So in a last gasp to remain relevant in the days before the Steelers consume all the remaining sports news oxygen in town, the Pirates put Lloyd McClendon out of his misery today. The prevailing question people have asked me over email is "Why now?" Since Lloyd was a lame duck at the end of the season, it doesn't make sense to bump him off now. There's two reasons it could matter:
The first is that following the fight between our coaches and the Cardinals coaches, and it was picking up racial overtones, somebody had to be let go to quench it. The irony of this being that once again, Larussa wins. (There's a meme of Larussa hating the Pirates and enjoying screwing them over. Personally, I think it's more like Larussa enjoys screwing everyone over, and the Pirates have just never managed to have an effective way to get the bully off their backs.)
The second reason would be if the assumption is that they want to get a coach in now, bypassing the expected hoops one would get for an off-season coaching search. This would indicate a candidate in hand, possibly that they want to bring back Jim Leyland or bring in Art Howe, as they're the only favorite son candidate not working now. (Macha, should the A's not extend him being the other candidate from the area.) Leyland, though he wants back into coaching, I can't see taking this team around the corner. Howe is either a good thing, given his term with the A's, or a bad thing, given his term with the Mets. The problem is I don't see really anyone who could move this team forward in its current configuration, or anyone who could create a configuration that would lead it out of the basement.

The other curiosity of this is that any candidate carries the possibility of being a short-termer. The other prevailing meme of Piratedom is that the management has telegraphed that a sale of the team will occur as soon as the checks clear for the All-Star Game revenues. If you assume that a systemwide shakedown will occur following that, there's no reason to assume the manager will survive it any more than the GM. So, it's not like anything's improved by this, it just makes it more uncertain.