Phil Nevin out as manager of the Los Angeles Angels.
ESPN calls this a firing, while other sources say they “declined the option on his contract”. That to me is functionally indistinguishable from a firing, but maybe it makes some sort of difference to someone.
Another one down, another one down, another one rides the bus bites the dust…
Buck Showalter out as manager of the Mets.
I was initially a little confused by this: was it a firing, or a retirement, but later articles make it clear it was a “forced resignation”.
ESPN:
Also ESPN:
New York is 74-87 and 29½ games behind National League East champion Atlanta.
The baseball season’s ending, and we all know what’s coming: the ceremonial throwing out of managers.
The San Francisco Giants started today: Gabe Kapler out. SF Chronicle.
The big problem seems to be that the Giants pretty much fell apart:
Sort of on the margin for sports firings (and from ESPN, who I have a high barrier for), but I’ll allow it: an oral history of Lane Kiffin’s legendary “tarmac firing” (which really wasn’t) from USC.
I’m allowing this because there’s a couple of quotes that struck me:
Kiffin
It’s 5 a.m. The sun’s getting ready to come up. I’m sitting in the backyard, and I said to my wife, “When I go to bed, I don’t want to wake up.” She’s got a little more perspective, and she said, “You have three children upstairs. Don’t ever say that again.”
Men: marry that kind of woman.
Kiffin
I saw a podcast the other day on the rapper Macklemore, and he’s talking about, he’s winning the Grammy. He’s on stage. He’s got everything. And he’s not fulfilled. And later, he’s in rehab. He’s making coffee in the morning for people. He’s serving others. And he says, “I felt more fulfilled doing that than when I was on stage.”
This is only sort of a firings watch because Mel Tucker isn’t out as head coach of Michigan State yet.
But the school has notified him they intend to fire him “for cause”. Which means no contract payout.
This is a weird story that I’ve been following from a distance, but have had trouble finding a way into that treats everyone involved with respect. Mr. Tucker is accused of sexual harassment. I’m just going to quote from the ESPN story:
Prominent sexual assault awareness speaker Brenda Tracy filed a sexual misconduct complaint against Tucker in December 2022. She claims that Tucker made unwelcome advances after she was hired to speak to the Spartans football team about sexual misconduct and her experience as a rape survivor. She said Tucker also masturbated without her consent during a phone call in April 2022. Tucker admitted to masturbating, but said in a statement last week that it was part of a consensual intimate relationship.
Tracy told USA Today that after she raised concerns about Tucker’s conduct, he postponed and eventually canceled a speaking engagement at the university. Because she had an ongoing professional relationship with the athletic department, she was able to file a claim under the school’s sexual misconduct policy.
Mr. Tucker has seven days from yesterday to respond to the termination letter.
I guess the baseball season is winding down. I’ll probably do a loser update, either as an individual post or as part of the regular post, when the season ends.
In the meantime: Chaim Bloom out as “chief baseball officer” of the Boston Red Sox.
Bloom was hired in 2019, bringing with him a plan for sustainable success from his time with the Tampa Bay Rays. He instead angered much of the fanbase by methodically stripping the team of its stars and replacing them with an ever-changing cast of veterans on short-term contracts, role players and prospects.
The Sox are 73-72 this season, tied with the Yankees at the bottom of the American League East and 267-262 under Bloom over four seasons. His tenure was marked by the franchise losing its status among Major League Baseball’s powers.
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Under Bloom, the Sox traded Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers in 2020 in what was essentially a salary dump. The return was Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong, and Jeter Downs.
Verdugo has been a solid player in right field. Wong, 27, has shown promise as a good defensive catcher and Downs was released in 2022.
Betts helped lead the Dodgers to a World Series title in 2020 and remains one of the premier players in the game.
Jim Foster out as baseball coach at Northwestern.
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Northwestern had several coaches depart the program in February, and the team struggled to a 10-40 record. After the season, 16 players reportedly entered the transfer portal.
Radio station 670 The Score in Chicago reported that Foster discouraged players from seeking medical attention for injuries and that players hid their injuries from him. The station also reported that Northwestern coaches and other staff members attempted to meet with Gragg but were denied an opportunity.
This seems like fallout from a story I missed covering earlier this week: football coach Pat Fitzgerald got canned on Monday, for pretty much the same reason.
The firing of Fitzgerald, 48, comes after the school announced Friday that he’d be suspended without pay for two weeks this summer following the conclusion of a university-commissioned investigation into allegations made by a former Northwestern football player. The school said the investigation, which was initiated in January and conducted by an outside law firm, did not find “sufficient” evidence that the coaching staff knew about ongoing hazing — though there were “significant opportunities” to find out about it.
The school then reversed course Saturday night after The Daily Northwestern published a story detailing allegations from the former player, who described specific instances of hazing and sexual abuse. That led Schill to write an open letter to the university community in which he said that he “may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction” for Fitzgerald and acknowledged focusing “too much on what the report concluded (Fitzgerald) didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known.”
The All Star break is upon us. It seems like a good time to update the fortunes of hapless the Oakland Athletics.
Tragically, they seem to have gotten a little better: they are currently at 25-67, for a .272 winning percentage. If this continues, that would put them at about 118 losses: that’s bad, tending towards historically bad, but not as bad as I’d like to see. (I’m personally rooting for at least 120 losses, if not more.)
Interestingly, Kansas City is only slightly better: 26-65, .286, 115 losses if trends continue.
And Dillon Lawson is out as hitting coach of the New York Yankees.
This is somewhat unusual. It isn’t common to fire a whole team from a league.
The only example I am aware of before the past few days is NK Veres Rivne, an “association football” team, which got thrown out of the Ukrainian Second League in 2011 for not paying dues.
On Thursday, the Albany Empire (“Albany?”) was thrown out of the National Arena League…for not paying dues.
The Albany Empire was recently aquired (maybe: it is complicated) by Antonio Brown, former NFL player.
Since Brown bought the Empire — becoming a part-owner in March and taking over a 94% stake in the franchise in May — the team has been through multiple coaches, and both quarterbacks on the roster were released after last weekend’s loss to the Orlando Predators that dropped Albany to 1-6. The Empire had entered the season as two-time defending champions.
Brown, a four-time NFL All-Pro wide receiver, had vowed to play for the Empire but had yet to do so. He practiced Wednesday and caught passes from quarterback Dalton Cole — who played at Division III Brevard College and played for the Sharks for a short time — before giving an interview in which he questioned whether “AB” was going to pay him; Brown has stated in the past that AB the owner and Antonio Brown the player are different people.
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I’m tagging this under “firings”, even though it isn’t a firing in the normal sense of the word.
There were elections yesterday in various parts of the country.
Voters in Tempe, Arizona had three propositions to vote on. All three were related to a plan to build a brand-new arena (and a related large “entertainment complex”) for the Arizona Coyotes NHL team, which is a complete disaster.
In order for the arena to be built, all three propositions had to pass by a simple majority vote.
All three failed by a pretty large margin.
The estimated cost of this plan was $2.1 billion. It isn’t clear to me how much of this would have been funded with public money, though Field of Schemes cites “$500 million in tax breaks“.
Right now, the team is playing in a 5,000 seat college arena.
There are persistent rumors that the team is going to move out of Arizona completely: one potential location I’ve seen is, believe it or not, Houston.
(I think I went to a Houston Aeros game in the Summit back in the day, possibly as a Boy Scout thing. Never went to see the other Houston Aeros, though, or the Ice Bats.)
More from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.
Edited to add: coverage from Reason, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.
Doc Rivers, who as far as I can tell is neither a doctor or a river (discuss) out as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.
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Rivers has been one of the NBA’s most recognizable and successful coaches for more than two decades, being honored as one of the top 15 coaches in league history during its 75th anniversary celebration. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008, before guiding a once-embarrassing Los Angeles Clippers franchise to six playoff appearances in seven seasons. The former All-Star point guard began his coaching career with the Orlando Magic in 1999-2000, where he was named coach of the year in his first season and took that team to three playoff berths in five seasons.
Yet Rivers has also become known for playoff failures, particularly in close-out games. He is now 17-33 in such situations, and 6-10 in Game 7s, after the Sixers surrendered their 3-2 series lead to Boston.
Monty Williams out as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.
They lost to the Nuggets in six games this year. They made the finals in 2021, and lost in seven games to Dallas in the semi-finals last year.