I agree with most of what you said, except for this one........."YOU KEEP JIM LEYLAND, unless you can get Tony La Russa...."
No way man, the old coot needs to GO and go NOW. How many times have we seen ol' Smokey yank a pitcher that was doing good just so he could go to his 7th inning guy or 8th inning guy, or his lefty / righty match up, or leave in a pitcher that was blowing it. Leyland is WAY too set in his ways with the pitchers, way to faithful to pitch counts and way to stubborn with his line up. What other skipper would keep a guy (Fielder) in the #3 spot when he's batting .100 with zero RBI's in the post season? And what other skipper would basically Waste the talent of someone like Smyly by only using him for 1 batter a game. That's just plain ridiculous.
We are out of the WS and payoffs because of Jim Leyland. The two games we lost (Game 4 and Game 6) where lost because of the results of his inability to manage the pitching staff, the starting pitchers too early in both those games before they needed to be, and he trotted out a parade of pitchers until he found one having an off day and both times it resulted in grand slams. The team played poorly that's for sure, but I put the main part of those two loses on Jimmy boy from the reult of his bad managment of the pitching staff. We've been stuck watching him do the same thing for 8 yrs now and it just does not work.
At one time Leyland was a good manager in his day, but because of his age, stubborness, and inability to evolve with the game, baseball has passed him by and we are stuck with a manager that we will never win a WS with. He needs to retire.