Eric Wedge's Days Seem Numbered

Back in May, Indians' GM Mark Shapiro put manager Eric Wedge on the hot seat by vaguely supporting him for an unknown amount of time. Since then, he's said that he would make a decision on Wedge and his coaching staff when the season ends. And no one's really said anything since then, but since Wedge says no one's really approached him about anything, it really seems pretty likely that the Indians will be looking for a new manager when the season ends.

Wedge has managed the Tribe since 2003 with some mixed results. He very nearly stole the AL Central from the White Sox in 2005, took the Indians to Game 7 of the ALCS in 2007, and has finished .500 or worse in his other five years at the helm. The disappointing performance of the team since that ALCS berth in 2007 is probably what's most damning for Wedge.

Of course, the other thing going against him is that Shapiro has been GM for longer than Wedge has been manager, with the same mixed results. His performance at the trade deadline this year got mixed reviews and as the linked report says, the Indians' ownership group is getting involved with team decisions for the first time. That's a bad sign for a general manager and that means he needs to do something to buy himself some more time. In general, I think that the way most GMs do that is to fire their manager.

That's not to say Wedge is blameless in this whole thing. I know there were questions about his handling of some of the team's prospects earlier in the season and he's never really been all that popular in Cleveland from what I could tell back when I lived in a semi-Cleveland market. The team's certainly disappointed this year and that blame always falls on the manager first, even if there's not much Wedge could do once things started going downhill and the trade deadline fire sale became inevitable.

I went to some Indian blogs this morning looking for some insight into the situation, and while I didn't find that directly, I will say that firing Wedge would indeed be one of the first steps that Let's Go Tribe is advocating.