Maddux Sports Blog

The Blue Jays have extended Cito Gaston as manager through the 2010 season. Let me be the first to prematurely declare this team as one to watch next year. The tough AL East should be even tougher thanks to this move. It is no fluke that the Jays have been a much improved squad since the calming influence of Gaston has been in charge. He thinks offense, he doesn’t tolerate crap, and he has the respect of his charges. The team is 48-36 since Gaston took over, and made the AL East race more interesting. The team likely has a spot or two in the rotation to fill, and they still need a bat or two, but the core of this team is good enough to compete. A very good move.

Is Allan Houston freaking kidding? The Knicks’ fourth leading all-time scorer has announced that he is going to attempt another comeback with the Knicks this year. He retired in 2005 wth knee problems. He tried a comeback last year, but it was lame - he missed the first 10 days of camp because his wife had a child, then quit after just one exhibition game. Now he;s 37, and I find it virtually impossible to believe that his knees could hold up to the abuse that they would take under Mike D’Antoni’s offensive system. This is not an offensive approach for the fragile. This story likely won’t turn into much as Houston isn’t going to make the team, but it’s just one more distraction for a team that desperately needs to avoid distractions and get back to playing something resembling real basketball.

Matt Millen. What else is there left to say? He was brutal, and now he is gone. I think that the public is going to overestimate the positive impact of this one on the Lions. The fact is that the GM’s impact on a team mostly happens in the offseason. There are players to be added and subtracted during the season, but the meaningful moves are long done. This move, then, might provide a big boost to fans, and perhaps a smaller boost to the players who have had problems with him, but it isn’t going to have the substantive impact on the team that people will assume it will. People overreact to high profile injuries and quarterback changes, and they will overreact to this, too.

Monta Ellis said he hurt his ankle in a basketball accident. It turns out that it happened on a mo-ped. An injury is an injury, but that’s just funny. The Warriors, it seems, are cursed.

Novak Djokovic is an absolute moron, and I suspect that there is no one more embarrassed on the planet right now. If you missed it, he spent a great deal of effort last week telling everyone who would listen to him that Roger Federer was vulnerable. Since Djokovic was set to play him in the semi-finals at Wimbledon if they both made it that far, the clear assumption was that Djokovic was going to beat him. I have no problem with a claim like that. You have to back it up, though. Djokovic didn’t even come close. He came out in the second round of the tournament and fell in straight sets to Marat Safin. Safin used to be good once, but those times are a distant memory. Djokovic should have been able to win the match in his sleep, but instead he looked lethargic and unfocused. Even worse, he whined his way through the whole match. Terrible. This is one more reason added to an already large pile why I don’t buy into the prevailing theory that Djokovic is a future number one.

So far, so good for the Blue Jays after their change of manager. After a seven game losing streak the team has one two in a row. More importantly, the offensively inept team has scored 22 runs in the two wins, and their 22 hits in the 14-1 win over Cincinnati last night was the best by any team all year. The most noticeable thing when you see the team play is that they are visibly relaxed. Under John Gibbons they were tense and they didn’t look like they were having any fun. Given that the change is so noticeable it seems odd that Gibbons was able to hold on so long. This team should, on paper anyway, be able to hit much better than they have been.

The best part of that Toronto - Cincinnati game last night was the line posted by Reds’ starter Bronson Arroyo. He lasted one inning, allowing 11 hits and 10 earned runs. It doesn’t take a math major to figure that that makes for an ERA of 90.00 on the game. That hurts the long-term stats - it bumps the ERA from an already dismal 5.55 to an ugly 6.52. Ouch.

Another day, another manager fired. This time it was John Gibbons in Toronto. That comes a day after Seattle made a change, and just a few days after Willie Randolph started this current epidemic of managerial upgrades.

Just like the previous two firings, this one was unquestionably needed. The Blue Jays have one of the best starting rotations in the league, and they have no shortage of batting talent, but they are underachieving at the plate as much as it is possible for a team to do (except for Seattle). It’s frankly a bit of a surprise that Gibbons, a guy who thinks that challenging a player to a fist fight isn’t necessarily a bad idea, made it this far.

More remarkable than this inevitable firing is who Toronto tabbed to replace Gibbons - Cito Gaston. If you recall, Gaston is the guy who led the Blue Jays to back-to-back World Series victories. A few observations from that front:

1. This is a clear sign that J.P. Ricciardi is all but done in Toronto. There is no way that Ricciardi made this hire. Gaston is an ownership man, and they pull the strings on this one. Ricciardi has prove yet again that he is a goof with this Adam Dunn kerfuffle this week, and his days are very numbered. I figure he will play out the season and then ‘leave to pursue other opportunities’. Good riddance - the guy is lousy. I live in Canada, and the sports radio station in my home town is owned by the same group that owns the Jays, so this story got lots of coverage today. In all of that coverage it is Paul Godfrey, the President and CEO of the team, that is quoted or makes a comment. Ricciardi is silent.

2. Gaston is an odd case. He took over an underachieving team full of holes midway through th 1989 season, and he turned them into dominant champs. He ultimately left the team rather unceremoniously in 1997, and he hasn’t managed since. He was a finalist with Detroit and the White Sox, but he hasn’t been offered anything better than a hitting instructor job. On paper he clearly deserves another shot, so there must be a less-than-enjoyable part of his personality from the management perspective.

3. This move will by the team time from the fans. Gaston is wildly popular in Toronto for obvious reasons, and his return will be seen as the greatest move ever. It probably won’t actually turn out to be a great move, but it will buy the Jays some time to turn things around from a roster perspective.

4. Gaston has a background as a hitting coach, and this team can’t hit at all, so he seems like a good fit. If he sticks with what he knows then he should be fine. The risk, though, is that he will rest on his past laurels. None of the current players will care about that and it will go badly.

5. It will be interesting to see if Gaston’s hiring is basically just a P.R. move or if he will be given real input into this team. There are several players on the roster that are not his type of guys, so if changes start to be made then we’ll quickly know that Gaston is for real.

6. This does nothing to change the Jays’ fundamental problem - they likely will never return to former glory until they can find a way to get out of the AL East. The last decade would have looked very different for them if they were in the AL Central.

7. Who’s next? I’m not going to do the research, but I would guess that this is the most mid-season firings we have seen in one week in a long time. If ever. There are a few more guys who probably don’t need to stay where they are. Clint Hurdle has his team playing better in Colorado, but it’s still pretty ugly, and it has the real potential to get worse. Cleveland and Detroit are both spending too much money to be patient forever. Manny Acta is terrible in Washington, but to be fair there isn’t a manager alive that could do anything with that mess. Cecil Cooper is only in his first full year as manager in Houston after taking over as an interim last year, but he isn’t doing much with the talent he has and gives us little reason to believe that he has a long, bright future. After failing to make the playoffs last year and basically failing to win a game this year, Bud Black may be in some trouble in San Diego. Heck, if this firing pace keeps up baseball could soon be like the NBA was a couple of years ago.

8. There was an almost total change in the coaching staff at the same time. Most notable was that Dwayne Murphy replaces Ernie Whitt as first base coach. Murphy was the guy who hit behind Rickey Henderson in Oakland when Rickey was at his base stealing best. He was a very good and underappreciated player, and he is still a legend in Oakland. Sadly, Toronto doesn’t travel to Oakland for the rest of the year, so we don’t get to enjoy the interesting, though totally meaningless, story of how Murphy is received in his homecoming. In another blast from the past, Gene Tenace is the hitting coach. Tenace filled that same role when Gaston was last the manager, and he was a successful interim manager for a short spell when Gaston had to take time off with back problems.

9. I hope the Jays realize that bringing back the 1992 staff won’t bring back 1992 results.