Starkville | Is It Ever Too Early to Fire a Manager?
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 875 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jayson Stark and Doug Glanville are back in Starkville to dig into the stunning April firings of Alex Cora and Rob Thomson, breaking down how it unraveled and what it reveals about the ever-shrinking margin for managers. Then, MLB broadcaster Ron Darling joins the show to share his thoughts on the moves, the mounting pressure on today’s skippers, the Mets’ ongoing struggles, and his memories of the iconic 1986 Mets.
Rundown:
0:00 Starkville Is Back!
3:25 April Firings: Alex Cora and Rob Thomson
8:24 Ron Darling Joins the Show
9:18 Darling on Thomson
11:53 Managers in Peril
15:49 Where will Cora Go Next?
17:40 In-season Managerial Changes
18:57 How the Manager Role Has Changed
25:37 What’s Wrong with the Mets?
33:09 40th Anniversary of the ‘86 Mets
39:02 Looking Back at Darling’s Book, ‘The Complete Game’
43:04 Favorite Pitchers
Follow Jayson on Bluesky: @jaysonst.bsky.social
Follow Doug on Bluesky: @dougglanville.bsky.social
E-mail: starkville@theathletic.com
Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels
Hosts: Jayson Stark & Doug Glanville
With: Ron Darling
Producer: Jason Potere
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Starkville, we'll talk managerial firings, Boston, Philly, with Ron Darling. |
| 0:06.7 | And of course, we have some strange but trueness. |
| 0:10.0 | Coming right up on Starkville. |
| 0:29.6 | Greetings and welcome back to Starkville. I'm Jason Stark. I wrote about baseball for The Athletic. |
| 0:42.2 | And I'm joined once again by my good friend, writer, substacker, a man who once got 1100 hits in the major leagues, and our favorite voice of baseball on ESPN radio, Doug Glanville. |
| 0:47.5 | Doug, how are you, my friend? |
| 0:49.4 | I'm doing well, very well. |
| 0:51.7 | You know, as you know, I cut out the red eye as an option of travel. |
| 0:56.8 | And so I'm a very rested version of myself if I go back in time. |
| 1:02.0 | So I'm feeling pretty good. |
| 1:03.4 | I was in Kansas City. |
| 1:04.2 | Not easy to get to from Connecticut, but a little rain delay. |
| 1:08.3 | But we are in good space here. |
| 1:12.0 | Game is over, right? It seems like it is. It has ended, yes. We started at three hours early and |
| 1:18.1 | almost ended at the same time. But a great game, walk off home run, Lane Thomas. And that was, |
| 1:25.6 | wow, that was a great game. Not for the Angels, but it was fun. |
| 1:29.6 | All right, so before we go on, time once again for our weekly reminder of where and when, |
| 1:35.1 | you can find us on Starkville this season. |
| 1:38.5 | First, the answer to when, this show will drop every Saturday morning. |
| 1:47.5 | There will be some occasional special episodes earlier in the week. You can still listen on Apple, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts. |
| 1:55.1 | So follow and subscribe, rate and review. You know the drill. But the big news is, if you are watching us on YouTube, |
| 2:03.1 | you've probably noticed our show is now on YouTube. So every week, you will get to see people |
... |
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