If he was the Italian Mickey Mantle and he was that bad, I could've at least been the Irish Abraham Nunez.
;D ;D ;D
Nunez was an interesting case. Good field/no hit but when he sent to St.L in 2005 he batted .285. The Phillies signed him as a FA the next year and saw the real Nunez as he batted .211. Absent 2005 his career BA was otherwise .233. With the Pirates he was a very good fielder and very weak hitter. So naturally Lloyd McClendon usually made him the first guy off the bench to pinch hit. Nunez had a ton of PH opportunities with 276 career PH ABs but only 42 hits for a PH BA of .152. And after he would make his automatic PH out, he was out of the game and unable to be used to his strength as late inning defense. Just another example of how a manager can make a bad team even worse with illogical decisions.
I used to go ballistic when McLendon would constantly use Nunez to hit. There was no way to justify it. In fact, he shouldn't have even been on that team with the roster that bad. His defense certainly wasn't needed because the team rarely had a lead late in a game. I go back and forth as to who was the worst manager, McLendon or Russell. It's hard for me to decide.
I go with Russell. At least McLendon had a pulse!
HAHA! Russell could've been declared clinically dead on several occasions.
McClendon used to grossly overmanage every game. It seemed like he wanted to make every move he had ever seen managers make. So every game he made a ton of moves, many of which didn't seem logical and were counterproductive. I used to say that the Pirates would do better if McClendon just slept thru every game.
Russell seemed like he really was sleeping thru every game. But after McClendon, it seemed that doing nothing was better than doing everything wrong. So I think Russell was the better manager because 0 is a higher number than -5.
