Originally posted by Maxie the Taxi
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After the ship was partially righted, JSO ran an article that got some on the record quotes from other ST coaches that Slocum was trying some new things and several of them seemed schematically unsound. And that later iterations of the same units were going back to more traditional designs. My version of events might mix things from two years, because I think some time passed between the disaster of his debut to subsequent revelations.
McCarthy is not a coach who is afraid to experiment and I bet his buddy Slocum indulged M3s wish to be aggressive on ST. And it backfired spectacularly.
Even after the two of them were done with their teenage experimentation, Slocum had units that would not improve. He has had one, maybe two years above average but usually in the bottom third. They never seem to develop better options, schemes or players. And if a problem develops (kick blocks, Crosby's struggles two years ago) it persists for most of the year before getting straightened out.
His only successes seem to be player driven self-improvement; Masthay and the Aussie kick, Crosby's self correction and Bush.
If I had to guess, Slocum is too good a friend to M3 and he can't tell the HC to go jump in a lake when he is off his nut about something. This is related to his being inexperienced or incompetent enough not to recognize and fix trouble before we recognize the problems.

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