The interim manager has brought a spark. He has the players' support. He works the Orioles' clubhouse like a politician, keeping everyone posted on the latest news and lineup changes. Dave Trembley is emphasizing fundamentals, beaming with optimism and unable to hide how proud and humbled he is to have a key to the manager's office.
"I'm having fun. I was in Ottawa last year at this time and there weren't this many people at the ballpark," he said, scanning the media contingent that greeted him before the first game of the second half of the season. "I'm not being negative. I'm telling you the honest-to-goodness truth. I wish you all could be sitting where I'm sitting and understand the magnitude of what this means to me."
Trembley is 9-10 after last night's loss to the Chicago White Sox. His predecessor, Sam Perlozzo, carried a simliar mark (10-9) after his first 19 games as interim manager in 2005.
In fact, the newfound energy, the unwavering optimism, the great player relations - it all reminds me of when Perlozzo was promoted.
I bring all of this up because the Orioles could take another cue from the 2005 season. As they did for Perlozzo, the Orioles should allow Trembley to finish the season as interim manager.
Club officials have indicated they won't pick up the manager search before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. Assuming a new search would take at least a few days and up to a few weeks, the Orioles will need to weigh just how important it is to have a permanent manager in place for the final one to 1 1/2 months of the season.
Expectations for this team have fallen since April 1, making it difficult to identify too many advantages to having anyone other than Trembley managing this team the rest of the season. The names being bandied about - Don Baylor, Dusty Baker, Joey Cora - wouldn't provide the impact that would justify rushing into a midseason hire. There's no urgency to those names, and each is a candidate that will still be eager and available in October.
The only reason to pull the trigger at some point in the next couple of months is if the Orioles had someone in mind who really made their knees shake. After Joe Girardi turned them down last month, though, team officials turned the page to see Plan B and found they had absolutely nothing written there.
In the three weeks since, they haven't formally interviewed any other candidate, which makes them look like the band geek who got rejected by the head cheerleader and decided to skip the dance entirely.
