Tito’s farewell season

[DCTribefan]

Per Terry Pluto’s column posted tonight on Cleveland.com

“Every winter, I’ve been trying to get healthy for the season and then I get beat up. I need to go get healthy for life. This lifestyle is just too difficult. I went to see the doctor this morning just to set these things up. Trying to be logical, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Terry Francona opens up on why this will be his last season as Guardians manager – Terry Pluto

Terry Francona is facing more major surgeries after the season.

www.cleveland.com

Looks like Tito will literally be riding off into the sunset this fall.

 

[DCTribefan]

Dolan said in interview tonight, “he’s (Tito) given everybody a chance to prepare.”

 

[shoes22]

Best manager the organization ever had. Hall of Famer.

 

[Real Deal]

Love to bitch about his poor managerial decisions piling up since April, but 110% hate to see him ride off for that final time. I hope we have a Tito successor. I hope it's eventually Kevin Cash.

 

[Tondo]

Did an amazing job stabilizing the org. Now it's time to go.

It's a risk, but also a chance

 

[2 For The Brew]

Absolutely sucked that we came up just short in 2016. Very few people I‘ve rooted for more that Tito and Andrew Miller.

 

[BigJ0526]

sad that we couldnt get him a WS in 16 or 17. but still a cleveland legend. we will for sure miss him

 

[Cassity14]

I had stopped caring for the Tribe as a member of the "Dolan's cheap" crowd, but Tito's time with the organization restored that fandom in me. The Tribe was my first professional sports team love and I'm grateful it came back during Francona's tenure.

I am thrilled that he is exiting now, where he will be remembered for the triumphs and not for the blunders that we saw this past season. He had a fantastic run.

That 2017 team is one I'll never forget and will never leave my Strato-o-matic collection. It was a shame that variance got them the way it did. For my money, it was one of the more complete rosters I've seen.

 

[Steve_424]

I had stopped caring for the Tribe as a member of the "Dolan's cheap" crowd, but Tito's time with the organization restored that fandom in me. The Tribe was my first professional sports team love and I'm grateful it came back during Francona's tenure.

I am thrilled that he is exiting now, where he will be remembered for the triumphs and not for the blunders that we saw this past season. He had a fantastic run.

That 2017 team is one I'll never forget and will never leave my Strato-o-matic collection. It was a shame that variance got them the way it did. For my money, it was one of the more complete rosters I've seen.

Tito's "blunders" this season are way overblown. The roster just wasn't good enough, especially once injuries hit.

 

[Cassity14]

Tito's "blunders" this season are way overblown. The roster just wasn't good enough, especially once injuries hit.

We can agree to disagree. I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive.

 

[Criznit]

Tito is an excellent manager day in day out. But... He is a creature of habit. Amed batting 2nd all season long was infuriating... Batting Carlos Santana in the cleanup spot in 2020 while putting up some of the worst numbers for a cleanup hitter in the last 50 years at least... Ground me up..

I will look forward to someone with less rigidity in this regard.

 

[Steve_424]

We can agree to disagree. I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive.

Do you think he became a worse manager from 2022 to 2023?

 

[Urban]

Tito is an excellent manager day in day out. But... He is a creature of habit. Amed batting 2nd all season long was infuriating... Batting Carlos Santana in the cleanup spot in 2021 while putting up some of the worst numbers for a cleanup hitter in the last 50 years at least... Ground me up..

I will look forward to someone with less rigidity in this regard.

Carlos Santana was in Kansas City in 2021

I think there has to be a better example of Tito's "stubbornness" than batting a notoriously slow starter in the 4 hole in a shortened 60-game season coming off the best season of his career rather than moving him to the 5 hole

 

[CBBI]

Do you think he became a worse manager from 2022 to 2023?

A lot of people won’t agree with this, but I don't think it’s out of line to suggest the 2022 Guardians won fewer games than they could have won based on some of Francona’s decisions, particularly when it came to the lineup.

Namely batting a 106 OPS+ guy 2nd and a 142 OPS+ guy 6th/7th all year and refusing to platoon or even pitch hit LHB who struggled badly against LHP last year.

Now I get that the latter had positive impacts in 2023 specifically for certain guys (Josh Naylor primarily), but the point is optimal decisions weren’t always made last year.

Just because they were expected to win like 82 and won 92 doesn’t mean Francona did the best possible job he could do. It’s possible to both overachieve and still not overachieve as much as you could have if that makes sense.

 

[CBBI]

And yes, I totally understand from a pure runs scored/runs allowed standpoint the Guardians overachieved quite a bit last year.

I simply think that had they made more optimal lineup decisions, they would’ve scored more runs and probably could’ve overachieved even more than they did.