The argument is out there that he alienated his players in his final year in Oakland, and people are afraid he is not going to gel with our guys. I have spent this entire year (minus 12 games) listening to people complain about how Ned Yost is too buddy-buddy with the players, that they want someone to come in and crack the whip. Now we've got a guy that can do that, and everyone wants him to be Ned Yost!! In four years at Oakland, Macha's squad went 368-280 with two playoff appearances and one run to the ALCS. His WORST season was an 88-74 record back in '05 and still people have not embraced him as our manager.
Being a fan of the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, and seeing a small-market club succeed in this league where money buys wins, I paid a lot of attention to what the Oakland A's did in the first half of this decade. Now granted, a lot of the success has to do with moves and drafts made by Billy Beane, but someone needed to take that raw talent and turn it into wins, that man was Ken Macha. Ultimately, the 2006 A's ran into the bandsaw that was the Detroit Tigers and were simply outclassed, which unfortunately cost Ken his job. He deserves a lot of credit for taking a group of young and unproven players and turning them into winners.
I understand that he did not coach pitching for the A's in 2003, but he oversaw the development of Zito, Mulder and Hudson. A pretty lethal and young rotation, if we can get Gallardo, Parra and Villanueva to be mentioned in the same sentence as the Oakland trio, the Brewers rotation will be just fine.
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