Ricketts said he had "100 percent confidence in Jim" on June 15 before firing him (secretly no less!) on July 22. Whether we like it or not, I don't think Ricketts always means what he says publicly. He feeds pablum to reporters in order to avoid public feuds while conducting his business behind closed doors. Those situations aren't comparable at all. Yeah, what would be the motivation for Ricketts to lie in this case? To be clear, my point is simply that I don't think you can put a lot of stake in what he says to reporters. His full quote regarding replacing Kenney with a "baseball man": It's obvious in retrospect that he didn't "trust Jim". I think its equally plausible that the rest of the stuff he said could be a smoke screen; Ricketts seems to like to avoid public confrontations. I think he will stock his front office with the people he thinks are most capable of running it, irrespective of what he may have said (mostly in defense of Hendry, who he fired) a few months ago. You're acting like Ricketts said I'm just going to hire a GM and nobody else. There's a difference between having Pat Gillick as a president over the GM and Epstein bringing along a Byrnes or whoever as assistants.