Miley shouldn't get blame
Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler

The irrepressible temptation, on Tuesday night, was to gander at the familiar, fitful firebrand in the Devil Rays dugout and wonder what Lou Piniella might do with this ungainly gaggle of Cincinnati Reds.

He, of course, is the last manager to win a world championship here, and the least likely to countenance the kind of "unacceptable" - to use upper management's loaded term - and generally stinking baseball the Reds have been dispensing for the past month and a half. Not Always Sweet Lou wouldn't have designated D'Angelo Jimenez for assignment; he would have designated him for plastic surgery. He wouldn't hold team meetings; he would hold team beatings (verbal, for the record).

This inevitably brings us to Dave Miley, the single figure - now that Danny Graves is gone - dodging the most spitballs from local fans and the button-downs doing Carl Lindner's bidding. He is, after all, the easiest guy to blame.

Like the rest of the Reds, Miley has made his personal contributions to the frightful freefall. Cases could be made that he allowed Graves to blow too many games; that he waited too long to put Felipe Lopez and Ryan Freel into the everyday lineup; that he should have walked Derrek Lee that time with first base open; that he had no business benching Ken Griffey Jr. in Colorado; that his wrath should have been taken out on something other than Adam Dunn's lounger; that he should demand more from grown men fully capable of it.

This may or may not have been the message John Allen hand-delivered to him Sunday in Denver. We're safe in surmising that the subject of contract extension didn't come up.

For his part, general manager Dan O'Brien has so far stood by his man, the irony being that Miley wasn't really his man. O'Brien's choice would have been Brian Graham of Pittsburgh. For that matter, O'Brien wasn't Allen's choice as GM. That would have been Wayne Krivsky of Minnesota.
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