What wizard by yon holy tree
Mutters unto the sky
Where Macha's flame-tongued horses flee
On hoofs of thunder by?
—Thomas "Oil Can" Boyd, "The King's Son" (Answer: Billy Beane)

In a surprise move today, the A's let go their manager of four seasons, Ken Macha, citing problems dealing with players. Macha owns a 368-280 record which translates into a .568 winning percentage. He has won the division twice in his four years. In the other two years, his teams finished second, one game and seven games out of first. He also got them over their supposed first-round jinx by sweeping the Twins in the first round.

At that point it seemed inconceivable that Macha would be let go. Then, the Tigers swept the A's in the ALCS, and two days later he is unemployed.

The thing is as sweeps go, it wasn't that great a beating. Of the 57 sweeps in the postseason (including the three this year), the A's come in tied for 29th in average margin of victory, or rather loss here. On average the Tigers beat the A's by 3.25 runs per game. The A's were basically in every ballgame, losing once by 4 runs and three times by three runs.

Here are the most one-sided sweeps in playoff history:

At the other end of the spectrum, the closest sweeps were both in the World Series. In 1950 the Yankees beat the Whiz Kid Phils by an average of 1.5 runs, and last year the White Sox beat the Astros by the same average margin.

I think that instead of blaming Macha's apparently poor communication skills, I think the A's would have been better served in pointing to how he handled his pitching staff in the playoff especially game four. There seemed to be no immediacy in his moves even though it was an elimination game. Then there was the fact that he had no answer to Mark Ellis's injury--D'Angelo Jimenez killed the A's offensively and defensively, but that might have been more of a Billy Beane issue. And Macha had no control over the anemic offense of Frank Thomas, Nick Swisher, and Marco Scutaro, not to mention Eric Chavez's inability to complete an easy play.

Whatever the reason, Macha becomes the ninth manager all time to lose his job after a postseason sweep:

With the Phils enlisting ex-managers en masse to serve as Charlie "I Need a Friggin'" Manuel's heirs apparent on the coaching staff (i.e., Jimy Williams, Art Howe, and Davey Lopes), I expect Macha to be enlisted as a bat boy or a bullpen pitcher before the season starts.