Whipped Cream Difficulties

Dana Brown out as general manager of the Houston Astros.

The Chron calls it a mutual parting of the ways, but it sure sounds like a firing to me.

ESPN.

The Astros are currently in first place in the AL West, but with a 65-66 record. They have lost six of their past eight games.

Carlos Mendoza out as manager of the New York Mets.

…with the team sitting 13 games below .500 following their sixth straight loss on Thursday in what will likely be a second straight season without playoff baseball.

ESPN.

Mendoza, 46, was in his third season as manager with a club option for 2027 that was not exercised. He led the Mets to an improbable appearance in the NL Championship Series in his first year at the helm in 2024, guiding the club from one of the worst records in the majors in June to within two games of the World Series.
But his second season was a failure as the Mets inverted the results from 2024, jumping out to the best record in the majors before capsizing over the season’s final 3½ months and failing to reach the postseason.

I’m a little behind, and, to be honest, not feeling great. But Lawrence would give me a hard time if I failed to note that the Dallas Mavericks fired Jason Kidd.

Five seasons, 205-205 overall.

Sorry for the lazy ESPN link, but, as I’ve noted before, the Dallas media is all but unlinkable.

Jamahl Mosley out as coach of the Orlando Magic.

The 15th head coach in franchise history, Mosley went 189-221 in five regular seasons in Orlando. In early February, he moved past Doc Rivers (171) for third on the Magic all-time coaching wins list.

The problem seems to be that they’ve gone to the playoffs three straight times…and lost in the first round each time.

The Magic still haven’t won a series since 2010 despite three trips to the playoffs under Mosley.

Most recently, they took the Detroit Pistons to seven games, and lost game 7, and the series, on Sunday.

ESPN.

Rob Thomson out as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Thomson, 62, a mild-mannered Canadian and baseball lifer — “Topper” to his players and staff — skippered the Phillies to a 355-270 record, four consecutive playoff appearances, and back-to-back National League East titles after replacing deposed Joe Girardi on June 3, 2022.

But: they are 9-19 so far this season.

Two weeks ago, on April 13, the Phillies trounced the Cubs, 13-7, at Citizens Bank Park. They lost the next 10 games by a combined 69-26. Last Tuesday, in the midst of that skid, Dombrowski offered a vote of confidence for Thomson, saying there was “nothing to ponder at this point” about a managerial change.
But the losing continued. The Phillies are off to their worst 28-game start since 2002. They have dropped six consecutive series. After bowing again Sunday in Atlanta, they slid to 10½ games behind the NL East-leading Braves, their largest deficit in the division in April since 1997.

This broke kind of late on Saturday (plus there were other things going on Saturday night), and I was tied up all day yesterday.

So for the record: Alex Cora out as manager of the Red Sox. I’m pretty sure this is the first firing of the baseball season.

Bench coach Ramón Vázquez, hitting coach Peter Fatse, third-base coach Kyle Hudson, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson and hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin also were dismissed.

The Red Sox are 11-17 so far this season. Also noted:

The Red Sox initially hired Cora, a 14-year major league veteran, in 2018 after he spent one year as bench coach for the Houston Astros. The Puerto Rico native guided Boston to a 108-win season and the World Series title in his first year.
Boston failed to reach the postseason in 2019 before Cora resigned as fallout for his involvement in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal in 2017. Commissioner Rob Manfred later suspended Cora for the 2020 season. The Red Sox rehired Cora upon his reinstatement, signing him to a two-year deal with club options for 2023 and 2024.

Tom Fitzgerald out as general manager of the New Jersey Devils.

Although the Devils (40-34-3) entered Monday still mathematically eligible for the playoffs, they were seven points out of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot with five games left.

The way I read the ESPN article, they actually started out okay this season. But they lost a key player (Jack Hughes) to a “freak hand injury in mid-November that kept him out for 18 games”.

Missing Hughes was only the beginning, with the Devils losing five straight to end November and begin December. It was the first of four separate four-game losing streaks that made it difficult for them to attain consistency in a challenging Eastern Conference landscape.

Shortly after my previous post, word came out: the Chicago Bulls have fired general manager Marc Eversley and “executive vice president of basketball operations” Arturas Karnisovas. Tribune. Sun Times. ESPN.

Karnisovas and Eversley were hired to run the Bulls front office at the start of the 2020-21 season and went 224-254 across six seasons. Chicago achieved only one wining season under Karnisovas’ leadership, in 2021-22, which is also the only year the team made the playoffs — a five-game, first-round exit to the Milwaukee Bucks in 2022.

…

At the trade deadline, Chicago flipped over a large portion of its roster, dealing away seven players, including fan favorites such as Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu in an effort, as Karnisovas deemed it, “to get out of the middle.” But Chicago’s deadline moves did not dramatically improve their lottery odds or gain any pieces the team sees as part of its future, sources told ESPN. One of the players the Bulls acquired, Jaden Ivey, was dismissed last week after several social media posts ranging on topics including religion, anti-gay sentiments and depression.

Patrick Roy out as coach of the New York Islanders.

The Islanders have lost four in a row and seven of their past 10 games, going from comfortably in a playoff spot to needing help down the stretch in a competitive Eastern Conference race.

Amaka Agugua-Hamilton out as head coach of the University of Virginia women’s basketball team.

This is mildly interesting: UVA got as far as the women’s sweet 16 this year.

Agugua-Hamilton led the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2000. She went 70-58, including a 29-42 mark in ACC play.
Virginia became the first double-digit seed to reach the regional semifinals since 2022 and pulled off the upset of the tournament, knocking off No. 2 seed Iowa on the road in double overtime in the second round.
It became the first First Four team to advance this far, before falling to TCU.

But: the backstory seems to be that she “created an environment where her support staff had feared for their jobs due to abusive behavior towards them and threats to fire them”.

Virginia sports reporter Jerry Ratcliffe reported, following the announcement, that the entire women’s basketball team, except for two players, had been preparing to enter the transfer portal.