The suggestions and involvement by Lincoln and Armstrong by themselves don't necessarily constitute meddling. They demonstrate a desire to win at some level. But if you feel your manager is doing so poorly and missing so many of these obvious suggestions, then you probably hired the wrong guy and that's still on you.
Or (and this is sure what it sounds like was going on) the reason for incessant suggestions is that you've hired a crap GM who builds a farm system full of young guys not one of whom pop at the major league level, you haven't wanted to expand payroll so you can get proven players in to ease the young players in or increase their success, and so basically you've asked your manager to do the impossible, it's not working, and you somehow think the answer is to pester him to death with suggestions that amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Jack Z is no great shakes and that has been plenty obvious. The rest of the stuff about him throwing guys under the bus...eh...I mean it's interesting but the main thing to me is that he sucks at his job and needs to go.
As far as the Cano deal goes, yeah it's probably a desperation move but that doesn't mean I poo on it. ALL of these crazy deals become albatrosses down the road so that doesn't disqualify it. Cano is a legit superstar we overpaid like we have to do to get guys to Seattle, so what. We weren't spending anything anyways. The offense will be better. If they open the wallet again out of desperation and get another bat or two the offense might even be decent. I would definitely rather it not be Jack Z pulling the trigger on the deals but we can evaluate them as they happen.