In following last night’s depressing elections, I completely forgot to think about the Crew’s new elected official, Ron Roenicke.
Like most other Brewer fans, I wasn’t really familiar with the guy before, or even during interviews. Even after he was hired, I immediately thought, “Oh no, he’s under Mike Scioscia, that means he loves bunting and slap hitters.” But after reading up on the guy, he’s got a pretty impressive resume.
Considering he comes from the system that spat out Bud Black and Joe Maddon, two of the most impressive managers, I’m pretty optimistic. Maddon’s obviously had huge success managing a good team, and Black’s Padres were the most surprising team in MLB this season.
I remember watching a late-season Padres/Cubs game on MLB Network during the last week of the season during the NL West pennant race. The Scrubs had won 2 of the first 3 in San Diego, and were playing for an afternoon sweep on the final home game of the year… they showed the dugout before the game (due to a short rain delay), and Black and all the players were upbeat, seemed loose, were fistpumping each other and were definitely ready to play. They were thinking about having fun that day, instead of thinking about not losing.
They lost 1-0, which is nothing to sneeze at, but that’s baseball.
Considering Milwaukee’s young core, that type of guy is definitely the type I want running the team. Not an old, blah stathead who makes the analytical decision first and turns baseball into work. Hopefully Roenicke can turn the Brewers into a team that plays for fun, instead of a team just going through the motions.
I mentioned this before, although Bobby V’s later-reported $10M price tag was turning me off a little. Melvin wasn’t the right guy, and it looked like Cora was deserving, but just placed second.