Orioles Turn Focus to Buck Showalter

The Baltimore Orioles continue to search for a new manager and according to ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian they’re now set to interview Buck Showalter. It appears the team is interested in continuing their search, as they’ve already interviewed Bobby Valentine and Eric Wedge for the position.

Kurkjian mentions that the team isn’t sure when they want to hire a manager and you know what that makes sense. Do they want to do it midseason or after the season? It’s a good question. Right now they’ve got Juan Samuel in the interim manager role and he’s at a very affordable price. The managers they are looking at are pretty expensive, they’ve all had a decent amount of success in the role.

I’ve already talked about Valentine’s success in the prior post about his interview date. Showalter’s had more tough luck then in his career then Bobby thou. Buck has coached three teams and two of those teams won the World Series the season after his departure. There’s two ways you can take that.

1.) He can’t put a team over the top.
or
2.) He gets teams ready for that next level and he hasn’t been allowed to finish the job.

Being a fan of the New York Yankees, I have to say it’s a little bit of both but when you look at his third coaching stop in Texas you’d have to say he just wasn’t that good of a coach.

In New York and Arizona, Buck had veteran players who knew how to play the game and were hungry for a championship. Both teams were so-so before his arrival and then were coached into contenders.

In Texas, he had a team of youngsters and couldn’t get them anywhere near the playoffs, only finishing above .500 once in four seasons, even with some very talented youngsters.

So when you look at his career you have to ask yourself if he’d be a good coach for the Orioles, as they are a team of youngsters. These guys do need some leadership but they are no where near being able to compete in the ultra competitive American League East.

Based on his career I’d have to say Buck is definitely a good coach but not a developer. What I mean is this. If you have a team that’s close to competing he’ll get those boys ready to go out and he’ll manage the hell out of them. If you’ve got a young team and the players need some help developing then he can’t do much for them.

Regardless, I can’t blame the Orioles for interviewing him. He’s a well known name and he’s got plenty of experience. I’m just not sure if he’d be a better option over Wedge and Valentine.