And when you consider that the Mariners a) had all but decided to trade Jones at that point and b) would have received a sandwich pick had Guillen rejected Seattle’s offer of arbitration, it makes even less sense.

It’s crazy. The three absolute best case scenarios involving Guillen were considered the worst case scenarios in the eyes of the FO (and idiots like LaRue) due to their unwillingness to accept — or perhaps even see — previous mistakes and move forward. The timeline of compounded mistakes that sank the Mariners at warp speed during the Bavasi era is astonishing.

(OK, that rant was totally unnecessary and out of date but it still felt good.)

the biggest mistake coming in to the season was effectively exchanging Guillen for the mediocre Wilkerson

If the only difference was Guillen out there in RF, would this team be a .500 team? Would this be a 90+ win team? Is Guillen really the biggest mistake coming into this season?

Maybe they were going to let him stay until the team got home, but he said or did something that really pissed them off/broke the camels back?? Who knows!??? I certainly don’t have all the details to make a judgement, do you?

There has been speculation (not just by bloggers) that the Mets were just going to fire pitching coach Rick Peterson and first base coach Tom Nieto, but Willie Randolph, when told of this, suggested that they just fire him along with them.

Guillen was a plus bat, and I thought it was BB’s bonehead in not signing him, because his three year deal was peanuts in terms of cost performance when you compare with contracts like Silva, Washburn, Batista, etc. But BB’s comments on Guillen indicate the possibility that he was severely constrained by Lincoln and Armstrong who must have had their pants in a twist by superficial concerns (the Mitchell report hasn’t seemed to effect Brian Robert, Giambi, Tejada, etc. etc.).
It’s also probably Lincoln and Armstrong who insist on picking up mediocre players because they happen to be “hometown boys”. When most of the other teams are playing rational hardball, such sentimental garbage can pull you down.

Anyway, I’ve been upset with Bavasi’s performance, but I’m getting the idea he was victimized more than we can know by incompetent meddling from above.

And regarding the Guillen topic, I can imagine some rationale to the recent McLaren (crazy man) moves.
If you move the best rightfielder out of his position, it’s with the idea that you are getting a plus bat (like Guillen) to man right.
But when you end up plugging terrible replacement level bats out there, it makes less sense.
The offensive numbers coming out of RF must be terrible this year (Wilkerson being a complete bust and Wlad having serious adjustment problems).
I’d rather see the Ichi-range manning center, but can understand Reed being there too.
Of course it could just be some random move by McLaren going crazy (which could actually be one attempt/way to jumpstart this complete carwreck of a team). Have a crazed unpredictable man drive.

As far as the “baseball thing” goes, has there been data collected to see when a manager was fired during a season (home or away)?

That would be an interesting study. Go look up the last, say, ten years of manager firings, map that out, and report back with results.

Yes – and Derek didn’t give you are a reference so I will. I believe that manager hirings and firing are included in the data at baseballreference.com. So you don’t even need to search all over the internet or go to a library to get it. After you research it, could you summarize it in a table, and get back to us.

My bad, if I can’t keep track of who is currently sweeping us, what kind of Mariners fan am I?

Psychic?