A replacement for McLaren

At least McLaren dropped Richie and Raul (for a while) down in the lineup and moved up Beltre. He is probably getting Jones in the lineup more than Mike would of.  

Though McLaren has made his share of dubious, even infuriating decisions (hell, he made several today, including the nonsensical call to the bullpen for Parrish; we didn't understand that either)... he gets a lot of flak given how badly we wanted Hargrove gone and given that, for all his observation over the years, he is still very new to running his own team at the big league level and managing all those big money personalities.

This is not to say I believe he deserves a perma-waiver for all his bad calls, and I understand everyone's frustration because I get frustrated with his managing as well, but it's a bit rash to already ask for the head of a guy who's only been doing this for a month and change and is still trying to figure it all out.  Yeah, he's been in dugouts forever, but always as a subordinate to another manager that made all these decisions he never had to make on his own until now.  It's tough, and he has to balance putting a competitive team on the field with not losing the trust of his team.  And plus, there aren't many managers that we as diehard fans would consider 'good'.  A lot of managers make seemingly nonsensical decisions and non-decisions day after day, and many of them run winning teams.  Many of them win despite themselves.

In the end, it's not as simple as it looks.  There's a lot of variables besides the ones we're focused on and it takes some getting used to and feeling things out.  He doesn't quite know what direction he wants to take this ship, what step to take next, and the timing for this learning process couldn't be worse given we're in the middle of a playoff race, after he suddenly got the job following Grover's sudden resignation.

He just needs more time.  This is a bad time for him to 'need more time', but still.