THAT'S IT!!!

Bring Wedge back, have Acta manage April-May, then Wedge for August & September. Not sure who should be in the seat for June and July though. When not managing, there is still the chance to be 1st base coach or ball boy or something.

VT'er- BRILLIANT! I suggest Ted Turner for June and July.

Should have hired Joel Skinner 10 years ago!!!

Yeah, look at all the teams that refuse to be successful by not hiring Joel " I just roll the balls on the field and let them play " Skinner.

That is a direct quote from Skinner when asked to describe his management style.

Is Skinner still in baseball?

Last I heard he was bouncing around the low Minors.

Last I heard he was with Oakland.

At one point he took a job to keep him near home and family. but maybe that was a couple years ago by now

Rusty is a year off. I am years off.


2010 – Hired as the Oakland Athletics bench coach for the 2011 season.

2011 – Hired as the manager of the Charlotte Knights, the White Sox triple-A affiliate, for the 2012 season.

This is just my opinion, but under Joel Skinner we don't have half the problems Eric Wedge created.

Wedge and Skinner had the same, almost identical minor league resumes, with one exception. Joel Skinner had half a season of managing the Cleveland Indians. The players liked Skinner, both the veterans and the young players.

And this opinion I can almost guarantee. Under Joel Skinner, Brandon Phillips is still an Indian.

Reds' Phillips says Tribe tried to change his game

By Hal McCoy

Staff Writer Updated 2:27 AM Friday, May 22, 2009

CINCINNATI —

Brandon Phillips doesn't think Cleveland Rocks and figures his time there was his own Mistake By the Lake.

"I have no beef no more with the Cleveland Indians. I'm done with that. As long as we beat their butts, that's all I care about." he said.

Phillips basically said he wasted more than two years of his professional life in the Indians organization because they wouldn't let him be himself. They told him to wipe that smile off his face and get serious.

Phillips was traded by the Indians to the Reds for what amount to a couple of bags of donuts on April 7, 2006 and he considered it Liberation Day.

"It was an honor and a blessing for me when the general manager (Wayne Krivsky) and the manager (Jerry Narron) brought me into the office and told me, 'You come here and play the game the best way you know how and if it doesn't work your way, then we'll sit you down and talk about how we want you to play,'" said Phillips. "They were telling me, 'Just be yourself.'"

Phillips said that didn't happen in Cleveland and it led to him hitting .208 in 2003 and burial in the minors. "I'll take the blame," he said. "Those are my numbers, I did it. But the way they wanted me to hit was not my way." So in the spring of 2006, Phillips rebelled and went back to his way and it got him what he wanted — a trade to Cincinnati. "I feel like I'm home," he said. "The fans are beautiful, how they opened their arms to me.

"Cleveland wouldn't let me be myself, wouldn't let me be me," he said. "When somebody takes the joy away from the game by wanting you to be a certain way and play a certain way, that's kind of hard for a player to perform. When I was with Montreal (before his trade to Cleveland), nobody said anything to me and I got the job as a No. 1 prospect. That's why the Indians wanted me."


He said Cleveland manager Joel Skinner told him to be himself and play the way he always played, "But they got a new manager in 2003 (Eric Wedge) and I was put on standby. I had to be a totally different person. I couldn't do that." Then the trade happened.

"I'm glad all that happened and I've matured a lot," he said. "All it did was make me stronger. What they did to me was like the New York Mets going up to Jose Reyes and saying, 'Hey, you can't smile and you can't play the way you play.' There's no chance Reyes could do that.

"And it's like Hanley Ramirez," Phillips added. "How do you take the fun of the game away from him. He is one of the best players in the game and you see him laughing and playing around."

The Reds never said a word about change and Phillips appreciates that.

"I can do it my way as a Red and I can go out of this game and just say, 'I did it my way,' instead of going out and saying, 'I did it somebody else's way and not my way.' So, I'm just here being me."

Frank Sinatra couldn't have said it better.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-s ... 28997.html

Beating the dead Joe Z as usual.

Let's see. Skinner did not get the Indians job. At the time someone told Joe Z that Skinner would not get a major league managers job because of his attitude. Still has not got it.

Wedge got hired, won manager of the year, got fired, and then hired for another team.

Only the beating the dead Joe Z would ever bring up Skinner's name again.

http://www.stationcaster.com/player_ski ... 1&f=661411

John Hart on ESPN 850 today.

I don't know Joel Skinner would have done as a manager, but I wish he had not been our 3rd base coach in 2007 in Boston for Game 7 of the ALCS.

Tribe Fan in SC/Cali wrote:I don't know Joel Skinner would have done as a manager, but I wish he had not been our 3rd base coach in 2007 in Boston for Game 7 of the ALCS.

I wish our Cy Young winner had done his job, so we never would have got to Fenway!

I don't know if this is the norm with every team, but it appears that Shapiro has surrounded himself with a bunch of Ivy League type cronies. I did a short search and couldn't find any front office personnel with any real on-the-field baseball experience. In reading some of the bios that I could find, it appears we have a bunch of numbers crunchers running the show. In my opinion, computers can't judge the heart of a player or those intangibles we hear so much about. Just an observation.

Does that include Acta who makes most of the major league roster calls just like Eric Wedge did ?