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He's a fiery guy, but he also seems to needle some players and issue large swaths of blanket support to others.  He has "his guys" and then "other guys."  Bill Parcells was like that in football.  He would come in, tell the team that half of them wouldn't be there next year, bring in a bunch of his old players from previous stops to show the new guys how to do it His Way, and blow out anybody who couldn't take his needling and abuse.
He was a Super Bowl winning coach, so you took that as a player.  And veterans told the rookies how to deal with it.  But if you couldn't thrive in that kind of environment, it would not go well for you. Lloyd hasn't won anything as a manager to demand respect (he's no La Russa) and baseball locker rooms are not like football ones.  You can't yell after every game - there's a few more of em.
The guys Lloyd seems to like? Guys like himself, naturally.  Who hasn't gotten a great shake in the early going? The soft-faced, soft-spoken pitcher. The quiet Canadian. Players who won't pop off and get in your face.
Problem is, we don't really have a popping-off kind of team. Maybe that's what Lloyd wants, a few guys who chew tacks and spit fire. But we're still one of the youngest teams in the league, and we've been bad at player development (which is different than player talent).
Talented guys struggle here.  We have poor advance scouting, bad doctors (anybody see how Mike Morse is doing in SF now that his wrist isn't broken?) and an inability to get our hitters to grow as players.
Maybe that'll stop now.  Maybe Saunders can take the doubters and show them up.  Maybe Ackley will hit, and Miller and Romero and Zunino will remember the rule about 4 balls equalling a trip to first base. We're where we had to be at this time, around .500.  Our offense is not good, but it has the batters to get better...
I just hope Lloyd's approach helps us get better.  If the kids tune him out, some people are getting fired.  This isn't football - you can't scrap half the roster in a season just because their emotional makeup doesn't match what you want and still make the playoffs.  
That said, being .500 into May with a raft full of pitching reinforcements on the way is a good thing. We have room for improvement and have recovered from that horrific losing streak to keep the season afloat. I hope Lloyd can find out how to get the most out of the talented kids we have and we can make it a fun season to watch and hopefully a competitive one down the stretch, which will be rare air for us.  Because if he can't, he and Zduriencik will be on the street sooner rather than later.  And La Russa's still looking for a job...
~G