Seriously, what an utter mess that entire organization is:

The Manny Acta tenure is over with the Washington Nationals. While the Nationals have not made an official announcement, Acta has told Enrique Rojas of ESPNdeportes.com of the firing.

"I thank the Nationals for giving me this opportunity and I'm sorry that things didn't work out as expected. It's normal for the manager to pay the price when the team is not doing well," Acta said.

The rumors of Acta being fired has been circulating for some time. Jim Riggleman has been seen as the leading candidate to replace Acta.

Acta posted a 158-252 record with the Nationals since coming on-board in November of 2006 after the Nationals let Frank Robinson go – the only other manager the Nationals have had.

The Nationals are a league worst 26-61 (.299) heading into the All-Star break. At their current pace, they would surpass the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics record of 117 losses on the all-time record, second only to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders at 134 losses.

I've talked before about how managers often receive too much credit or criticism based solely upon their team's performance (this, I think, is true with Ron Washington to a significant degree, at least judging from what has been written about him over the last 18 months), but at the same time I've also talked about how it's usually fair to hold management, coaching or whatever pertinent element of baseball operations accountable whenever their area of responsibility is turning/has turned into a weak spot.

The thing is, I'm not sure there is another man in baseball capable of extracting a whole lot more out of this horrendously bad Nationals squad than Acta was able to -- I'm not informed enough about the inner workings of the Nationals to know whether he's actually making bad lineup decisions or victimizing the run prevention facet of the team with poor bullpen management or what, but I do know that the lack of talent in Washington is responsible for the 25-60 record more so than any gross mismanagement by Acta 100 times over. The irony is that he'll probably land on his feet somewhere -- maybe New York, once Jerry Manuel is inevitably run out of town -- and the Nationals will still not be any good.