Too many walk offs lead to a walk off of his own
By many accounts, the Twin City River Monsters are having a decent season. The media guide predicted a .395 winning %, while the BBA News reports had them at .457. The current pace is at .430 with a pyth saying they should be at .465. Not great, but pretty much at or slightly better than expected. Apparently, that was not good enough to save the jobs of manager Marcos Canavezes, hitting coach Jorge Castellanos, and 3rd base coach Cliff Palmer. All of whom were fired this week.
Manager
Canavezes was hired by the River Monsters prior to the 2050 season as part of a cleaning out process. In his first season he was able to improve the team by 16 games with a revolving roster of quad A players and waiver claims. This season, he was given a more respectable squad, but team ownership gave him an unfair expectation of improving the team by another 16-20 games to finish closer to .500
Managing Twin Cities is not an easy task as the teams GM is constantly micro managing the team. So really the only job the field manager has is to do is manage the in-game decisions. Canavezes struggled to manage close/late games. Going 10-20 in one run games and 2-6 in extra innings. The final straw came when Twin Cities was swept by Louisville via two walkoffs and another one run loss.
Taking over the manager duties will be first timer Gerald Brandt. Brandt started this season as the pitching coach for Omaha Cyclones. Before that he was a manager in the Des Moines system and prior to that was a bench coach in Charlotte. On the surface it seems like an odd choice as Brandt has been a part of awful teams wherever he has been. Twin Cities likes that he is a mid west guy, has a good relationship with the players, and has a skillset that could end up being a great buy low situation.
Hitting Coach
As for hitting coach Jorge Castellanos, what needs to be said? Twin Cities has had a pitiful offense for a half a decade now and there are about a half a dozen River Monsters having career low offensive seasons in 2051.
Taking over for Castellanos will be Waldemar Buddenberg. When rumors surfaced connecting Buddenberg to the team, many thought he should be the manager as he is a two time former Landis(Brewster) winning manager with Louisville. But Twin Cities really wants to do everything in it's power to become a better offensive team and Buddenberg was the best man for the job. For starters, he has an excellent relationship with 20 year old franchise cornerstone Felix Ramos. He's also outstanding at teaching hitting and excellent at all other applicable areas. Buddenberg could eventually slide into the bench coach role or even manage sometime down the line. But first he must fix this offensive mess.
3B Coach
Esteban Ruperto takes over as the third base coach. Not much to say here except he has better skills than Cliff Palmer.
These moves seem to be in line with the teams philosophy on trying to make the infrastructure better. Twin Cities is expected to take a deep dive into its minor league coaching lineup to try to make them more efficient as well.
