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Russ' and my longtime partner in crime is --- > a pro-Wedge analyst.  This makes me happy.

Quoth Mariner Analyst,

Before we gather our rocks to go stone Wedge,

SSI thinks that Wedge is probably a good overall manager.  ... It's a little weird that (what I see as) his big Achilles' heel came up first on this site, but...

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I think that we need to give him and his pitching coach some benefit of the doubt.  Don't forget -- Wedge is a former catcher.  He knows how to work with pitchers -- he understands them. 

My assumption would be that Wedge has an artist's feel for how to work with starting pitchers, a feel for where they are on their fatigue curves, as it were.

BP's stats show that Wedge does get SP's out of the game timely, and that he abuses them almost more rarely than any other manager.

As far as I can tell, that's where the finesse begins and ends, though :- )  ... these SP's were not left in a long time, but they did suffer tons of crashes-and-burns at the ends of their starts...

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One thing Wedge also understands is the need to delegate authority.  He will lean upon his coaches and let them coach, so whomever he brings in as pitching coach (I think we can be fairly certain that man will be Carl Willis) -- that's the guy we need to be more focusing on when it comes to pitchers.

Let's hope.

Glad to hear that MA has researched Wedge to be a delgator.

My question is whether that delegation is going to lead to a sufficiently coherent bullpen management that the 9-12 guys won't be doghoused.  In Cleveland, that didn't seem to be true...

It's one thing to let a pitching coach make a switch on Tuesday.  It's another thing to let the pitching coach oversee Dan Cortes' groove throughout June and July...

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I believe what we in Seattle really have to grasp here is just what the situation in the Cleveland was like.  Wedge saw the club through 1 rebuilding phase, watching a young roster mature under his leadership, and watching the club improve every year -- culminating in the team's ALCS appearance in 2007.  2008 was a bit of a different story though -- and by mid-season the team had begun a fire sale.  I wouldn't put too much stock in any of the pitching after that -- frankly, he didn't have a lot to work with.

I do think that it's important that Wedge (1) succeeded with the rebuild and then (2) collapsed only after his key players were sold out from under him.

I think that if you'd sold Griffey, Edgar, Randy Johnson and Bone out from under Lou, he'd have made a royal mess out of the remnants also.  No surprise that Wedge -- with all his loyalties -- couldn't organize the nuke site better than he did.

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I'm not necessarily a guy who believes that platooning in the pen correlates with winning.  :- )  I'd rather get the right guy in there.

But Wedge's rep is for "slotting the best guys into formulaic roles, and ignoring the other relievers," and if Matt's correct that Wedge doesn't platoon ... in this specific case that's suggestive that Wedge is just swapping pitchers like a grade-schooler playing Strat-O-Matic.

Again, I think Eric Wedge's work in his first 3-4 years in Cleveland was very impressive. 

Just for example, Ryan Garko had some impressive little runs early on, and when Wedge flushed him, the fans were up in arms.  But who turned out to be right?

The bullpen work, specifically, has looked like a big problemo, and so far we remain to be convinced despite even the MA comin' into the key :- )

Cheerio,

Jeff