Ken Macha gets zero respect when it comes to managing the Oakland Athletics. It stands to reason that if he were Buck Showalter or Mike Scioscia, accolades would tumble from high heaven about his skills as a miracle worker. No manager in the American League has done more with less this year than Macha-not one!

And yet, we utter his name among baseball denizens and they shrug their shoulders and continue imbibing a cold, frosty one. Macha does little to capture the imagination of A's fans in general. To them, he's the silver-haired lump sitting on the far right side of the dugout making the obvious pitching change when necessary.

SFist wants to know one thing: Does Ken Macha matter? A's fans get all into a tizzy-fit over resident pretty-boy GM, Billy Beane, but does anyone else wearing the Kelly green and gold deserve any credit? If fans look closely, Beane's numbers-crunching hoo-haw isn't translating into fat numbers on the Stat sheet this year.

In truth, the Athletics are one of the worst hitting teams in the AL, if not the worst. They stink. Bill James can go to hell on this one! Whatever success they achieve is manifested from the clubhouse to the field. Real humans making real baseball moves, and Macha is showing himself to be the strong-arm master in a division that is home to souped-up reputations of the likes of Showalter and Mike Hargrove.

But Macha suffers from a severe lack of magnetic personality. His pre-game interviews are generally snore-fests, and his post-games are worst. To manage, or rather, do anything in Oakland, one has to have flavor like Dick Williams did or Billy Martin, or even the punchy Tony LaRussa. Macha has zero. But he can manage, and the entire American League is beginning to suffer his wrath.

SFist Kevin, contributing