Then there's that other name that circulated through the baseball world this week: Randy Smith.Smith hasn't been heard from much since he was fired six years ago after a mostly unsuccessful run in Detroit. He's impressed people with his international scouting work with the Padres, particularly with this month's signing of five top young Dominican prospects.
And now his name is out there again.
If there's any juice to that rumor, Mariners fans had better hope that Smith was the only one responsible for those Dominican signings, because nothing else on his CV provides reason for hope.
It's hard to blame a GM for the records of his teams because, generally speaking, a GM is hired because the cupboard is bare. The longer he's there, however, the more ownership he has over the performance of his club. By that measure, Smith may be one of the worst GMs in history, as the final product of his seven year term in Detroit was a 55-106 record, which got even worse the year after he left. Overall his teams in San Diego and Detroit posted a .419 winning percentage. Between his awful drafts, awful free agent signings, and awful trades, Smith simply destroyed the Detroit Tigers.
I suppose everyone deserves a second chance, but this would be Smith's third, and I can't really see any basis for giving it to him.
4 comments:
I think the pattern would be for the Mariners to hire him after a mediocre season at the end of a three-year pattern of declining success.
Well, of course...Randy Smith didn't know how to GM a baseball team before, but now that he's signed 5 good prospects from the Dominican, he knows how to GM a baseball team.
I'm of the mind that baseball GMs are hired less for their ability to construct a baseball roster than for their ability to stand in front of the media. Smith won't build a good team, but he would give ownership cover.
This would be the *exact* wrong hire for the Mariners. It's so perfectly wrong, no one here even considered the possibility. I mean, I've heard some cynical names mentioned, but this is so obscure, and so feeble, it can't possibly be topped. Or whatever the opposite would be...
Can it?
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