Riggleman cries about working on one year cntracts, but he has only had two of them: last years and this years. He was hired as an interim manager, and if Strasburg had not gotten injured late last season, Riggleman wouldn't even have been managing Washington this year.
With the spectacular arrival of Strasburg, Washington was on the verge of becoming a desirable managing situation, and as such, could negotiate fairly for the services of a top tier manager. Riggleman agreed to hold that job of placeholder for $600,000 a year this year, with a $600,000/$100/000 buyout club option for next year.
Who knows why he is all of a sudden upset by the terms of an agreement that he entered into with his eyes open? Maybe it is a combination of a lot of things. Maybe, in addition to havng to tolerate player insubordination, he gets sick and tired of his family and friends saying to him, "What gives?" and "Do they want you or don't they?". He already knows the answer: they don't want him in the long run, so there was nothing for the GM to talk to him about.
How did the likely incoming manager, Davey Johnson, go from never having hit more than 18 home runs in a season to hitting 43 in 1973, and then never hitting more than 15 in a season after that? That's even more incredible than Carl Yastrzemski hitting 44 in 1967. We will never get to the bottom of HGH and its likely use in the 1960s and 1970s.