FanPost

Want to Grade Pete ?

With all the hubub surrounding 'Clutch', it has come to my attention that Reds manager Pete Mackanin is pretty 'unclutch'. I started out liking Pete pretty well. He had a plan, involved his players, was open to talk with them and gave players roles. The team has done resaonably well under him. But I feel that he's done just about all that he going to do. By that I mean I don't see much in the way of any 'outside the box' spark in Pete. What we've seen up to now seems to be pretty much the whole repetoire.  And often I've been baffled by some of his choices. Then again I'm baffled by lots of things, none more than why Dunn's contract has not been picked up. But that aside, how do we grade Pete given the team he has had to work with and the results that he has achived? I struggled with this because I believe that his approach of invovling as many players as possible and providing roles for the bench guys is a solid one. But for Pete this has lead to some very strange moves e.g. Jason Ellison in LF for Dunn when we are leading in the 8th. And the use of Stanton for more than one batter etc. Also his use of the bull pen while infinately better than his predecessor still leaves a fair amount to be deisred. Anyhoo....I'd give him a B-. Although his results have been pretty good, I don't think he's shown that he's 1st tier MLB manager and he's too old. I think we need a young, smart and a guy who has some people skills as manager to help push this team to a higher level of achievement.How 'bout yous ? want to talk a little Pete?