Add new comment

I do not want to defend Eric Wedge, but so many of the criticisms make little to no sense to me.
While in Cleveland, the following list of players had their first successful big league seasons with Eric Wedge as the manager: Travis Hafner, Jhonny Peralta, Milton Bradley, Coco Crisp, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore, Asdrubal Cabrera, Shin-soo Choo. None of them, literally none of the them are hacks, and most of them derived much of their offensive value from their ability to take a walk (Hafner, Bradley, Martinez, Sizemore, and Choo).
During his seven year tenure, the Indians where 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 14th, and 26th (first year) in walk rate.  
Walk rate was integral to the Indians program -- GM Mark Shapiro (Princeton grad) and assistant GM Chris Antonetti (Georgetown grad) were sabr-darlings.  If Wedge were opposed to walks, how could he have survived in that environment?
For what it is worth, I suspect his snide comment about bloggers is more directed at his days in Cleveland, where the baseball power was wielded by people with limited playing experience, than at baseball bloggers. But that is just a guess. 
Eric Wedge is partially accountable for the poor performances by Ackley, Smoak, and Montero, but the notion that he isn't aware of the importance of walks and on-base percentage is laughable and has always been laughable.