My, my, my. The Bucs have fired just about every high-profile member of their management: manager Jim Tracy, scouting director Ed Creech, farm director Brian Graham, and director of baseball operations Jim Mercurio.
Tracy and Creech were so surprise, of course - Tracy lost the fans a long time ago and appeared to have lost the players too, and Creech is largely responsible for the Pirates' horrid drafting under Dave Littlefield - but Graham is a surprise. Owner Bob Nutting has said he liked Graham, and the Pirates even made Graham the assistant GM after he fired Littlefield.
This is a good sign, I think - not because Graham was terrible at his job or something, but because it probably shows that Nutting stayed out of the way on this decision, and will presumably do so in the future.
Some greatest hits of Jim Tracy:
He didn't have the support of the players
On players' wives having babies
On the Pirates' players not caring about winning games
On how you have to put up with losing because it's a "process"
Why there was a Dodgers blog called "Fire Jim Tracy"
On "mentally applying yourself and then physically executing"
On how you should shut up if you haven't played baseball before
On how Freddy Sanchez thrived in 2006 because Tracy didn't play him every day
On how Ronny Paulino is such an awesome game-caller
...By the way, if you haven't been reading the ongoing series of Tracy parodies at Honest Wagner, you should.