The only rough look here is the continued support and defense of a general manager that did everything in his power to run this team into the ground and then ran away to Toronto leaving the next guy in the lurch to clean up that mess.
The rough look is ignoring the fact that a manager's job is to leave an organization in a better stead than which they received it. Your hero left behind a roster in disarray, a salary broken structure, a minor league system bereft of prospects, a deficit of draft picks to address that concern, and a dysfunctional culture which required a purge. Even when the body of evidence continues to mount where it is pretty much universally accepted that Treliving left the team in the lurch and in a horrible situation, the defense and admiration continues.
Treliving's inability to hire a coach and waste years of player's careers, ignored. His inability to develop and stick to plan, disregarded. His terrible track record of bringing in free agents and overpaying them, forgiven. His inability to recognize the talent that needed to be kept long term and focus on paydays for overachievers which contributed to the skewed salary structure, all but forgotten. Treliving's lack of ability to distinguish which players who were going to be difference makers and make smart deals, marginalized. His habit of bleeding picks for useless veterans who never moved the needle and then allowed to walk away for nothing at the end of their contract, seemingly omitted from the memory. Worst of all, his moves in his final year which really hobbled the organization, in a Kathy Bates sort of way, completely ignored, even when the evidence of his incompetence is measured at every turn by other moves happening around him and the negativity landing on the team rather than the individual who put those moves into action. The continued defense of it all is insulting to the fanbase to be quite frank, and we don't deserve it.
That's a rough look, on all levels.
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