Grady Little Resigns: Joe Torre Waiting in the Wings
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by Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook and Etcetera
Grady Little Resigns
Grady Little saw the handwriting on the wall and quit his position as manager of the Dodgers who had faded out of the NL West race in the last half of the season. With him no longer as manager it cleared the way for Dodgers to offer Joe Torre a three year contract for $14.5 million. Latest reports say that there will be an announcement tomorrow probably to announce the hiring of Torre.
There is speculation that Don Mattingly and Alex Rodriguez will follow Torre to Los Angeles. One thing for certain is that the Dodgers need a new coaching staff since all of Little's coaches had not been rehired for the 2008 season.
Little was in a no win situation after reading about reports of Torre being offered the managerial job with the Dodgers. This writer will be surprised if Little manages again but in baseball anything can happen but the late season collapse of the Dodgers probably ended his career as a major league manager.
Joe Girardi Accepts Yankee Offer To Become New Yankees Manager
Joe Girardi will be the 32nd manager in their long history and during the offseason he will be working with Brian Cashman to find out what is needed to be done to make the Yankees a World Series participant in 2008.
In 2006 Girardi was NL Manager of the Year with the Marlins but didn't receive the award till after he was fired by Marlins management. Whether Girardi can deal with criticism of his managing if he struggles by the Steinbrenners remains to be seen.
I look for him to use a more aggressive managing style than Torre but on the other hand Torre's passive style of managing may have kept team more relaxed when things weren't going well like in April and May of this last season. Some managers like Lou Piniella could not have handled the pressure of being 14 1/2 games behind the Red Sox in late May.
Sammy Sosa Declares to be Free Agent
Sammy Sosa who rejuvenated his career hit 21 home runs and drove in 92 runs last season has entered the free agency market. He hit seven more home runs and drove in 47 more runs in only 32 more at bats than he did in the 2006 season.
Sosa hit 7 of his 21 home runs in April but hit a total of 7 home runs in the last three months of the season. Despite playing 18 years Sosa has only 2408 hits so is no threat to ever reach 3000 hits but unless alleged steroids use prevents him from getting many votes he should be in the Hall of Fame someday.
Regardless of if he signs with Rangers or any other team he should get a huge raise over the $500,000 he made in 2007. Even rookies entering majors for first season make $390,000 in 2008 so he should at least get back into seven figures for 2008.
Etcetera portion of post can be found at baseballetcetera.blogspot.com
