Playoff baseball has not disappointed in the last forty-eight hours, and that is a good thing. It's been a pleasant distraction from focusing on the managerial search in minute detail. I feel as though the interview process for us as fans, is pretty useless. As Footer stated in a link I have below, "it is impossible for me to size up the candidates during a 10-minute media briefing and tell who was the most impressive during his 2 1/2 hour interview session with the club's decision-makers." For that reason alone, I've tried my best to remain aloof from it, but I haven't forsaken the process completely. Hopefully by mid-week I'll have my next contribution to better informing us about the candidates.
But on with the reason your reading this: links to stuff you can read while you watch a little pig skin (or obsessively watch your fantasy football tracker...).
- I'll start with Footer's link because I liked her insight the best and she always has pictures. Plus I quoted her above. Alyson throws out whom she feels has a leg up in the race.
- Richard Justice gives us Drayton McLane's mailing address and urges us to hire Garner (probably the most useful thing Justice will ever do for us). I feel like we can do a lot more productive things with this information...like mail him a giant petition urging him to sell the team, and bring in a new, fresh group willing to spend money and trust smart people to make smart decisions with it. But if you want to endorse Garner via snail mail, go for it. There's a lot about the article I'd like to pick apart, but I'll leave the fun and excitement for you.
- I'll be honest, there are a lot of these managerial candidates who I don't know from Adam's house cat. So when I came across this synopsis of Mackanin, I have to admit, I perked up a little bit:
- The Chronicle hosted a poll asking which of the ten candidates should be the next manager, the results shocked the [expletive deleted] of me. (Ok, we're done with managerial talk.)
- A cool retrospective of Lance Berkman's career from Astros.com. There's a crazy photo of Lance in his early twenties as Rice Owl.
- Zach Levine remains above the managerial search fray and lets us know just exactly where all the Astros who are playing winter ball will be playing it.
- JC Bradbury takes a look at an attempt to rebunk wins. I used to read Bradbury all the time and then stopped for a year or so. I'm glad I got back on board, though.
- BtB's Daily Box Score asks, and attempts to answer, "What do the playoffs tell us?"
- Finally, a pretty incredible glossary and guide to understanding Japanese baseball (research provided by SABR).
Mackanin, the bench coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, is in his 41st season of professional baseball. He is searching for his first non-interim managerial position in the major leagues... He has run the gamut in baseball from scouting, to the minor leagues, to managing in Latin America to being a part of four major league coaching staffs since 1997.Pretty much everything. Impressive. Final word about the managerial search.