Levine's take

We get some beef from Zach Levine on why Coop was canned:

My biggest complaint about Cooper's strategy in his first year in office was how liberal he was as a base stealer on behalf of his club. He either green-lighted or didn't red light players who had absolutely no business going.

To me, the nonchalance about sending runners and strict adherence to his mantra of aggressiveness demonstrated a lack of understanding of the true values of outs and extra bases, overvaluing the latter and undervaluing the former...

...Where I think he hurt the team, literally and figuratively, this year was in bullpen management, which brings me back to the Gervacio item.

Cooper very often used a variant on the talking point win today's game and then worry about tomorrow, and I never really thought he could really believe that in a 162-game sport until I think about his bullpen use.

Cooper was very reliant on his best middle reliever, Chris Sampson, who got worn down and had to have his workload seriously reduced in the minors. Then it was Alberto Arias, who picked up the slack and not necessarily relatedly was injured.

Other injuries and the fact that the Astros didn't win a lot of games were probably the only thing that saved LaTroy Hawkins and Jose Valverde...

...Part of the wearing out had to do with short outings from the starters, and I thought some of that was the manage-for-today philosophy. I'm not going to take exception to every 4-5 inning start when the hurler was struggling, but I thought there were a few in the beginning of the season, especially involving Wandy Rodriguez, when it would have been more beneficial to leave him in than to further wear down the pen.

Putting in Gervacio to keep the Brewers from kicking the extra point on their touchdown lead struck me as another example of managing for today, and this time there was no tomorrow.