Justice Comes From The Strangest Place.

Orioles Fire Perlazzo

The perentially struggling Orioles fired manager Sam Perlazzo today. I have one main thought in response:

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

A couple of years back, when Lee Mazilli was hired to manage the Orioles, he was not allowed to pick any of his own coaches. This was of course a recipe for disaster but Mazilli, anxious to get that first big-league job and thus (hopefully) get his name on the managerial treadmill going forward, took the job.

Well, as all Oriole seasons have been recently, it was a disaster, but Mazilli's tenure had the added flavor of the coaches greasing the skids, reporting every little thing back to Angelos behind Maz's back. Perlazzo was the chief skid-greaser, and just as Judas got 30 pieces of silver, Perlazzo got the manager's job when Mazilli was inevitably fired.

The 30 pieces of silver would've been a better deal. The knock on Mazilli was that he "didn't know how to use the bullpen." Well, in 2004, the one full year Mazilli managed, only one Oriole starter had an ERA under 4 and only one other had an ERA under 5. And the main guys in the bullpen, aside from BJ Ryan, were such immortals as Buddy Groom, Jorge Julio, Jason Grimsley, and John Parrish. No one was succeeding in that job, that year.

The O's problem is wqhat it's been for a decade. Angelos is where Steinbrenner was circa the mid-1980s. That is, assemble a team of big offensive names, mostly past their primes. Ignore the pitching. Act like an a-hole so that people think you're "decisive."

It doesn't matter who manages the Orioles. But Sam Perlazzo not managing them was richly deserved.