Today's column was Wilber at his very best.
He starts out with a legitimately interesting idea: teams are hiring inexperienced managers because they're cheaper and it allows superstar GMs to exert more control. Like I said, not the worst idea he's ever had for an article. Only three paragraphs into it, he talks to an unnamed GM who completely submerges the idea and says that this is definitely not the case. Different teams have different reasons for hiring inexperienced managers, but the saving money/greater GM control is not the reason.
Does this make Nick change his story? Fuck no. He already has his lede written, do you really expect him to change? C'mon. So he spends the next, I don't know, ten paragraphs listing how much money each manager makes. Then he moves down to a couple of pitching coaches before finishing up with, "yeah, there are some people who say that teams aren't trying to save money on inexperienced managers and that GMs don't exert more control but that's all bullshit."
It was a triple threat of Cafardoisms: an easily rebuked idea, mounds of unnecessary data and a dollop of passive aggressiveness that tells the reader that, yes, he knows more than the experts that he interviews.
The rest of the piece was typical Wilber tripe: the Yankees might hire Eric Wedge (pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease) he didn't know Bobby Doerr really well, but he seemed like a pretty good guy, launch concept is fucking bullshit you guys, Babe Ruth talked about it and Jim Benedict and his $100,000 salary were let go by the Marlins. Benedict was described by Cafardo as a "pitching guru", but he's really the former Miami VP of Pitching Development. I have no idea what that means and Cafardo didn't feel like explaining it. Todd Frazier might be on the Sox radar, which, if true. Ugh.