Everyone is talking about Trey Hillman, but not so much about his replacement.
Trey Hillman’s record during his three seasons as Kansas City Royals‘ manager was was 152-207. Last night after his star pitcher Zack Greinke earned his first win of the season (6-4 over the Cleveland Indians), it was announced that he had been fired.
Former Milwaukee Brewers manager Ned Yost, who joined the Royals’ front office in January, takes over as manager immediately, but the Internet community seems to be way more focused on Hillman than they are on Yost.
Out of all the relevant results returned on the subject, Hillman was mentioned almost twice as much as Yost.
Relevant data was spread pretty evenly across site-type categories with social media sites like Twitter accounting for 28.77%. With news like this, there is bound to be a lot of traditional news coverage and blog coverage as well, and those results are almost even with the social media sites.
• Social – 28.77%
• General – 23.58%
• Blogs – 23.47%
• News – 22.17%
• Video – 2% (This number will increase as time goes on because video content takes more time to produce.)
General manager Dayton Moore obviously has respect for Hillman, since he had a tough time not getting too emotional when he made the announcement, but his win/loss record spoke for itself.
Here are excerpts with overt sentiment from sites other than Twitter:
“Even with the bad hand he was dealt in KC, Hillman didn’t do himself any favors. Perhaps it was his lack of prior Major League experience. Perhaps it was a bad attitude. Perhaps it was his poor relationships with his players.” – Fack Youk
“…with Moore having signed a contract extension, one has to wonder whether he’ll make a change if things get off poorly for the Royals again.” – Prince of New York Baseball Blog
“Veteran catcher Jason Kendall offers a strong endorsement for new Royals manager Ned Yost from their time together in 2008 at Milwaukee. “Ned is a great manager, a great baseball person,” Kendall said.” – Kansas.com (Wichita Eagle)
“The Royals fired manager Trey Hillman and replaced him with another mediocre non-entity Ned Yost.” – The Big Lead
“No one will ever mistake Trey Hillman for Casey Stengel, but at the same time no one will ever mistake the Kansas City Royals of his tenure for the 1950′s Yankee teams Stengel managed.” – Fanspeak
“In two-plus seasons as Royals’ manager, Hillman was 152-207. This is a garbage firing in my opinion. It’s not Hillman’s fault that he had zero talent to work with.” – Bleacher Report
