Whipped Cream Difficulties

Bryan Harsin out as Auburn football coach.

Harsin’s tenure on the Plains lasted just more than 22 months, and he finishes with a 9-12 record at Auburn that included a 4-11 mark against Power 5 opponents. He’s the first Auburn coach to finish his tenure with a losing record since Earl Brown’s three-year stint wrapped with a 3-22-4 record between 1948-50.

He was two years into a six year contract. He was also the subject of an inquiry by the university back in February:

Former players spoke out publicly about their experience with Harsin last season, while current players rallied around the embattled coach. After an eight-day investigation and uncertainty about whether Harsin would see a Year 2, Auburn announced its decision to retain the coach, with Gogue releasing a statement on the matter, explaining that it “would have been an abdication of the university’s responsibilities” to not investigate concerns raised about the football program. Gogue added that the university was committed to Harsin and providing him the support necessary to achieve his goals as head coach.

Ultimately, though, it was the on-field product:

After starting 6-2 in Year 1, Auburn spiraled to close out the 2021 season, ending the year on a five-game losing streak. That skid included blown double-digit leads against Mississippi State, South Carolina and Alabama, ultimately losing the Iron Bowl in a quadruple-overtime classic at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The year was capped with a loss to Houston in the Birmingham Bowl, which solidified the program’s first losing season since 2012 and its first five-game losing streak to end a season since 1950.

…

Two uneven performances against opponents from the FCS and Group of 5 to open the [2022 – DB] season, followed by a humiliating loss to Penn State that marked the program’s worst at home in a decade. Auburn escaped its SEC opener against Missouri in overtime before losing each of its next three. The death knell came in the form of Saturday’s double-digit loss to the Razorbacks, which dropped the Tigers to 3-10 in the last calendar year and brought an end to a coaching tenure that was uncomfortable, unfounded and ultimately didn’t work.

Mike Matheny out as general manager of the Kansas City Royals.

Also out: pitching coach Cal Eldred.

While they avoided a 100-loss season, the Royals (65-97) finished in last place in the AL Central and recorded the fifth-worst record of any club in the majors. They went an MLB-worst 26-55 on the road.
Matheny inherited a 103-loss team in 2019. In his first season, the Royals went 26-34 playing a pandemic-shortened 2020 schedule.
The Royals went 74-88 last season after adding veteran pitcher Mike Minor, first baseman Carlos Santana and left fielder Andrew Benintendi.

ESPN:

Matheny finished 165-219 during his time with the Royals, though the number that perhaps is more important to the future of the club is 29 — the number of players who made their major league debut during his tenure.

Missed this yesterday: Paul Chryst out as head coach of the Badgers.

Chryst, 56, who was born in Madison, finishes 67-26 in seven-plus seasons at Wisconsin, his alma mater. He won 10 games or more in four of his first five seasons with the Badgers, winning a Cotton Bowl, an Orange Bowl and three Big Ten West Division titles. But the program fell off beginning in 2020, going 4-3, before a slow start to the 2021 season, in which the Badgers finished 9-4.

The team is 2-3 this season.

Geoff Collins and athletic director Todd Stansbury out at Georgia Tech.

Collins was 10-28 as Georgia Tech’s coach after arriving from Temple. Stansbury had been Georgia Tech’s athletic director since 2016. Stansbury hired Collins and made the decision to bring him back last year after a 3-9 season.

Georgia Tech is 1-3 this season. That one win came against Western Carolina.

(Apologies for linking to ESPN, but the AJC is pretty much unreadable and unlinkable without a subscription.)

Herm Edwards out as football coach at Arizona State.

He was 20-26 overall (about five years) and 1-2 so far this season. AZ State lost 30-21 at home to Eastern Michigan, who was playing their backup quarterback.

The bigger issue, though, seems to be that AZ State is under a major NCAA investigation.

In June of 2021 an investigation was launched into recruiting violations which occurred during a COVID-dead period. That resulted in the firing or resignation of five coaches including Antonio Pierce who was recruiting coordinator and defensive coordinator and at one point being groomed to be Edwards’ successor as head coach.

That investigation is still ongoing.

More from ESPN.

We’re only two (or three, depending on schedules) games into the college football season, and we already have our first firing. (As far as I know: at least this is the first major school firing.)

Scott Frost out at Nebraska. Rather unceremoniously: they fired him now, three games in, rather than waiting until October 1st. On the first, his buyout amount would have been halved.

Frost was pretty well regarded: as a quarterback, he led Nebraska to the national championship in 1997. Nebraska hasn’t won a championship since. As a coach, he led Central Florida to a 13-0 season in 2017.

Then he came to Nebraska. His record in four and a quarter seasons was 16-31, “worse than any of the previous four Husker head coaches who had been fired this century”. His record in “one-score” games was 5-22.

The final straw seems to have been Saturday’s game against Georgia Southern, a cupcake team that Nebraska paid $1.423 million to play in Lincoln. Nebraska lost 45-42, at home, after being a a three touchdown favorite. They’re now 1-2 this season.

More from ESPN.

Chris Woodward out as manager of the Texas Rangers.

Currently, the Rangers are 23 games out of first in the AL West.

The Rangers, on their way to their sixth consecutive losing season, are 211-287 in Woodward’s three-plus seasons. The .424 win percentage is the sixth worst in MLB in that time.

…

After flirting with .500 in June, the club has seemingly taken a step backward. The Rangers are 15-25 since July 1 and have fallen back to a 90-loss pace.

…at the bottom of the AL Central.

Al Avila out as president and general manager in Detroit.

He’d been with the team for 22 years.

During Avila’s tenure, the Tigers finished in last place in the American League Central Division four times and currently occupy the basement with a 43-68 record and a -122 run differential, both third-worst in the majors.

Charlie Montoyo out as manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Toronto is currently 46-42 and is 15 1/2 games out of first place.

Montoyo took over for John Gibbons — the last Jays manager fired mid-season, in June of 2008, before coming back to manage the team again from 2013-18 — to begin the 2019 season, and the Jays were 236-236 over his three and a half seasons.

More from ESPN. As you know, I don’t like using ESPN that much, but in this case, the other Toronto media outlets either had no story, required a subscription, or would not load.

Bench coach John Schneider has been named interim manager for the rest of the season.

Does this mean those Duke boys are at it again?

No punny title, because it has been a busy day and we have multiple firings out of LA to report.

Joe Maddon out as manager of the Los Angeles Angels.

The Angels were 24-13 and tied for first-place with the Houston Astros in the American League West on May 15 but have lost 16 of 19 games since then to fall to 27-29 and 8½ games behind the Astros.

…

Maddon, who spent three decades with the Angels as a minor league coach and coordinator and big league coach, finished with a 157-172 (.477) record in parts of five seasons as Angels manager, including two interim stints in 1996 and 1999. He was manager Mike Scioscia’s bench coach when the Angels won the World Series in 2002.

Derek Fisher out as coach of the Los Angeles Sparks (of the WNBA). 54-46 over “less than” four seasons, 1-4 postseason, and 5-7 to start this season.

And the Lakers, having just hired a new head coach, fired a bunch of assistants: David Fizdale, Mike Penberty and John Lucas III.

…with the ceremonial throwing out of the first manager.

Joe Girardi out as manager of the Phillies.

The Phillies hired Girardi after the 2019 season to replace deposed Gabe Kapler. At the time, owner John Middleton hailed Girardi’s track record, including a World Series championship with the New York Yankees in 2009, and his reputation for blending old-school feel with the use of analytics and data.
But the Phillies went 28-32 under Girardi in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and 82-80 last season, missing the playoffs both times. They were 132-141 overall with Girardi at the wheel.

…

The Phillies are 22-29, 12 games out of first place the National League East. Entering this weekend’s series with the Los Angeles Angels at Citizens Bank Park, they have lost 12 of the last 17 games.

Well, that’s not true. Some men are Islanders.

Not, however, Barry Trotz, who got fired this morning as head coach.

Trotz’s record as Islanders coach was 152-102-34 in the regular season and 28-21 in the playoffs.
The Islanders (37-35-10) had a disastrous season in 2021-22, prompted by a poorly timed COVID-19 outbreak that derailed them following a season-opening 13-game road trip.