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Find out more about John: John covered sports for daily newspapers in the San Francisco suburbs for four years before moving to Washington, D.C. He wrote about the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's, and now he writes about the Washington Nationals just for you. |
Clearly, when you lose 102 games and earn the No. 1 draft pick as the league's worst team, there's only one person to blame: the video coordinator. As Manager Manny Acta hinted at recently, the Nats fired every assistant coach Sunday except pitching coach Randy St. Claire. That includes hitting coach Lenny Harris, bullpen coach Rick Aponte, bench coach Pat Corrales, third base coach Tim Tolman and first base coach Jerry Morales, strength and conditioning coach Kazu Tomooka and video coordinator Tom Yost. Apparently, Nats officials were unsatisfied with all the tapes they had to watch of their team getting pounded this year.
Actually, I somewhat respect this decision from Jim Bowden and the front office. Normally the manager would get canned after two seasons like Acta has had. This housecleaning-from-the-bottom is a new tactic, and if it works you could see more teams follow suit. So I at least applaud Bowden's originality.
But doesn't this completely undermine Acta as a manager? All signs (and quotes) point to Acta not being pleased with the firings. Now he'll have to find an entirely new staff, one that may take a while to mesh as a leadership unit. The coaches really need to be on the same page for things to work smoothly. I'm not sure the Nats can afford an adjustment period for their coaches to get acquainted.
That said, it was clear some of the dismissals were warranted. Harris was a disaster as a hitting coach, as the Nats finished the year 28th in the majors in runs scored and 27th in batting average. Aponte deserved to go after the Nats managed just 28 saves all year, second worst in baseball.
But the video coordinator? The strength and conditioning coach? Color me confused. Bowden clearly has a better insight of the team than I do, but I don't see how the video coordinator could have contributed to this year's ugliness. Were the DVDs scratchy? Did Yost accidentally record over a scouting tape with episodes of "Mad About You"?
Whatever the reason, there will be a lot of new faces on the Nats' bench next year. If Bowden can also find some new faces who can actually take the field, the Nats might actually improve.
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