Whipped Cream Difficulties

The MLB regular season is over. Time for the baseball version of “Bloody Monday”.

Rocco Baldelli out as manager of the Minnesota Twins. 70-92 this season.

Baldelli finished his seven-season tenure with a 527-505 record (.511 win percentage). The only Twins managers with more victories are Tom Kelly (1,140-1,244) and Ron Gardenhire (1,068-1,039).

ESPN.

Bob Melvin out as manager of the San Francisco Giants.

Under Melvin, the Giants went 80-82 last year and 81-81 this season, which wa president of baseball operations Buster Posey’s first in his new position.

…

In 22 seasons, Melvin has a 1,678-1,588 record with the Mariners, Diamondbacks, A’s, Padres and Giants.

He was 161-163 in two seasons with San Francisco.

ESPN.

I guess this counts as a “big” firing, or at least a larger one:

Mike Gundy out at Oklahoma State.

Gundy, 58, is the winningest coach in program history with a record of 170-90 over his 20-plus seasons, accounting for 26.6% of the school’s all-time victories.
No single figure has had as much direct impact over such a significant amount of time as Gundy, who has spent 35 of the past 40 seasons at Oklahoma State in some form.

But this is kind of a “what have you done for me lately” thing. Especially if you define “lately” as “since 2021”.

The 2021 squad came inches short of defeating Baylor and potentially earning a College Football Playoff bid…
But since that moment, OSU has gone 21-21, despite a 10-4 season in 2023 that included another appearance in the Big 12 title game.
The 2024 team went 0-9 in conference play, and the 1-2 start with a 66-point loss to Oregon and a 19-12 loss to Tulsa spelled the end for Gundy, concluding his career with a record of 170-90 (.654 winning percentage), and 12-6 in bowl games.

Noted:

Screenshot

Not quite the war font, but fairly close.

Edited to add: ESPN, for those who want supplemental coverage.

It was another one of those busy weekends for me.

It was also a busy weekend for sports firings, so getting caught up:

DeShaun Foster out at UCLA. Heh. Heh. Heh. 5-10 in “a little more than one full season”, and 0-3 so far this season. ESPN.

Brent Pry out as head coach of Virginia Tech. 16-24 in “four seasons” and, yes, 0-3 so far this season. ESPN.

Pete DeBoer out as head coach of the Dallas Stars.

Dallas joined the 1975-77 Islanders as the only teams in the expansion era to lose in the round before the Stanley Cup Final for three straight seasons.

(Sorry for the straight-up ESPN link, but the Dallas papers are pretty much unlinkable.)

This is still breaking news, but: The New York Knickerbockers just fired head coach Tom Thibodeau.

In five seasons with the Knicks, Thibodeau led them to a 226-174 regular-season record, and they made the playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm.
When it came to the postseason, however, a 24-23 mark with the Knicks didn’t cut it.

ESPN.

Brandon Hyde out as manager of the Baltimore Orioles.

15-28 so far this season.

ESPN:

With an underperforming offense, one of baseball’s worst pitching staffs and middling defense, the Orioles have regressed in every facet of the game this season. Hyde, 51, entered the season with questions about his long-term future after Baltimore was swept out of a wild-card series against Kansas City last year. In 2023, following a season in which they won an AL-best 101 games, the Orioles were swept by the Texas Rangers in the division series.

On Saturday, general manager of the Colorado Rockies Bill Schmidt came out in support of manager Bud Black.

“I think our guys are still playing hard, and that’s what I look at,” Schmidt told the Post. “Guys are working hard every day, they come with energy, for the most part. I don’t think we are [at that point of firing Black]. Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed. We are all frustrated.”

Saturday night, the Rockies lost to the San Diego Padres…21-0.

Sunday, the Rockies fired Bud Black. Also out: bench coach Mike Redmond.

Black was in his ninth year as Rockies manager and had a career record with Colorado of 544-690. He is the winningest manager in franchise history.

I have been planning to do a loser update later this week. I’ve been waiting until we got to about the 25 percent mark in the season. However, I will say that right now, the Rockies are 7-33, for a .175 winning percentage. If my projections are correct, and this holds up for the rest of the season, I estimate that they will lose 133 games. Which would not just be “historically bad”, but would be the worst percentage in the modern era.

The baseball season doesn’t really start until the ceremonial throwing out of the first manager.

Derek Shelton out as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

12-26 so far this season, for a .316 winning percentage. Not great, but better than the White Sox and Rockies.

306-440 in “five plus” seasons, according to ESPN.

So I guess yesterday was the NHL equivalent of the NFL’s “Bloody Monday”.

Peter Laviolette out as head coach of the New York Rangers.

The Rangers are now searching for their fourth coach since 2021, with Laviolette joining a list of fired bench bosses that includes David Quinn and Gerard Gallant.

Also out: “associate coach” Phil Housley.

Greg Cronin out as coach of the Anaheim Ducks.

The Ducks were 35-37-10 (80 points) with a .488 points percentage. While that was an improvement over last season (27-50-5, 59 points), it wasn’t enough to bring Cronin back after two seasons behind the bench. Anaheim missed the playoffs for the seventh straight season.

The Suns are sweating.

As much as I prefer to quote local news sources, I can’t pass up the way the Post put it:

The Suns have fired head coach Mike Budenholzer after they finished with a 36-46 record, didn’t sniff a playoff-clinching top-six seed and missed the play-in tournament by three games.

AZCentral:

The Suns closed a disappointing 36-46 season on April 13 at Sacramento that began with championship expectations for the NBA’s first $400 million team with three max players in Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal. It ended with Phoenix missing the playoffs for the first time since 2019-20.
Booker, Durant and Beal are due a combined $150 million this season.

Budenholzer coached for one season. He took over after Frank Vogel was fired.

Phoenix has been paying Vogel, who signed a five-year, $31-million deal.

Post:

It’s the third consecutive season that Phoenix has fired its head coach, as Monty Williams was canned after a 45-37 season the year before Vogel took over.

And ESPN, for the record.

Also fired: David Griffin, executive VP of the Pelicans.

Michael Malone out as head coach of the Denver Nuggets. Also gone: general manager Calvin Booth.

Malone went 471-327 in ten seasons as coach. There are three games left in the NBA regular season, and Denver is in fourth place in the Western Conference.

More from ESPN, which is spinning Booth’s termination as “not extending his contract” rather than a firing.

Taylor Jenkins is out as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.

Six seasons, 250-214 overall, and 9-14 in the playoffs.