I'm totally fine going in with Maddon on the last year of his deal and see what happens. Maybe its playing with fire and unfair and puts a weird amount of pressure on Joe and his managing will slip. I dont know. My thinking regarding managers is that, tactically, almost all of them are gonna do weird perplexing horsefeathers, mess a bunch of horsefeathers up, and you really can only hope to minimize the damage there. Evaluating the rest of it....is really hard if not impossible. I think its clear that Maddon is a good "player manager" however that is defined, even to the point where its a bad thing, like with Russell. The team is motivated and plays to win and morale seems high. It is what it is. I think Chili Davis should be fired at the very least as a sacrificial lamb and admission that something dreadfully wrong went on with the hitting, even if it a majority of it wasn't his fault. It just has to happen.