Community Opinion: Our Man Mazz

I'm still a little up in the air on Mazz.  I think he could be a great manager.  I definitely think he has the potential.  As for the success of the current birds, I'm not so sure it is a direct result of Mazz's managing.  I think it may be more about the team maturing and the few big acquisitions in the past couple off-seasons.  Don't get me wrong, I think Mazz seems like a great guy, I just haven't seen where he could be considered personally responsible for turning the team around.  If I could say that about anyone on the coaching staff, I would have to say Ray Miller has done more to contribute to the turn around than Mazz has.  Give Mazz a year or two more and I think he'll come around.  He'll get more into umpires faces to protect his players and team.  That's not his "style" yet, but as he grows and learns, it will become more and more a part of his game.  Some times when a coach gets thrown out of game it gets the team fired up (especially a team with Miggy), and he'll realize that one day when the team comes out flat.  I just kind of hope its sooner than later.

I think Mike Hargrove was a smart baseball guy, a genuinely good guy and a positive locker room presence -- but, after 5 straight losing seasons and watching him sit passively in the dugout game after game after game, I think that, although the Orioles' lack of success can be more pinned on the front office than the manager during his tenure, it was time for Grover to go.

We were told that Mazzilli wowed Flanabeattie and Angelos during the interview process, going from a last-minute, dark horse candidate to getting the job.  He was touted as a great baseball mind who would bring passion back to the club.

Instead, he seems to be what he is, an inexperienced manager who's struggling with pitching matchups and putting together a lineup, which happens to be the most talented Orioles' lineup in years.  

Passion?  Never (or very rarely) argues a call or sticks up for his player(although a poster on Birds in the Belfry thinks Mazzilli just might not like Steve Kline, in the recent example.  And really, who DOES like Kline at this point?), and sits silently, motionlessly, Hargrove-like in the dugout all game long.  

I'm not sure that a real firey manager will work with today's players.  I lived in Philly for a few years from 1999-2004, and so I got to watch The Larry Bowa show on a daily basis.  I think Bowa was fall the guy for a bad regime there, but his temper and his personality made the team worse.  There's got to be a happy medium between the Bowa (and maybe Weaver is the same mold -- I'm too young to really give a good opinion) model and the Hargrove/Charlie Manuel/Lee Mazzilli-nice guy quiet manager type.

On the other hand -- Ray Miller says Mazzilli's a great communicator with the players, and is very encouraging and they're very respectful of him.  He might be doing a great job behind the scenes, we just can't see him doing it. (Do the results thus far speak for themselves?)

I'm not a huge fan of his handling of the roster.  How long will Sosa bat 4th or 5th when he's killing us and Raffy is red hot?  How long can he keep trotting Kline or Reed out there in pressure situations?  Why did it take so long to figure out that Mike Dejean sucked?  Why do you use stinky Kline every other day and let John Parrish and even Bauer, while he was here, rot out there?

To be fair, Maz can only work with what he's given, and injuries are taking their toll, no doubt.  He's also got a coaching staff that includes Rick Dempsey and Sam Perlozzo, two guys who wanted the job that went to Maz.  Now, Perlozzo is suppossedly an old friend of Maz's, and Dempsey, I hope, isn't secretly making life more difficult for the manager, but still, probably not an ideal coaching staff situation from Mazzilli's point of view.

It's hard to tell how much Maz influences the personality of the team, which seems to be a lot more confident and fun than in prior years, because I think Tejada brings such a fire, and also the fun personality to the team, that I give him most of the credit for the team's new persona, which, along with Ray Miller's work with the pitcher's, I consider the key reasons for the improvement of the team.

But (sorry for the novel) I think baseball is the toughest of all the major sports to tell what kind of effect the coach has.  You can easily tell what kind of effect Bill Belichek, Andy Reid, Bill Parcells have on their team, just because I think the game plan plays a bigger role, and also, it's more over-analyzed.  In baseball, is strategy as big a part of the game, or is it more just execution?

Maz seems like a smart guy, and a nice person, and I do think he can get better in the areas where I'm not a fan.  But, right now, as things stand, I wouldn't be upset if he got fired.  I could be 100 percent wrong -- perhaps Maz is totally responsible for the success of the team, he's just not doing the best at the few aspects of his job that we the fans can see most clearly.