Nationals need manager change after Dave Martinez’s comments

“It is by no means on teaching,” Martinez mentioned. “It is by no means on teaching. Coaches work their a**** off each single day. We’re not going to finger-point right here and say it is on the coaches. They work onerous.”

After saying he had performed the sport a very long time and by no means blamed a coach, he continued defending the group’s teaching employees and put the blame on the gamers.

“Generally you bought to place the onus on the gamers,” Martinez mentioned. “They obtained to go on the market and so they obtained to play the sport. And play the sport the fitting method. We won’t hit for them. We won’t catch the balls for them. We won’t pitch for them. We won’t throw strikes for them. They obtained to try this.”

There’s a lot to unpack from all of that.

First, no person was really placing the blame on the coaches. It was a easy query from a reporter as as to whether it needs to be on the gamers or the coaches. Martinez then turned it right into a passionate protection of the teaching employees, whereas throwing the gamers beneath the bus (after saying they weren’t going to level fingers).

Second, Martinez is not solely mistaken with what he is saying.

It does come right down to the gamers. The coaches cannot pitch, hit or subject for them. However even when that’s the case, it is not one thing a supervisor can say out loud. It is not one thing a supervisor can say out loud when the group is 30-40 and when the group (beneath this present supervisor) has not had a successful season in six years. 

It is a matter of accountability. 

And a supervisor who just isn’t keen to take any duty and is as a substitute very happy to throw his gamers beneath the bus is a supervisor who’s shortly going to lose the respect of his locker room. 

If he hasn’t already.

It is not simply that he put the onus on the gamers to play higher. That alone might be acceptable. It is the massive leagues and everyone is extremely compensated and open to criticism, particularly when they don’t seem to be performing. It is that he put the onus on the gamers and completely refused to place any on his teaching employees or himself, and as a substitute backed them up utterly. 

The Nationals’ roster just isn’t significantly good proper now, and there in all probability just isn’t a supervisor who’s going to show that group of gamers right into a winner. That additionally has to fall on the final supervisor and entrance workplace for assembling such a flawed and unhealthy roster. 

When you’re a group as unhealthy because the Nationals, no person will get to flee blame for it. That is not the view of Martinez, the place everyone else will get the blame aside from him and his teaching employees, simply because they work onerous.