Yes, UM hiring/firing timelines should be based on the minimization of heartburn for internet porsters.
Again, if you gave me a simple binary decision between "fire DC immediately, possibly leading to difficulty lining up a successor" and "delay firing DC until a new DC is hired, possibly leading to difficulty with heartburn among internet porsters", I'm going with Choice #2 every time.
Either Baker will be fired by Manny, or Baker will not be fired by Manny. And I would venture a guess that if Baker is retained, a lot of porsters are going to have heartburn, regardless of the timeline.