The Firing of Trey Hillman
Posted: May 13th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 75 Comments »
In 2007, when the Kansas City Royals hired Trey Hillman to be their manager, I traveled to Japan to watch the man in action. Hillman was a bold hire by what then looked like a young and bold organization. The Royals had just hired Dayton Moore from Atlanta — Moore was more or less the hottest young general manager prospect on the board. The Royals brought in respected people all from around baseball. They tried to reconnect within the community. They spent a lot of money on the draft, they bulked up their international scouting, they added a minor league team and they talked the good talk about building from within.
And they hired Trey Hillman, championship manager in Japan. The line of thinking was that if a Texan like Hillman could win in Japan — when he did not even speak the language — he certainly could win back in the ol’ U.S. of A. The line of thinking was that he could bring home some of the discipline and emphasis on fundamentals that defines Japanese baseball. The line of thinking was that the Yankees really liked him — he had been a successful minor league manager for New York — and there was actually a rumor that the Yankees wanted to hire Hillman instead of Joe Girardi. The line of thinking was that Hillman was a teacher and a winner and the sort of guy who would outwork his counterparts and make the Royals a cutting edge baseball team.
I watched him manage in the Japan Series — Japan’s World Series — and I was impressed. His Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters were a decidedly mediocre team — they finished last in runs scored that year — but they were so disciplined and together and had such good fielding and such good pitching (featuring world-wide sensation Yu Darvish) that they went to the Series anyway. They lost decisively — the final game was a perfect game — but I saw what the Royals saw. And I will never forget coming back to the States and talking to one of of my best friends in the game, telling him that Hillman was smart, impressive, engaging and all those good things.
He listened. Then he said this: “Yeah. He’s never been in the big leagues.”
If there’s a tombstone for Trey Hillman’s career as Royals manager, those are the words that should be carved on it.
* * *
The Royals fired Hillman on Thursday, just moments after his team snapped a seven-game losing streak and Zack Greinke won his first game of the season. This was also just two days after Dayton Moore offered such powerful support of Hillman that it seemed to transcend “dreaded vote of confidence” status. Moore didn’t just say the organization believed in Hillman, he said that “Trey’s done a terrific job.” He didn’t just say that he planned to stick with Hillman, he said that “he is exactly what this organization needs at this point in time.”
Two days later, he found himself firing Hillman … which strongly suggests it wasn’t his decision. He probably should be in better concert with the rhythms of Royals owner, David Glass, who, like just about everyone else, had lost patience. Late last week, the entire Royals team failed to notice when Texas’ Josh Hamilton simply forgot to tag up on a fly ball. The missed out cost the Royals two runs and the ballgame. It wasn’t the worst blunder Hillman had made, but it was obvious. There was no recovering. The experiment had failed. The Hillman Era was doomed. Moore should have had a better feel for the reality surrounding him.
But why did it fail? Why didn’t Hillman have more success as manager? There are numerous reasons, none more significant than the lack of Major League talent the Royals have put on the field day after day. As the old line goes, Casey Stengel, Earl Weaver and Joe McCarthy combined weren’t winning with this team.
But that’s obvious. Beyond that, none of the reasons the Royals hired Hillman in the first place quite worked out. He was known for his sense of the game, but his Royals consistently played clueless baseball. He was known for his deep belief in the fundamentals — “there are no little things,” was one of his mottos — but the Royals were a terrible defensive team and a terrible base running team on his watch. He was known as a man who related well with players and the community, but the players often didn’t seem to get him and his appearances in public were often just bizarre. I will never forget his inscrutable answer during an Internet chat when a fan asked him to what he expected for the upcoming season:
Hillman: “Same as every year. As a manager, we want to show marked improvement on what we showed in 2008. If we do that, we should improve our overall standings and increase our fanbase.”
What the heck is that? This was a FAN asking a question, not “60 Minutes.” Improve our overall standings? Increase our fanbase? But that was Trey Hillman … his public statements always seemed out-of-touch, his attempt to connect with players off-key. I often wondered: Why? Where was the confident guy I remembered from Japan? Where was the baseball man with the great story: The undrafted player who managed and coached and scouted and went halfway across the world, all chasing this game he loves so much?
And, in the end, it occurs to me that the answer was there in what my friend said before Hillman managed even one big league game: He had never been in the big leagues. That’s all. He had never played in the big leagues, never managed in the big leagues, never coached in the big leagues. The only time he had been around a big league clubhouse was as a clubbie for the Texas Rangers when he was a kid. He simply did not know about life in a big league clubhouse. He thought he knew. But he did not.
Bill James wrote a great piece a few years ago about the failure of Vern Rapp as a manager. Few managers have ever had the pedigree of Vern Rapp. He had been around the game for decades. Numerous players who became stars in the big leagues swore by him. He was smart and intense and a teacher and all those other good things. And when he was 49 years old in 1977 he was finally hired to manage — by his hometown St. Louis Cardinals, no less — and he led the Cardinals to a dramatic 11-game improvement from the year before.
But, even so, the season was a disaster. He feuded with players constantly. He tried to enforce rules about facial hair and clothes and weight — these were rules that Sparky Anderson managed to enforce with the Big Red Machine because he got the players to buy in. Rapp could not. He proudly announced that he wasn’t there to be liked, and nobody liked him, and 17-games into the next year he called Cardinals star Ted Simmons a loser after a game (Simmons, apparently, had turned up the stereo after a loss) and got himself canned.
Bill’s point was simply that Rapp had never played, managed or coached in the big leagues and, as such, did not know what he could do and what he could not. He did not have the fine understanding of what makes a clubhouse go, what buttons to push, what battles to fight, what wars can be won. “If he had just one year to sit on a Major League bench,” Bill wrote, “to bend his ideas to what he saw around him before anybody took a position on them, he might have been great.”
One of the first things Trey Hillman did as new manager of the Kansas City Royals was call together a team meeting at home plate after a spring training game. He then yelled at his players in full view of the public — while people were filing out of the stadium — for some base running blunders they had made. Now, some people LOVED that. It showed guts. It showed that he was serious about discipline. Dayton Moore would say that he watched Hillman pull that Herb Brooks stunt and thought, “He’s going to be one of the great ones.”
And that’s fine but … many of the players lost respect for him. They thought he was showboating — he certainly could have yelled at them behind closed doors. They thought he was compensating — he was ACTING the way he imagined a big league manager acts rather than BEING a big league manager. Mostly, they thought he was small-time. A Little League coach. And whatever point he was trying to get across, well, it didn’t take. The Royals were a dreadful base-running team all year.
This is the issue — things that seem like good ideas from the outside often are terrible ideas on the inside. Hillman did not understand the politics of a big league clubhouse. He did not understand that his success in Japan did not impress Major League baseball players. He did not understand that nobody was going to just give him respect. Sparky Anderson was known by his players as a “Minor League M——-,” and he came to earn respect with his intensity and his loyalty and by being right an awful lot. By the end of the year, the players were rather openly comparing Trey Hillman to Michael from “The Office.”
And, in my mind, Hillman never recovered. Later, he tried to loosen up. He tried to regain some of the confidence and likability that he had going for him in Japan. But, once things started to go bad, he did now know how to get things going right again. The finish was already written. He kept changing his mind about things. He infuriated players with silly little things like having pitchers warm up for no reason. He was sensitive to slights. He was constantly searching for whatever sounded best rather than, you know, the truth.
I will never forget the day Jon Lester threw his no-hitter against the Royals in Fenway Park. Hiillman had this thing about keeping reporters out of his office … while pretty much every big league manager does press conferences in their offices, especially on the road, Hillman thought his office was his private sanctuary. Fine. So he did the postgame press conference against a brick wall while people walked by and pointed and shouted. Even that’s fine. But what I remember is that he told us that he had not talked to his players after the game — after all, he explained, there was nothing to say. They were big league players. They understood what had happened. He reiterated the point again: He didn’t even talk to them. No, he most definitely did not talk to them.
We then went inside the clubhouse, where player after player told us how Trey Hillman had come in after the game to talk to them. Well, of course he did. I never even understood WHY Hillman would tell us that he had not. How was that was supposed to make him look better? I mean, shouldn’t a manager talk to his players after they get no-hit? But Trey Hillman never found his voice or his confidence. He had the best of intentions and a tremendous work-ethic. But, in the end, he just didn’t know.
* * *
When a manager gets fired, a team almost always hires the exact opposite … and so the Royals hired Ned Yost to fill in. Yost has plenty of experience — he played parts of six seasons, was bullpen coach for some great Atlanta teams in the 1990s and was manager of the Brewers for six seasons. His managerial experience was mixed — he seemed to lose it as the Brewers vainly tried to hold off the Cubs, and he was fired the next year in the middle of a pennant race. There seems to be a long line of players who did not like Yost, and some who got better on his watch, but the point seems to be that unlike HIllman he certainly understands the inner workings of a big league baseball team. And for now, that’s what matters in Kansas City.
Hillman went out gracefully, as you might expect from a class person. He was fired before Wednesday’s game, but he managed anyway. The firing was not announced until after the game but, looking back, he seemed more relaxed than I have seen in a long time in snippets they showed on TV of the pregame press conference. It’s funny, I think he would probably make for a pretty good managerial candidate NOW that he has been through all this. He still has all of the positives he always had as a baseball man — smart, loyal, committed and so on — and now he has a much better understanding of what the job is all about. He probably will get coaching offers. And he probably will think an awful lot about what he learned.
And the Royals? Well, make no mistake, the big reason they have lost the last three years is not because of Trey Hillman, it is because they are a bad baseball team. They are a team with a dull lineup filled with old guys, a last-in-ERA pitching staff overflowing with underachieving young starters and a mess of a bullpen. There’s no magical solution here. Ned Yost may give the team a boost, he may not, but when it wears off this is a 90-loss team waiting to lose 90 games. Their future is in the future, built around a handful of young players in the big leagues and minor-league prospects who, at least for the time being, look promising. In the meantime, this is a Royals team that no longer looks young or bold like they did in when they hired Trey Hillman not so long ago.
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I was sad for Trey. Good guy.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Joe Posnanski, Tom Krewson. Tom Krewson said: RT @JPosnanski: Tonight, the firing of Trey Hillman. http://bit.ly/dogm9q. Tomorrow, the heartbreak of the Cleveland team that quit. [...]
Was Frank White even considered for the manager’s job? Or, at this point, is the broadcast booth as close as Frank wants to get to the clubhouse and dugout?
Baseball is a performance sport, if you don’t perform you lose your job. Just look at the bullpen arms who have been released this year by the Royals.
I wonder if Dayton Moore is starting to feel more pressure from his boss in Arkansas this year?
This is a good post, thanks, Joe, for going behind the scenes with examples of the inside workings of baseball. But the outrageous decisions go beyond the manager. Such as a couple of years ago when the Royals traded two strong-armed middle relievers — one (Leo Nunez, I think was one?) went to Florida for a first baseman who couldn’t field but had some home-run pop. The hitter is gone after a season; Nunez is in Florida saving games for the Marlins with a 0.63 ERA this season. Pitching and fundamentals have to be taught system-wide, and it just doesn’t seem to be happening — and hasn’t for a long time. Makes me glad I am a Twins fan — but with empathy for Royals fans, especially announcer Denny Matthews.
“…but they were so disciplined and together and had such good fielding and such good pitching that they went to the Series anyway.”
This is what escapes me–how can Hillman be a great manager in teaching fundamentals in Japan and come to MLB and manage a team that wholly lacks these skills? I’m at a complete loss for understanding this.
Nice article. There are a couple of things I don’t understand.
Firstly, the main reason the Royals are bad is because they have bad players. Who is reponsible for personel decisions in the Royals?
Second on teaching fundamenals, by the time players have gone through little league, high school, college and the minors don’t they already have the fundamentals? Aren’t they fully formed when they get to the big leagues? Do players actually improve their fundamentals during their stay in the majors? Yuni is a crap fielder for every team he player for. No manager made him any better.
I think Trey had a lot of good qualities. But if you want to win baseball games with a bad bullpen, your actions with that bullpen better be bullet-proof.
The post game comments from Mitch Maier and Willie Bloomquist indicate that Trey did not lose this team.
I’m not sure Trey had the right game-time strategy to win; his decisions often seemed to lack good data. Lefty-righty match-ups that didn’t actually match-up for the particular players he was using, etc…
I also think he let his veterans swayed his decisions too much. For example, Meche wanted to stay in, so Hillman let him. Hillman should have said no, but I have a hard time faulting Hillman for that.
I guess if Hillman had taken over the Yankees he’d probably have been out of a job a lot sooner; but he would probably also have a winning record.
Convert here. Can’t believe this guy’s got me reading every post.
Kept checking after the firing, knowing Pos’d bring it. Right quick, and all that.
Allow me to lift this left-coast, Braves’ fan glass to the Royals. May Kyle Davies turn into, well, anything. Dayton, stop disappointing these fine people. Pedigree, and all that. And, stop signing former Braves; they kinda suck. Just sayin’, Melky’s ’bout to become available. Just say no.
I’m sick of all these writers and posters saying that Hillman went out gracefully or that he was a class guy just because he didn’t throw a hissy fit at his last press conference. If you want another chance in the big leagues, of course you’re not going to rant and rave and point fingers on the way out.
Hillman has no more class than anyone else. He just did what was expected of him by thanking everyone on the way out.
Actually, Hillman showed no class when he left his Fighters team right before the 2007 Japan Series so that he could attend a press conference in KC announcing his hiring. He then flew back to Japan only to have his team be swept in the Japan Series.
Having spent time in Japan, I know the biggest difference between Japanese players and American players that Hillman learned the hard way. In Japan, even if they think their manager or coach is full of it, players will still listen and follow orders and play hard to a certain extent, unlike a lot of major leaguers.
As Graig Nettles once said, Hillman went from managing a Cy Young winner to sayonara.
Good post Joe, honestly, Hillman’s teams played exactly as I imagine he felt. Overwhelmed. They couldn’t stop rough patches and they exude no confidence in the field, on the paths, in the box, or out of the pen.
It’s not his fault. The stresses of the job changed how he managed and who he was. To second guess himself for those politics of the clubhouse and media and to not listen to what instinct told him.
I hope he gets another chance on a team with a better chance at winning than the Royals. He could do some serious damage with a halfway decent rotation and defense.
As for the Royals… throw $40M a year at Pujols and hope for the best from there…
Ken, the Fighters were not swept – they actually won game 1 in 2007. I don’t think they were too upset about him flying back before the series!
Joe – I am not sure why having pitchers warm up for no reason is a silly concept. Is it any sillier than having a pitcher throw in a game because he hasn’t thrown in a game in a few days? It seems to me it is a better for a pitcher to get full speed reps in a controlled situation rather than be forced into an unnatural slot.
[...] View original here: Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Firing of Trey Hillman [...]
Looking back, hiring a manager who had never spent a day in the big leagues was foolish.
I do not believe Hillman is very smart. He “succeeds through his confidence” and his ability to quickly spout out jargon. Also his hard work.
The Royals got worse at the fundamentals because Dayton Moore continued to bring in players with worse and worse fundamentals.
Trey Hillman seemed like a terrible major league manager from the beginning, many of his decisions and press conferences leaning toward the bizarre.
However, maybe his biggest problem was learning the wrong lessons in Japan. Perhaps in Japan he learned that players will listen and work hard and do anything to win. Sounds like that didn’t translate well to a Royals clubhouse full of lazy, bitchy, whiners who were only on the Royals in the first place because their skill level made them losers by MLB standards.
It’s not surprising the Royals would show their boss the disrespect of comparing him to Michael on The Office. While entertaining, the rest of the Office characters are incompetent losers as well. Perhaps the players didn’t understand their role in the analogy.
Success in professional sports is mostly about player acquisition. Trey never had any chance.
Thanks for the inside scoop, Joe. I haven’t followed this team very closely for the past 5 years or so, but it was apparent that “Milk and Cookies” Trey Hillman was going to be a terrible hire right from the beginning–almost comical really.
Par for the course for this organization, though. They let Pedro de la Rosa get away for nothing, and now he’s one of the dominant pitchers in the National League. Miguel Olivo now has 7 home runs in under a month and a half for the Rockies. The personnel decisions from this team have been bizarre. Nobody outside of KC has heard of anyone on the team other than Greinke and Soria. It seems like a Wal Mart team made up of AAA players. At least in the past they were able to produce the odd Carlos Beltran or Damon. Somebody worth coming out to the ballpark and watching. Now they just try to make sure they have 25 guys going in David Glass’ pinball machine.
This team used to have pride. I hope Yost gets them pointed in the right direction. He seems like a decent hire.
Also, as to the new poll question, (sorry if there was a separate column about it).
I’d like to my local paper to feature writers like you. Specifically, writers who show integrity concerning their subjects.
For a long time in KC, you were considered to be the supportive writer and Whitlock the combative writer, but it was never that simple. For a ‘watchdog’ to help a fanbase, that writer’s words must be intelligent, well-researched, persuasive, honest. Whitlock’s columns were very rarely any of those things. When the local watchdog is despised by half his readership, that may be good for sales or hits, but it undermines the message.
Here in KC, there is a strong argument to be made that people like Peterson and Moore – and even Pioli, though he’s still in something of a honeymoon period – have been empowered and emboldened by Whitlock’s criticism. His diatribes lack coherence, truth, and integrity. Vitriol like that gives the target power.
Meanwhile, your Royals columns over the past year have been devastating to Moore specifically because readers know you are fair, supportive, honest.
I want to read words that have meaning and power, words that find the best in people and uncover the reasons for things.
The Dayton Moore Era is just as doomed as the Herm/Carl Era was. We have to suffer through the death throes regardless of positive or negative spin. Quality matters much more than perspective, both when it comes to enjoyment and as it relates to the impact on ownership.
[...] The Royals finally put Trey Hillman out of his misery, firing the skipper Thursday and handing things over to team consultant Ned Yost. With that move taken care of, let’s be [...]
It’s the first time in forever that the Royals have fired a manager before the situation became toxic.
I never got the impression he was a bad manager, just ineffective.
Hillman has no more class than anyone else. He just did what was expected of him by thanking everyone on the way out.
Some people would argue that’s what class is.
It’s a shame that Trey got so far off on the wrong track. I wonder now if he’ll be yet another “Royals Refugee” that does better somewhere else.
And Ned Yost? I guess Morris Buttermaker isn’t available anymore…
Once again, Mr. Posnanski writes it better than I ever could.
better for him to be put out of his misery–it had to happen, only question was when. managers are always the fall guy for bad ownership making bad decisions. see also, angelos, peter.
You could see this one coming last winter when Ned Yost was hired. I agree with an earlier comment – was Frank White considered? Dayton Moore is as big of a culprit in this mess as Hillman was. You can’t win games without players and the Royals players with a few exceptions are Triple A players at best. They can’t play defense, run the bases and with the exception of Grienke, their starting pitchers are terrible. The bullpen, with the exception of Soria, is worse. Bruce Chen? Love his grit but he can’t throw hard enought to break a window. Just look at the numbers in terms of pitches thrown and the percentage of them that are strikes. Terrible.
Great column. The theme of this week is “shaky assertions finally refuted.” The Royals, bold no more. LeBron, invincible no more.
Why are sports fun, again?
Two thoughts. First, I wish Hillman well. He seems like a nice enough man, and competent enough and hard-working enough that I hope he has a soft landing in some job in baseball. He needed to go as manager, but he always seemed to be a good guy.
Second, this move really is meaningless if Moore wasn’t also given the clear message from Glass to forget all of this Betancourt, Ankiel, Podsednik, Bloomquist, Guillen nonsense and start putting youngsters with potential on the field. I doubt fans in KC are going to pay to see this group anytime soon, since they’re both terrible and represent no hope for the future. They may pay to see Mike Aviles and Blake Wood and Kila Ka’aihue and, hopefully later this year, Aaron Crow or Derrick Robinson or Mike Moustakas. And they certainly can’t be any worse than the current team, can they?
Why would Frank White want to manage this team? The Royals have indicated more than once that they don’t want him by passing him over for others when he was actively trying to win a managerial position. He seems very comfortable in the broadcast booth now, and I think that’s where he’ll stay. Managing the Royals would likely do nothing other than tarnish the image of as close to what the Royals have (along with Brett) of a homegrown hero. Frank White has a wonderful history. I’d like to remember him as the successful player from the 70′s & 80′s, and not a manager dragged down into failure by the current situation.
If Manny Acta can get another job after his *dismal* turn here in DC, then Trey Hillman should be OK. Here’s hoping he gets another chance.
Finally…So now we can stop whining about what a poor job Trey is doing and start whining about Ned Yost and why the heck Dayton hired him.
Actually we should be whining real hard on why the heck Dayton Moore is a MLB Gm and what we have done as city to warrant all the bad karma that has rolled over the whole Royals organization for the past 20+ years.
I can’t understand why Glass and Co. cannot give us baseball men who are experienced, knowledgeable and have a proven track record of running or managing a winning team.
Can you imagine the horror that a MLB player must feel when he somehow gets traded to the Royals.
Ned Yost. WTF is Dayton thinking.
They would of done much better if they would of hired a much more experienced manager such as Bobby V.
I knew this season was a loss before it even began when the Royals started running those commercials about coming out to the newly renovated and much more fun Kauffman Stadium, without even mentioning that there will also be a baseball team playing a game while you get blasted on $10 beer on the rooftop deck.
I wish the Commish and the rest of MLB would send the Royals back to the B league until they get their act together, but that’s asking too much of an organization who look at us as suckers and not fans.
Joe,
As usual you nailed it. The first thing that Hillman said that had me wonder about him was an early commentabout managing in Japan. Someone asked him about being a rookie big league manager and he shot back that he had major league experience by virtue of his time in Japan. He clearly thought he knew how to handle major leaguers and clearly he did not.
I heard him give an interview to a Tampa radio station before a Royals/Rays game and he sounded completely different from the tightly wound, , overly buzz word cluttered Captain Queeg imitation that he gave on KC stations. Trey was loose, funny and informative. It was the only time in his tenure that I understood what Moore saw in him. It is a shame that he was in so far over his head but he had to go. Thanks to David Glass and not Dayton Moore for insisting on a change that had to be made.
Let Frank White keep doing his Dr. Julius Hibbard from the Simpsons impersonation in the booth. After 80 games, the fans might actually realize that simply having a former Royal as the manager isn’t going to speed up Rick Ankiel’s bat…… I would like to think Frank knows this and enjoys the upside of being the “people’s champion.”
As a lifetime Royals fan who has lived in Denver for 15 years, it’s striking to see some of the parallels between Dayton Moore’s reign and that of Dan O’Dowd, GM of the Rockies. Coming over from Cleveland as a young up and comer, O’Dowd in Colorado routinely engaged in horrible decision-making, from bad trades and poor managerial hires to awful free agent signings that blew up in neutron bomb fashion. I never would have dreamed O’Dowd would still be around a decade later, let alone at the head of a now- competitive franchise with a fairly productive farm system. But he is, and he has built a successful small-market team that draws pretty well and has a great regional fan base.
I guess that gives me hope that Moore, once he’s past the first few years of constantly effing up, finds his stride and has kind of success that O’Dowd has had. The alternative scenario — another 20 years of lousy Royals baseball — is too depressing to contemplate.
I gotta disagree with at least one thing you said, Joe. You said the Royals are a 90-loss team waiting to lose 90 games. In reality, they’re a 100-loss team waiting to lose 100 games. They might have lost 110 with Trey managing, but it’d be hard.
Of course, the happiest entity in this entire firing is what’s left of Gil Meche’s right shoulder. Damage is probably irrevocably done, but it still has to be rejoicing.
Joe, you are an incurable optimist:
“It’s funny, I think he would probably make for a pretty good managerial candidate NOW that he has been through all this. He still has all of the positives he always had as a baseball man — smart, loyal, committed and so on — and now he has a much better understanding of what the job is all about.”
Sure, the failures of the Royals are not entirely on Hillman, but what evidence do you have that he has learned from this experience? Or that he could take that knowledge and apply it elsewhere?
I’ll take the generally supportive media. I want to read stuff that’s critical but I want it to come from a premise that the writer/broadcaster wants the team to do well.
In general I think we’ve got too many writers who cover sports as if it’s government and too many who cover government as if it’s sports.
“Let Frank White keep doing his Dr. Julius Hibbard from the Simpsons impersonation in the booth. ”
AMEN!!! Glad I’m not the only person who gets tired of Frank doing little more than chuckling at everything Lefebrve says.
90 loss team, Joe? That’s kind of optomistic, don’t you think?
Joe Smith: I think the hiring of Yost makes perfect sense. The Royals aren’t going to win much this year. They aren’t going to win much next year, unless they pour a bunch of money into the team. If the Royals were to go after Bobby V, or someone of that nature, they would have to convince that person that the team was going to spend some money. Since they have no plans to spend money, as far as I can tell, the Royals would never get Bobby V. But they can get a guy like Ned Yost. So, they hired Ned Yost.
Do I even have to say how good this was?
I must abuse the poor commentary function to note that I’m pleased to hear (“Michael Scott”) that the players were already reading my stuff back in 2008:
http://www.royalsreview.com/2008/9/25/612203/bunts-beanballs-billy-butl
[...] added note, May 14, ~10:20 A.M. EST: You really should check out Posnanski's post that really lays out Hillman's clubhouse issues that I hinted at below. Do so if for no other [...]
I agree with Paul White above. This move must be accompanied by a lot of personnel moves. Move Podsednik now. He is hot, you can get something for him. The top of the order for the ChiSox has been a disaster, bet they would be willing to trade back for him. Surely they have some good bullpen arms in AAA that we could use. Then install Alex Gordon in LF. If he is going to be your LF, let’s give him a chance to do that now. And let’s not give up after a month or less on him (for one thing, he is one of the only guys on the team who has a little patience at the plate, over the long haul those players usually do develop). Get rid of Betancourt, or at least, put him on the bench. If Getz is a great defensive player, fine, he can play 2B, but your offense cannot survive having Betancourt, Getz and Kendall in it. This is not 1915, that won’t work. Aviles can hit, he has to play SS. Live with Callapso at 3B for now, but actively look to trade him. Moustakos should be getting a look by the end of the year at 3B. Remind the Mariners that they owe you one for Betancourt and since they are in the market for a DH since theirs went to the Nuthouse, trade them Guillen. I think they might have actual fond memories of him in Seattle, given his one good year there. Then the Hawaiian dude plays first and Billy B moves to DH. Get Ankiel healthy, hope he plays reasonably well and then trade him too. I don’t think that Maier is anything more than a 5th outfielder, but maybe Derrick Robinson is your CF of the future.
If you install the kids at CF, SS, LF, 1B and 3B and get some decent pitching back for Pods, Ankiel, Guillen and Callapso, you could turn this around sooner rather than later.
Firing Trey Hillman is kind of like firing the Maitre D’ on the Titantic.
Is Hillman the one who gave Meche and Jose Guillen all that money?
Anyway, the Royals franchise is an absolute mess. It always looks like the Royals long term goal is to win 85 games and finish in Third place. Then they lose 65-75 games for 5 years, fire the manager 4 or 5 times, Repeat.
I don’t know if the Royals can be successful in K.C., maybe they have to move, who knows. Or maybe they have to approach the game radically like 4 man rotations, closer by committee, an all defense team, etc.
Reads a lot like Bellicheck’s time in Cleveland…..though I doubt Hillman will become Bellicheck.
Hillman was not the main cause of the Royals woes but he certainly was A cause. Not losing, say, 4 to 6 games a year because of your manager (which is what I believe his bad decisions cost the Royals) is a fairly big deal.
I’ll tell you one of the reasons the experiment failed: here he was managing puny “royals” while over there he was managing mighty “nippon ham fighters.” Who do you think Earl Weaver would want? A bunch of prima donna’s whose destiny it is to while away the days wearing a crown, sitting on a throne, eating grapes? Or a bunch of tough-nosed, tobacco-stained, bar-brawling ham fighters? I think the answer is obvious.
I was with you until the end, when you said he now is qualified to be a big-league manager. He has failed, but he hasn’t shown any inclination to learn from his mistakes. If he had learned from his mistakes, he might still be managing the Royals. But he has the one quality that is fatal to a successful big leaguer (whether a manager or a player): The inability to humbly accept failure and to make adjustments that will tend to lead to success.
If I were looking for a manager right now, Trey Hillman would not qualify because he never learned the most essential trait of successful big leaguers–making adjustments.
“The line of thinking was that if a Texan like Hillman could win in Japan — when he did not even speak the language — he certainly could win back in the ol’ U.S. of A.”
Maybe KC should have hired the translator.
I’m glad the Royals are back to hiring managers with major league experience, I just wish they’d hire one with a WINNING record. By the way, the last manager the Royals had with a winning major league record was Dick Howser.
I think this is one of your very best pieces, Joe.
Not unlike the firing of Eric Wedge last September, it was hard to detect an actual reason for the firing based on public statements and even based on the results. This piece sheds a lot of light on that, and I wish we’d had equally good reporting and analysis coming out of Cleveland last year.
What’s interesting is that there are managers who were never in the big leagues whose personalities and skills did somehow translate. Your piece strongly suggests, however, that anyone with big-league managerial aspirations really should be sure to log some time as a big-league coach along the way.
I think this piece shows that there is way more to being a manager than just the in-game decisions, and that things like connecting with the players and finding the way to get the best out of them is much more important.
If Hillman can learn from his mistakes, he could go on to be a good manager. Terry Francona seemed to improve from his Philadelphia experience, for example.
The Royals really need to get some young players into the lineup every day, and dump some of those old guys. If they didn’t bring in Yost to do exactly that, then this move won’t make any difference.
@28 Joe Smith RE: Karma
Don Denkinger. Just sayin
[...] Speaking of the Royals, what did Joe Posnanski think of the firing of Trey Hillman? JoeBlog [...]
“I can’t understand why Glass and Co. cannot give us baseball men who are experienced, knowledgeable and have a proven track record of running or managing a winning team. ”
Because those baseball men don’t get fired.
[...] Joe Posnanski notes that Dayton Moore fired Trey Hillman days after praising him and suggests that the decision wasn’t Moore’s. [...]
Ha ha, 90-loss team. This team has looked like a 100-loss team since day one. Aren’t they on pace for something like 107 losses? If probably is not that bad, but still, 90-loss team? Ha ha.
[...] Betancourt, Willie Bloomquist, Jose Guillen, Kyle Farnsworth, Jason Kendall et al, the move was hardly unwarranted, particularly after Hillman’s latest bit of managerial malpractice: letting fragile Gil Meche [...]
I said it before you wrote this article. Someone asked who’s going to bash this move and bash whoever the replacement is, and so on, and I said it the minute he was fired – Joe Posnanski and the rest of the anti-Dayton Moore, anti-Royals crowd.
I know you know a lot about how things are ran, more than Me, I’m sure.
And I know you know that GM’s always say something and their actions negate it. Dayton Moore wasn’t going to come out in public and say “Trey Hillman hasn’t been doing good and if the Royals continue to lose, he’s going to get fired soon.”
If you listened to anything Trey and Dayton said. They discussed the possibility a few days prior to it being made — hey, about the same time Dayton offered the praise for Trey.
So they hire a guy who was fired while his team was fighting for a wildcard spot several years ago and they won the wildcard after they fired him. What was Phil Garner unavailable?
[...] http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/05/13/the-firing-of-trey-hillman/ [...]
Great post, Joe. I never felt that Hillman looked comfortable in the job, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while. Last weekend, however, was the final straw. On Friday Betancourt drops the pop up and is in the lineup the next day; on Saturday he inexplicably allows a struggling Meche to throw 128 pitches, and puts Guillen in right and Maier at first; and the whole Josh Hamilton brain fart on Sunday. The Royals have lousy players and no team chemistry, but I still think they aren’t as bad as they have played in the last year.
I’m wondering why is it ok to make public these insights and incidents now that he’s fired but it wasn’t ok when he was the manager? I love the insights this post contains and it confirms my outside perceptions about the man. But why now? This is why I think media in KC is part of the problem. The enabling that goes on is just so frustrating. Maybe by making known these incidents it would have allowed the team to intervene with Hillman and at minimum “What’s up with that? Why are you so insecure? You have to be yourself.” then maybe he would have had a chance to succeed at least instead of embarrass himself like he did. The inevitable post firing – “Yeah we knew he was an incompetant from the start” oped, what purpsose does it serve now except to pile on Hillman and frustrate fans like myself who have been seeing this for 3 years.
And of course Sparky Anderson, despite being a Minor League M——— had spent a year as a major league coach with the 1969 San Diego Padres (if you want to call the ’69 expansion Pads a major league team).
Great post.
I’m glad they let him go. It was starting to feel so hopeless I was wondering when the country would start up with the jokes again. I really believed the 19 game loss streak was in jeopardy.
The team had lost confidence in him and it was obvious.
Hillman was smart though, no doubt about it. But it was the kind of intelligence that was “after the fact.” He could explain why something happened after a game with great insight but…that’s not the same ability as being able to predict or make the right moves in advance.
I’m listening to the Sox game right now, and KC is clearly playing with more confidence. Maier’s just knocked in two runs, against Buerhle no less…
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Firing of Trey Hillman [...]
I daresay Hillman would have won more games if the Yankees had hired him.
P.S. Thanks so much for your insight, Dental Beauty Care Wisdom.
“Sparky Anderson, despite being a Minor League M——— had spent a year as a major league coach with the 1969 San Diego Padres”
And he played one season in the show, as the regular second baseman for the 1959 Phillies. Another good place to learn what not to do.
Joe,
You remain one of the best reasons to live in KC. I appreciate your insight. I read your column every day that it was in the paper. I am happy that you are continuing to share your talent via the web since I had stopped taking the Star.
Dayton Moore should drink hemlock!
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Firing of Trey Hillman [...]
[...] his mistakes. In fact, Hillman blotted his copy book right from the outset with the Royals. As Joe Posnanski notes: “One of the first things Trey Hillman did as new manager of the Kansas City Royals was call [...]
The sad thing is this team is a .500 ballclub. We got good hitters, solid starters and NOW have a solid bullpen. If we had this pen the first two weeks we’d held at least 6 of those 8 blown saves. But Hillman with his new lineup everyday, letting the players call the shots and having the most unfundamental team in baseball (when you preach fundamentals) screwed us. 127 games left with Yost, i’m predicting 70-57 in those games!!!!
“Mostly, they (the Royals players) thought he was small-time. A Little League coach.”
It’s sounds like a perfect match since the Royals players are “small time” and play like “Little Leaguer”. There are very few (if any) Royals players that have had enough MLB success to look down on Trey Hillman. Yes, he was a bad game manager. But…the players are bad, the GM has made bad deals, and the owner cares only about his precious “revenue sharing”. Kansas City gave David Glass a $250 million dollar stadium renovation, what has he given us – besides crappy baseball?
I’ve always wondered, and this seems like a good place to bring it up:
Is fighting Ham anything like fighting Foo?
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Firing of Trey HillmanIn 2007, when the Kansas City Royals hired Trey Hillman to be their manager, I traveled to Japan to watch the man in action. Hillman was a bold hire by what then looked like a young and bold organization. The Royals had just hired … Read more [...]
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Thе Firing οf Trey HillmanIn 2007, whеn thе Kansas City Royals hired Trey Hillman tο bе thеіr manager, I traveled tο Japan tο watch thе man іn action. Hillman wаѕ a bold hire bу whаt thеn looked Ɩіkе a young аnԁ bold organization. Thе Royals hаԁ јυѕt hired … Read more [...]
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » The Firing of Trey HillmanIn 2007, when the Kansas City Royals hired Trey Hillman to be their manager, I traveled to Japan to watch the man in action. Hillman was a bold hire by what then looked like a young and bold organization. The Royals had just hired … Read more [...]