Gardy Wins AL Manager of the Year
Congrats to Gardy. He definitely deserves to have one of these awards sitting on his mantle. However, given the late season swoon to blow home field advantage, the managing of the pitching staff and the continued inability to get the team up for the Yankees makes this award kind of feel like a gold watch. He won it for continued success not so much for the job done this year. Anyone else feel the same?
7 Comments:
He was also inked to a two year extension.
November 18, 2010 at 1:03 PM
Ron Washington deserves this award for getting his team past the Yankees and Rays more than Gardy for finishing 7 games better in the regular season. Agree completely with RTS that this amounts to more of a lifetime achievement award. IMHO.
November 18, 2010 at 1:33 PM
Also, re: the "bejebus links" I added a response to the Quantitative Easing cartoon, which, although it has some points, I thought was a little long on the conspiracies and disparaging and a little short on the constructive ideas and displayed a couple instances of Macroeconomics Fail. I also deleted a number of the older links in the section, as they were getting a little stale and the section pretty long.
November 18, 2010 at 1:40 PM
Oh, also had a reaction to the "pennies on a table" demonstration, which someone linked and has been circulating around a lot the last year.
I like it, generally. I enjoy that it doesn't just dismiss efforts to actually cut costs simply because the savings are miniscule in the grand scheme (which even the President acknowledged at the time of making them).
This demonstration could be used as a lesson builder for budgets generally, too. And, somewhat surprisingly, I think it actually could be much better suited as a political weapon for Democrats than Republicans. Not that Democrats are capable of wielding political weapons and hurting anyone other than themselves, of course.
You look at that table, and it's just overwhelming to think about how and where to cut spending enough to get it all even close to in line. Think of the political cost involved in just getting 1/4 of one penny removed from the table. If, on the other hand, you added a marginal $1.20 tax on every American, you'd remove a full penny immediately. Make it $500/person and you'd wipe out most of the right side of the table. Taxing is an INCREDIBLY powerful tool - it's infinitely more efficient and simple than cost-cutting, and doesn't carry the inherent difficulty of having to overturn major apple carts on every corner to achieve it.
Politically speaking, it's hard to cut even $100MM through normal budget procedures. Comparatively, finding that much in additional tax revenue is a cake walk. It's the difference between a fly swatter and a sledgehammer. This is why the entirety of the "Tea Party" economic platform, such as it is and can be articulated, is doomed to fail in making any real impact. That's to say nothing of the misguided nature of the Hooverist obsession behind it, with cutting gov'tal spending in a time when Keynsian expansion is more justified.
I think the message of the pennies thing can be taken a number of ways.
Fiscal conservative/budget hawk: In some ways it's a miracle, and a testament to our political system, that our marginal tax rates are so much lower than anywhere else in the industrialized world, given the temptations involved with such a powerful tool.
Progressive: On the other hand, it makes our incredibly strong resistance to any minor uptick in the way of taxes, while we scream endlessly for cost cutting, seem totally misguided. If we could limit spending increases while very marginally increasing taxes, we'd be in much better position.
Economist/China-fearing: It also points toward how irresponsibly staggering a debt load we carry compared to everyone else in the first world - that's the only way we can spend as much as we do without taxing more than we do.
One other area it would be interesting to see this sort of visual demonstration used would be with respect to military costs. That $100MM that took 90 days and the cashing of a lot of political chits to find in cuts? In 2009, we spent that much on operations in Iraq. Every day. By 1:00 in the afternoon! Anti-war activists and health care reform supporters would be wise to use this pennies on a table thing themselves, I think.
November 18, 2010 at 2:01 PM
I actually do not think he deserves this award. I think the fact that he's won 6 division titles in 8 years and only advancing to the ALCS once and has a .350 winning percentage against the sox and yankees, and the fact that he had a chance at the best record in baseball and home field advantage but couldn't win 5 games against bad teams to end the last four series, tells you more about the division than it does his skill. Frankly, i think it's more impressive that ron washington took his mediocre team to a great ending than gardy took his very good team to a very (though consistantly) mediocre ending. Sorry, but Gardy lost me, and now has to earn my respect back. I hope he does, but i sort of wish he wouldn't have the opportunity.
November 18, 2010 at 4:18 PM
And btw - i agree with RTS that he deserves to have one of those awards. But it should have gone to him the first year. That was impressive for a new coach. He graduated beyond the "great job for taking a small ball team of kids to the playoffs against a lot of odds". Now we have real, well deserved expectations with actual talent and experience and he should be treated and judged as such.
November 18, 2010 at 4:22 PM
On Gardy -
The award has nothing to do with the post-season so that has to be thrown out but I agree with everyone on here, this is a Lifetime Achievement Award since he was passed over in a couple years where he actually deserved it. Do people think he was the best manager because Morneau went down and he put Cuddy at first? Or that we didn't have a third baseman and he called up Valencia?
November 19, 2010 at 9:27 AM
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