While hunting on the Atlanta Journal Constitution website looking at another news article surrounding Don Sutton (the current Nationals TV broadcaster), there was another piece about Leo Mazzone — former Baltimore pitching coach — that caught my eyes.
Leo’s tenure in Baltimore didn’t obviously go smoothly, and after two years with the organization along with little improvement with some of the pitching staff, he was let go.
A few days ago, Mazzone gave his side of the story to the newspaper, and let’s say he didn’t have too many kind words for the Orioles…
“If I had to do it all over again, I would have never done it,” said Leo Mazzone, mostly a national television analyst on baseball these days, reflecting from his home in Roswell. He inherited a bunch of soft pitchers in Baltimore who couldn’t adjust to his hard but effective style. He was booted after two seasons.
To hear Mazzone tell it, his firing was a relief. “Once I got there and saw how they operated compared to the Braves, I knew I made a mistake the first week of spring training,” he said, before chuckling and adding, “I said to myself, ‘You know what? I done messed up.’
“The lack of organization. The lack of discipline. The lack of overall professionalism. I was shocked, and I couldn’t believe it.”
Wow. Obviously, most of us are privy to what goes on behind the scenes; however, I would fathom that there’s a lot of truth to his opinion. We all know by now that Mazzone didn’t have the talent that he had in Atlanta when he was in Baltimore, but results matter and things didn’t change much. Furthermore, I’d imagine with a change of regime (MacPhail and Trembley), the organization wanted change and he was shown the door.
Whether he failed or succeeded in Baltimore isn’t the issue, the fact of the matter is he had amazing success in Atlanta. I think he was commenting on a baseball culture that existed in the organization at the time, and I’m sure it didn’t help things.
It really doesn’t matter because he’s gone now.
- The Orioles have released their schedule of spring training games that will be on the radio — there are twelve in total.
- It looks like the World Baseball Classic may potentially have a huge impact on the Oriole roster in Florida.
- Gregg Zaun would be fine with being a tutor for Matt Wieters; however, he wants to compete for the starting job as well.
- Peter Schmuck looks at Baltimore’s offseason moves so far…
