Front offices love a simple rule this time of year: miss the playoffs, lose the job. It sounds like accountability. Usually it's misdirection.
Bob Nightengale reported on Sunday, Aug. 16, that three more managers are expected to be gone if their teams don't reach the 2026 postseason: Arizona's Torey Lovullo, Houston's Joe Espada and Seattle's Dan Wilson. Other outlets have echoed the same three names, and nobody's disputing the reporting. What's worth disputing is the framing. A pass/fail playoff exam grades the wrong person.
What a manager actually controls
A manager sets a lineup, runs a bullpen, keeps a clubhouse pointed in one direction, and answers for all of it in front of cameras every night. He doesn't decide which stars stay and which get shipped out, how much ownership is willing to spend, or whether the farm system produces anyone worth playing. Those are front-office jobs. In all three of these cases, the front office's fingerprints are smudged all over the mess.
Start with Lovullo, who has run the Diamondbacks since 2017, won a Manager of the Year award, and steered a surprise run to the 2023 World Series. Arizona then missed the playoffs in both 2024 and 2025, a stretch in which the club ran a record payroll and still came up short. Notice who's on the hook in the reporting: not the people who assembled a roster that didn't pay off its own price tag, but the manager. He's in the final year of his deal with no extension talks, reportedly saved once before by GM Mike Hazen, a close friend, who may not be able to save him again. When the guy who signs off on the payroll is the guy deciding the manager's fate, the incentives work exactly like you'd expect.
Houston is the cleanest example
Espada took over the Astros in 2024 after being a bench coach on their 2022 title team. Since he got the job, the organization traded Kyle Tucker to the Cubs and let Alex Bregman walk to Boston in free agency. ESPN's preseason rankings put Houston's farm system 29th of 30, and the centerpiece the Astros got back in the Tucker deal has struggled at the plate. One ESPN analysis this year called 2026 "likely a lost cause," citing injuries, holes on the pitching staff, and a thin offense, and added that Houston "wasn't a playoff team in 2025 and won't be in 2026."
So the roster got stripped, the pipeline was judged nearly the worst in baseball, and outside observers say the talent isn't there. If that's true, firing Espada for missing October is like blaming the pilot for a plane that never got fuel. To his credit, as of the reporting Houston was still atop the AL West with a two-game cushion over Texas, which only sharpens the point: he may drag a hollowed-out roster into the postseason anyway, and if he doesn't, he'll take the fall for the players he was handed.
Seattle's problem is a lineup, not a lineup card
Wilson is the newest of the three. He took over on an interim basis in 2024 when Seattle parted with Scott Servais at 64-64, then closed that year 21-13. His current predicament has the least to do with him of all. Through mid-August the Mariners had scored 486 runs, among the fewest in the sport, with catcher Cal Raleigh mired in a prolonged slump alongside other hitters who haven't produced. An offense that can't score is a personnel and player-development problem. You can question a bunt or a pitching change all you like, but no in-game decision manufactures runs out of a lineup that isn't hitting.
Seattle was also the longest shot of the three as of the reporting, sitting around five games out of the AL West lead and three back of a Wild Card spot after losing 21 of 31 dating to early July. A skid like that reflects a talent problem, not a sudden strategy failure.
The pattern is the point
This report doesn't arrive in isolation. It caps a rough year for managers. Boston moved on from Alex Cora, and most of his staff, after a 10-17 start. Philadelphia fired Rob Thomson on April 28 despite back-to-back NL East titles, following a 9-19 opening. The Mets dismissed Carlos Mendoza after a 34-47 start. When this many respected names get swept out on short leashes, the common thread stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like policy: when a roster underperforms, fire the one employee whose exit costs the least and buys the most breathing room.
Nightengale tied the Arizona situation to a tight NL Wild Card race in which the Phillies, Padres and Diamondbacks are chasing the final two spots, noting that whichever of the three misses out will likely be hunting for a new manager too. All of it is still unsettled with weeks left, and the standings will keep sliding before anything is final. That's exactly why the binary test is lazy. A single missed berth by a game or two flattens an entire season of context into one bit of information: in or out.
Here's my take. If ownership hands a manager a top-of-the-market payroll and demands a title, or trades away the best hitters and quietly rebuilds while insisting on contention, the manager is the last person who should answer for the outcome. Firing him fixes nothing about the roster. It just resets the clock on the people who built it. Accountability that only ever flows downhill isn't accountability. It's a shield, and Lovullo, Espada and Wilson are the ones being asked to hold it.
