Even though Bruce Bochy just helped them win their first World Series title since the team moved to San Francisco in 1957, the Giants have decided to give him the boot and hire Lou Piniella instead.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Bochy and that giant-sized dome of his aren’t going anywhere. But the Giants did hire Piniella to act as some kind of baseball czar according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

He retired from managing in August, more eager to be with his family, citing his mother’s failing health, than playing out the string with the Cubs. The good news is that he’s not totally gone from the game, and that’s where the Giants enter the picture.

The team hasn’t made an announcement yet, but The Chronicle learned Piniella, 67, is joining the Giants’ front office to consult in a variety of ways, whether it’s evaluating or advising on player movement or scouting or . . . well, whatever a baseball lifer of 48 years can provide.

I’m not sure how much of an impact Piniella will have on the Giants’ week-to-week operations. The club hired Felipe Alou after the 2006 season and after that news made a small ripple in the San Francisco area, nobody has mentioned him since. I even forgot he was with the team until I read the Chronicle’s article about Piniella.

That said, adding a man with as much baseball experience as Piniella can’t be a bad thing. Nobody outside of GM Brian Sabean knows what Piniella will be doing, but I don’t see how this could blow up in the Giants’ faces. After all, the club already has a World Series-winning manager in Bochy, so if they start the season 10-20 it’s not like rumors will start to surface about Piniella taking over (uh, I think). After all, Piniella will set up shop in Florida, which Google maps tells me is cross-country from San Francisco.

I think it’s a good decision by the defending champs. Piniella was available and has connections with the Giants. Seems like a good fit.

I don’t blame Cubs fans if they feel cheated by the way Lou Piniella has decided to step down as manager with 37 games remaining in the season. After all, if they have to sit through the rest of this miserably year, why doesn’t he?

But the fact of the matter is that neither Piniella’s heart nor his mind is in it right now, so why drag the thing out any longer? And besides, does it really matter who’s managing the Cubs at this point?

Piniella has had to take two leave of absences to attend to personal matters this year, which mainly consists of him visiting his 90-year-old mother who has been ill for most of the season. There are more important things than baseball and seeing as how he was going to retire at the end of the year anyway, there’s no sense going through the motions for 37 more games.

Following another horrendous loss on Sunday, Piniella had this to say about starting his retirement early:

“Cried a little bit after the game,” he said, before choking up further in his postgame news conference. “This will be the last time I put on a uniform. This has been very special for me. I’ll go home, do what I have to do there…and enjoy my retirement.”

Obviously this wasn’t the way he or Cub fans envisioned things ending this season. While the club also struggled last year, many pundits thought they would bounce back and that just hasn’t been the case. The team’s roster is littered with overpaid, underachieving veterans and the youth movement has just begun. It’s a sad way for a World Series-winning manager to walk away from the game, but not everybody can go out on top.

Piniella wasn’t going to be part of the Cubs’ future and it was probably right that he has decided that they won’t be a part of his present.

When it’s time, it’s time.

According to ESPN Chicago, former Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez will be one of the candidates interviewed by the Cubs to replace Lou Piniella at the end of the season. Piniella announced his retirement yesterday, which will be effective immediately following the season.

Gonzalez, who was fired by the Marlins on June 24, has a long personal and professional relationship with Cubs general manager Jim Hendry stemming from the time they worked together with the Marlins.

Gonzalez, who has interviewed with the Cubs in the past, is the consensus top choice to replace Bobby Cox as manager of the Atlanta Braves, according to multiple baseball sources.

If I were to put on my prediction hat (which is essentially the sleeve off one of my old T-shirts that I fashioned into a hat), I’d say that Gonzalez winds up in Atlanta and Ryne Sandberg (photo) replaces Piniella in Chicago. Sandberg has been craving the Cubs’ job for a couple of years now. He wants it. He needs it. He wants to make sweet, sweet managerial love to it.

Of course, hiring Sandberg (who was a mega fan favorite in Chicago, which is about 10 notches above just a regular fan favorite in case you were wondering) makes too much sense. And nothing Cubs’ management does every makes sense.

The New York Daily News is reporting that Cubs’ skipper Lou Piniella will retire at the end of the 2010 season.

The 67-year-old Piniella, who led the Cubs to NL Central division titles in 2007 and 2008, is in the last year of his contract and has endured a particularly stressful last two seasons in which so many of his high-paid players, including outfielder Alfonso Soriano, third baseman Aramis Ramirez and pitcher Carlos Zambrano have underperformed to their salaries. This year, the Cubs are mired in fourth place, 10 1/2 games back and Piniella, who is in the last year of his contract, wanted to end to the speculation about his future for the good of the organization.

Earlier this season, he had to suspend Zambrano after the volatile pitcher got into a dugout fight with teammate Derrek Lee in the middle of a game. Last year, Piniella had numerous similar confrontations with temperamental outfielder Milton Bradley, who was traded to the Seattle Mariners last winter.

While Piniella has been one of the most successful managers in baseball history, there’s no doubt that the Cubs need to go in another direction at the end of the year. Their struggles this season can hardly be pinned on Piniella and Piniella alone, but it’s clear that his style has run its course on the North side of Chicago.

Speculation continues to grow that former Cub Ryne Sandberg will take over as the club’s next manager. He has stated that managing the Cubs is his ideal job and after moving through the minor league ranks over the past four seasons, it appears that he’s suited for the position as well. We’ll see what management decides after the season.

Getting back to “Sweet Lou,” this wasn’t the way he wanted to go out (i.e. marred in fourth place in a weak NL Central) but the timing is right. The Cubs will be undergoing a lot of changes this offseason and Piniella isn’t the right fit for a (potentially) young club that needs a lot of massaging.

But if you’re Lou, why pick on little ol’ Steve Stone?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Stone’s work, he’s a former broadcaster for the Cubs and now a current broadcaster for the White Sox. Earlier this week, he criticized Piniella on Comcast SportsNet for not playing rookie outfielder Tyler Colvin more.

This is exactly what Stone said (via ESPN Chicago):

“I think that means that Lou doesn’t have a great grasp on what to do with young players,” Stone said in the interview. “Because with Tyler Colvin, if you take a look at what he has accomplished in a short period of time, with limited play, you realize that he very well could be the one thing the Cubs have been looking for for six years. That’s a left-handed run producer. Colvin could be that one guy. But he can’t do it on the bench, so you make a decision that you play the guy.”

What Stone said was hardly venomous and the guy does have a right to share his opinion. (He is a broadcaster after all.) But apparently Piniella took exception to the criticism and before the Cubs got their ass kicked by the Sox yesterday, Lou went off.

You can read the rest of the story here, including Stone’s response to Lou’s comments (which are basically Stone telling Piniella that he’s been around baseball long enough to have an opinion).

First and foremost, Stone is right about Colvin. He’s a young player that hasn’t been given much of an opportunity to play because Lou (like many former players turned managers) favors veteran hitters. Granted, Marlon Byrd, Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome are the least of the Cubs’ worries right now, but Colvin is the future and Lou is holding him back. He’s delaying the future and for what? The Cubs are a .500 team at best, so why not play more of the youngsters?

I find it humorous that Piniella mocks Stone in a, “I’ve done things in baseball and you haven’t” kind of way. Keep in mind that Stone is being criticized by a manager that hasn’t won anything in Chicago, who didn’t win anything in Tampa, who didn’t win anything with a star-studded team in Seattle and who had the fortune of riding “The Nasty Boys” to a World Series title with the Reds in 1990. He hasn’t won anything in 20 years, yet he’s going to mock Steve Stone for a comment he made about Tyler Colvin? Come on, Lou.

This of course isn’t to suggest that Piniella is a bad manager. He’s won three Manager of the Year awards and is a three-time World Series champion (two as a player, one as a manager). But for him to pick on Steve Stone because he’s frustrated is absurd – especially given the current state of the Cubs.

This appears to be one of those times where someone takes his frustrations out on the wrong person. Stone was only voicing his opinion, which is something he’s paid to do. Piniella could have shown a little more grace in the wake of Stone’s criticism, especially considering he’s on the hot seat in Chicago.

For those Cubs fans that have been clamoring for Ryne Sandberg to replace Lou Piniella as the club’s skipper, you’re going to have to wait much longer, I’m afraid.

General manager Jim Hendry told the media on Monday that Piniella isn’t to blame for the team’s lackluster start (17-22 heading into Tuesday’s action, good for third place in the NL Central) and that the manager’s job is safe for the 2010 season.

“We’re certainly not here to play the blame game,” Hendry said Monday. “We’re not here to put all the blame on the players that haven’t done as well as we’d like either. It’s been a good, collective rough start, but there has not been one thought in my mind of Lou Piniella not managing the team this year.”

While many of the adjustments he has made with personnel certainly haven’t panned out this season, it’s hardly fair to blame all of the Cubs’ failures this season on Piniella. Two of his best hitters (Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez) have crapped the bed all season in RBI situations (and all situations for that matter) and he can’t find a reliable setup man to get to Carlos Marmol in the ninth. (He tried Carlos Zambrano there but much like his effort in 2010, Big Z was brutal in the role.) The bottom line is that the Cubs haven’t produced and a change in manager won’t magically remedy the situation.

The good news is that Lee has started showing signs that he’s ready to break out of his funk, Alfonso Soriano has actually thrived batting sixth in the lineup and young phenom Starlin Castro (who struggled defensively when he was first called up last week but appears to be settling down) is spanking the ball. If A-Ram (who hit a walk off homer to beat the Rockies Monday night) can shake out of his slump and start producing, then the Cubs can easily turn things around.

Things haven’t been pretty for the Cubs so far, but it’s early yet and the club’s issues aren’t un-fixable. Making a switch in managers would be premature and Hendry knows that. He just has to trust that Piniella can right the ship, just as Lou has to trust his players will snap out of it and start producing.

Photo from fOTOGLIF
]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/05/18/piniella-on-his-way-out-not-according-to-gm-hendry/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/07/09/soriano-angry-will-piniella/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/07/09/soriano-angry-will-piniella/#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:30:38 +0000 Anthony Stalter http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=21086

Cubs left fielder (if you can even call him that with the nightly circus routine he usually puts on out there) Alfonso Soriano is hopping mad with manager Lou Piniella after the skipper sat him for the third time in eight in eight games Wednesday night.

“That’s why I’m mad,” Soriano said. “If he had told me yesterday, then I wouldn’t come today ready to play.”

Piniella typically gives Soriano a heads-up when he will get a day off but declined to do so this time.

“That’s a surprise to me today,” Soriano said. “I think he could have said to me last night, ‘OK, take a day off,’ especially because [Thursday] is an off day. I’d be like, ‘OK, I’ll take the two [days].’ But I like to know before I come here.”

Soriano, hitting .182 over his last 40 games, said his knee pain isn’t enough to prevent him from playing.

“I can play,” he said. “If I can play, it’s not bothering me. It bothers me if I’m not playing though.”

Asked if he would talk to Piniella about his complaint, Soriano simply replied: “No.”

Considering he’s hitting a buck eighty two over his last 40 games and is a liability defensively, Soriano doesn’t have much of a compliant here. And I found it laughable when he suggested that he wouldn’t come ready to play if he knew he was going to sit.

Hey Alfonso, the Cubs (over)pay you millions of dollars every year. How about showing up ready to play everyday, regardless of whether or not you’re in the starting lineup? Is that too much to ask?

Piniella is really working with a couple of clowns on this team. He must go home every night and punch a fresh hole through the wall of his garage.