Tribe should skip 'interim' and make Alomar skipper

CLEVELAND -- The repercussions of a second-half slide revealed themselves on Thursday, though the Indians' dismissal of manager Manny Acta had felt increasingly inevitable in recent weeks.

No rational person could reasonably assert that Acta was solely to blame for the team's precipitous descent from American League Central contender to bottom-feeder. But at the rate the Indians were losing games (42 of their last 57, to be exact) and at the rate Acta was losing clubhouse influence, a reasonable defense became increasingly difficult to muster.

And so the Indians have replaced Acta with his bench coach, Sandy Alomar Jr., on an interim basis. And this, too, was inevitable, for Alomar is popular with fans, popular with the players and, more to the point, highly regarded in the baseball community as a manager-in-training and manager-in-waiting.

But general manager Chris Antonetti, who dismissed Acta three years after bringing him onboard, told a room full of reporters that this particular story is not yet complete. Antonetti will perform an extensive, time-consuming search -- though Alomar is, of course, a top candidate -- to find the right man for the job.

"It's exhausting," Antonetti said of finding a manager. "It takes a lot of time and effort and a lot of phone calls and trying to understand and get enough perspectives on individuals from a variety of areas to really have an informed opinion of someone."

My advice to Antonetti?

Save your time, save your cell phone minutes and save everybody involved the hassle of submitting to a process that seems to have yet another inevitable result.

Just name Alomar the permanent manager and be done with it.

This is not meant to belittle those who will be tossed into the fire of the rumor mill. Although it's silly to assume that Terry Francona would leave a cushy TV gig to manage a team likely in need of a rebuild on a budget, there is no shortage of promising up-and-coming candidates available. (Torey Lovullo, the Blue Jays' first-base coach, is a personal favorite, and he has past ties to the Indians organization as their former Triple-A skipper.)

Nor is this an affront against the benefits of careful deliberation and consideration. Even if the results are nowhere near as intended right now, the Indians do have a thoughtful process to the way they go about making decisions, and a managerial move is obviously a major decision.

But given these particular circumstances -- with a perfectly reasonable candidate in place and many pertinent and pressing questions being posed about the direction of the franchise -- I'd say Antonetti and Co. would be best served to place their emphasis and their time elsewhere.

For a team in need of some positive PR at the moment, Alomar is as positive as they come. For better or worse, many fans here remain enamored with those teams from Jacobs Field's nascent years, when division titles were as second nature as season sellouts.

Alomar was, of course, a popular part of those teams, and although nobody buys a ticket to see a manager in action, that popularity can't hurt.

(Granted, the Indians will never reasonably be able to satisfy that certain segment of the fan base that only wishes to dwell on the 1990s -- although Albert Belle did joke with an Indians staffer that he ought to be named the manager because he is, in his words, "the people's champ." So there's always that option...)

For a young team likely to endure a tough transition period, a rookie skipper such as Alomar, who can grow along with his players, is a fit. Even Acta, in his conference call with reporters after his dismissal, noted what a "good baseball man" Alomar is -- though Acta was also quick to joke that if he's not qualified enough to be this club's manager, he's not qualified enough to give his opinion on who the next manager should be.

And to this particular assemblage of players, Alomar is an ally. It's not exactly fair, but the current crop seemed to sour on Acta. They didn't feel that he stuck up for them enough on blown or controversial calls, and they didn't feel he associated with them enough in the clubhouse.

Indeed, it's telling that several hours after the news of his dismissal had gone public, Acta had only heard from one of his players offering condolences.

But Alomar is beloved by this bunch. Whether that amounts to much between the lines is a matter very much yet to be determined, because the talent is clearly lacking. For whatever it's worth, Baseball Reference's Pythagorean won-loss calculation suggests that the Indians should have had four fewer wins than they did under Acta this season, and Baseball Prospectus' manager data says that Acta's Indians outperformed its Pythagorean expectations more than any other AL club except the Orioles.

When you consider those admitted approximations and when you note the fact that none of the eight men who started three or more games for the Indians this season has an ERA below 5.00, you see that the Tribe has issues that go well beyond the managerial slot.

So that's my unsolicited advice to Antonetti: Give Alomar his shot and put the organizational emphasis elsewhere.

Take the time you would have used to conduct that exhaustive search and apply it to the other evaluations already taking place -- evaluations of the scouting, drafting, development and injury-prevention dynamics that put you in this hole in the first place.

Now that the ceremonial slaying is taken care of, get down the real roots of the problem at hand.