he's an awful GM.

Garner? who gives a shit. a manager is a manager is a manager.  if you have crappy players you're gonna lose.

"Foster, a member of the Reds from 1971-1981 and a 5-time All-Star, conducts the camps across the country. He is also a motivational speaker and works with several national agencies and is the current commissioner for the Reds Rookie Success League." (from the Journal-Times, Grayson KY)

Once you dropped his name I was curious. He had the oddest career arc, a la Dale Murphy and Will Clark, where for several years he seemed a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame, and then just fell of the face of the baseball earth.

Is it Garner's fault that he had to deal with so many partially-baked players, like Ensberg, Eric Bruntlett, Chris Burke?  Technically, no.  But I'm not sure any of these players got the kind of development they needed from Garner.  His tendancy to banish slumping players to the bench couldn't have helped, either; I'm thinking mainly of Ensberg here.

From the outside, there's no way to be sure how much is Garner's fault and how much was the players' inherent suckiness.  But my (admittedly superficial) position is: Players don't tend to improve under Garner.  They aren't given a chance to complete themselves.  They end up mired in that quadruple-A caliber setting.

As for Brad Lidge, I do believe his problems are entirely his own, and I feel bad for him.  But if you go with my hypothesis here, having Garner as a boss didn't help any.

The firing makes a lot more sense to me now.

Strike down one more GM who might have been susceptible to Sabean's jedi mind tricks.