Few managers and coaches get to walk away on their own terms. Al McGuire and John Wooden come to mind, but they’re the rare exceptions to the rule.

There’s an old adage that an owner can’t fire 26 guys (in the case of baseball) which isn’t to say that some managers should be fired midseason for their team’s poor performance. However, it’s difficult to judge in what case can the manager/coach be blamed for failure.

I think in most cases where the coach has lost the team, it’s time for a new voice in the room. The party getting the boot might agree in some cases. Too often in sports like baseball and football there are more guys that will take the fall for a manager/coach because of the number of visible coaches. Sometimes letting an assistant go is a direct warning for his boss. Firing a good friend of the man in charge, is that last straw so to speak.

Because he’s a first-year manager, I don’t think Craig Counsell has any strong ties to his current coaching staff. In an era where coaching/teaching seems to be less a measure of a team’s success, it’s become harder to tie a team’s failure in any aspect of the game to a particular coach. Editor’s note: Teams and the media covering them hype the crap out of new coaches and their progressive approaches to coaching.

At some point ML coaches need to be held accountable for a team’s failure in their given field. In Chicago coaches on both sides of town have failed to live up to the hype. I don’t advocate dismissing people out of hand, but I also can’t worry-they could care less if I’m underpaid or underperforming in my job.

Players in the NBA have been famous for getting their coaches fired. What’s particularly funny is how often “their guy” is an incompetent boob and sets the team back another five years. Luckily, in MLB it’s more difficult for an individual player to have that much say in front office business. I’m not naive enough to believe that MLB is immune to that though.