Leyland

According to Paul Meyer, Jim Leyland has made his desire to manage the Pirates known, if that's what you take out of this quote from Jim:
Whoever ends up getting the Pirate job will be walking into a pretty good situation. They have a combination of the best young pitchers and players they've had in years. And the farm system probably has a few more. They have something to work with.
Meyer then tosses in some anonymous quotes from "National League executives" and "high-ranking officials,"
They're not that far away. They have some makings.
And,
I feel that the best-case scenario would be for Leyland to manage the club. He lives there. He's very popular there.
The actual quote from Leyland about the job was, of course, almost completely non-committal.
I've made it clear that I'd like to manage again -- in the right situation. Other than that, I have nothing to say. There's nothing else to say at this juncture.
So let's talk for a minute about the "right situation" for Jim Leyland to manage again. It wasn't the right situation in Pittsburgh in 1996 when the team was full of young players. It wasn't the right situation in Florida in 1998 when the ownership dumped their high priced talent and began was turned out to be a successful rebuilding effort (bringing them another World Series in only five years). It wasn't the right situation in Colorado in 1999, another team full of young players and veterans going nowhere. So what would make Pittsburgh in 2006 the right situation? Since 1992 Jim Leyland's had one winning season, a season where his team was so incredibly talented it would've been a crime for them to NOT win the World Series (and yet they didn't even win their division and if it wasn't for Jose Mesa they almost certainly wouldn't have won that World Series). You can say what you want about the talent and the committment to winning on those teams he bailed on, but you can say those same things about the 2006 Pittsburgh Pirates. Just because he lives around here and the fans love him doesn't make him the right choice for the Pirates.

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