Teufel I cannot comment about.

Personally I would have liked to see Backman in the FL State League. That’s where the biggest hurdle is for minor leaguers and that’s probably Wally’s biggest strength, getting guys to believe in themselves. He would have had some of the guys from the Penn League, others from Savannah and could have hit Bingimton next year with a full crew of “his guys.”

I accept the plumb assignment in today’s baseball development is @ AA level & that Wally’s influence will be significant; however exactly what earned Tim this promo? Can we now state; “Teufel’s shuffle is off to Buffalo”?

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=13098627

Enjoy.

You decide which way is better.

and frankly, I don’t think any manager has full carte blanche to do anything that strikes his fancy.

in met terms, moving Wright from 3rd to 5th is his option, but putting Neise in the pen and starting Parnell instead, or moving Reyes back to 2B, would require approval from above!

Of course, Moneyball did exaggerate certain things, and Oakland was used as a test subject for an experiment rather than the new standard bearer, and Alderson isn’t Beane.

But, teams don’t generally put guys on the roster unless they have a very speciffic plan for them.

the manager is like a major in charge of the troops on the ground. He needs to make the day to day decisions, and react to circumstances, but that needs to be within the context of executing the plan.

Of course though once the framework is set, Collins needs to manage them as he sees fit. Alderson isn’t going to make line ups for him, or call down and tell him who to use out of the pen.

Seeing Terry speak, he looks to me like he is exactly the “yes boss” type of guy Sandy wants.

But make no mistake – this situation fits into exactly what their “organizational philosophy” is all about. Sandy is calling the shots and Terry is the middle man.
I don’t like it but not much I can do about it now.