Lloyd McClendon is great.. He is an overweight hot head fiery african american.. if anyone else was him, they'd be in prison.. so he must be smart and great to have avoided that.. Once he is fully accepted by the baseball community as a great manager, he will lead the pirats to a championship, it might just take a few more years.

The Pirates are supposed to be a rebuilding team, yet they're near .500. Thank you McClendon!

As has been pointed out he ain't exactly working with the 27 Yankees here, but he plays the percentages way too much, has a tendency to run them out of innings with bad steal attempts and insists on pinch hitting Abraham Nunez in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line.

His Pirates could have been great in the future if they didn't liquidate, and I love his tirades.

You really can't get much of a handle on Mac because he has so little to work with. Look at Joe Torre--he was run out of Atlanta and more or less considered a bum, until he fell into George Steinbrenner's pile of money. The '03 edition of the Bucs is better than the '02 team, but face it, they still stink, and McClendon's managerial abilities won't make them stink any less. Having gotten the disclaimer in, Mac has to go. The business with Kenny Lofton in Chicago left a bad taste with me. (For those who don't know, Lofton had a 24-game hitting streak going. He was given a day off at Wrigley Field, but with the Bucs down 5-4 in the ninth and runners on, McClendon chose to let anemic hitting Abraham Nunez bat, instead of using Lofton to pinch-hit...and risk taking a 0-for-1 to end the streak.) OK, maybe I'm nitpicking, but I want my manager to do everything he can to instill an attitude that puts winning ahead of personal stats. These guys can't afford to sacrifice wins on the altar of the individual. I don't think McClendon brings that to the table.

He relies too much on what appears to be a preplanned strategy and he is a terrible descision maker during a game. The Pirates would surely be a better team without him.

You are fired Lloyd