And I’m Back
Dave · October 17, 2006 at 10:41 am · Filed Under
Mariners
Transcontinental flights suck. Just so you know.
Anyways, I’m back on the east coast and trying to get caught up on life. Since I haven’t posted anything here in a little while, let’s just recap some of the news in the past week.
Lou Piniella has been hired to manage the Chicago Cubs, signing a three year deal to try and win with a club that doesn’t have enough talent to win. Good luck with that, Lou.
The A’s fired Ken Macha amid criticism from a significant amount of the players. Multiple players made their complaints public, and the A’s didn’t really have much of a choice, considering the way the clubhouse was being portrayed at the end of the year. However, the ’06 A’s should be another data point for the idea that a manager’s motivational ability to get his players to perform better is highly overrated. By all accounts, a large segment of the team didn’t particularly like their manager, and they still overachieved, winning the division with a pretty mediocre roster. I’ve said it a few hundred times, and I’ll continue to say it; by and large, the effects a manager can have on his ballclub are overstated.
One more managerial note, before moving on: Mike Hargrove made some bad strategic moves during the season, but man, did anyone watch Jim Leyland in the ALCS? He not only started Neifi Perez in game two, but hit him second. In that same game, he used Alexis Gomez as his DH, a move that was made at least partly due to the decision to leave Chris Shelton off the playoff roster. Games 3 and 4, he stuck Craig Monroe and his .301 OBP in the #2 hole. In the final clinching game, with a tie score and a chance to end the series and give his team a significant amount of rest before the world series, he used Jamie Walker, Jason Grilli, and Wil Ledezma to get through the 8th and 9th innings. Because the Tigers played well and the A’s did not, Leyland is hailed as a genius, but strategically, he made some lousy moves that turned out for the best.
Juan Uribe, shortstop of the White Sox, has an arrest warrant issued for him in the Dominican Republic after he shot two men last week. I wonder if he was hanging out with Ugueth Urbina.
The Arizona Fall League and Hawaiian Winter Leagues are underway, for those who need a baseball fix. Michael Wilson is off to a good start down in Arizona, but as I say every year at this point in time, the stats mean less than nothing. Don’t get excited or despair over fall league performances. The stats don’t matter at all.
Comments
I haven’t been in Seattle in a while; Dave, can you touch on what the general public sentiment is about bringing Hargrove back for another year?
I remember the baseball fans being less than knowledgable, but do “the ignorant masses who only read the Times” really feel that Hargrove is blameless for the way the Mariners have finished the last couple of years? How is the Lincoln letter being taken? I can’t fathom how people would stand for 3 last place finishes equalling another year for the manager while 2 out of the 3 teams who have finished ahead of the Mariners feel that their manager should go.
I haven’t been in Seattle in a while; Dave, can you touch on what the general public sentiment is about bringing Hargrove back for another year?
Frustration.
Is there any way that the M’s would/could “uncommit” to Hargrove and look at one of the newly available managers?
I’d say insanity more than frustration.
#3 Yes, if somebody really high up gets wasted, pissed off, and fires everybody.
Doesn’t Leyland get a break for using Gomez? He hit great in the ALCS even if it is a small sample size.
Is there any way that the M’s would/could “uncommit†to Hargrove and look at one of the newly available managers?
The laws of physics make it nearly impossible for the Ms to “uncommit” to Hargrove (largely because of the *Bavasi Principle of Attraction*) but several world renown physicists have recently developed an algorithm that suggests it is theoretically possible provided the Ms say, *Hargrove, you’re fired*…
Glad to hear you made it back. It sure was fun hangin’ with ya on Saturday, and trying to convince you (to no avail, of course) that J-Rod doesn’t totally suck, but at least I didn’t mention Rich Amaral
Do you think, though, that the Cubs will do what it takes to get Lou the talent he’d want to make the team more successful? They’re a lot like Seattle has been, from what I’ve seen, in that they like to spend big bucks on the wrong types of players. They’ve done their fair share of overspending — especially on the bullpen. They’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do, and I’m curious if Lou will help that, or if he’ll possibly hurt it.
Is there any way that the M’s would/could “uncommit†to Hargrove and look at one of the newly available managers?
Could? Sure. Anything is possible.
Would? Short of Hargrove going on national TV during the world series and making fun of Latinos or something, no. They’ve made their decision, and they’re going forward with him as the manager in 2007.
Do you think, though, that the Cubs will do what it takes to get Lou the talent he’d want to make the team more successful? They’re a lot like Seattle has been, from what I’ve seen, in that they like to spend big bucks on the wrong types of players. They’ve done their fair share of overspending — especially on the bullpen. They’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do, and I’m curious if Lou will help that, or if he’ll possibly hurt it.
Short of Mark Prior making a full recovery and throwing 230 innings next year, Derrek Lee staying healthy, and a quantum improvement from prospects like Felix Pie very quickly, the Cubs just aren’t a very good team. They have a lot of money committed to mediocre or poor players, and there just isn’t a talent base in place they can build around. And it’s nearly impossible to import that kind of foundation a roster needs in an offseason.
So, I’d imagine Lou’s signing simply means the Cubs are going to continue to delay the inevitable rebuilding they should be attempting, and they’ll continue to struggle with 80 or so win teams getting paid like 95 win teams.
it was nice to see you, though, Dave. and yes, you were On Fire.
Lou has also apparently told the Cubs he wants them to pursue Alex Rodriguez.
I could see the M’s losing all their games next year and instead of firing Bavasi and Hargrove, Lincoln sitting down, rubbing his hands together and saying in an old febble voice “Excewent.!”
oh, and Phil Rogers thinks Hendry must have promised Lou the world …
“It will be interesting to hear that discussion recounted on Tuesday, when the hiring becomes official. I’d guess Hendry told Piniella he would add one or two impact hitters—possibly vowing to pursue Alex Rodriguez or Ichiro Suzuki, not just free agents such as Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Lee—while also rebuilding a rotation that currently includes Carlos Zambrano and two hopefuls, Rich Hill and Mark Prior.
There are three elite free-agent pitchers on the market—Daisuke Matsuzaka, Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito—and there’s no way Hendry could promise landing one of them, not with the Yankees and every other team with money also on their trail. But maybe he told Piniella he can get some of the guys who have had success for Piniella elsewhere, like the ageless Jaime Moyer, who has an option to stay in Philadelphia, and expendable White Sox veteran Freddy Garcia.”
Lou’s press conference is up at mlb.com, and it is exceedingly Lou-like
The Juan Uribe story reminds me of the case of former Milwaukee Brewers reliever Julio Machado. From baseballreference.com:
Julio Machado was a fine young reliever for the Mets and the Brewers, known for his hard fastball and nasty slider. Her went 3-3 with a 3.45 ERA in 1991. His major league career ended after he was arrested in late 1991 in his native Venezuela; he had fatally shot a young woman during an argument after a traffic accident. Machado continued to pitch in Venezuela from 1992 to 1996 while fighting the charge, but was finally convicted and served nearly four years in prison. He attempted to restart his career after being released in 2000, but was never able to get a contract with any major league team.
Games 3 and 4, he stuck Craig Monroe and his .301 OBP in the #2 hole.
Dave, I made the same statement in a wondering post (also wondering about Polanco in the 3 hole) during those games. The response from the other readers was prescient, I thought. Simply put, Leyland was “playing the hot hand.” Now, I know that based on the numbers the moves looked a little silly.
However, you’ve referred to them in the universe of “strategy,” and I think that might be a mischaracterization of the moves. Batting order within games would seem to be tactics, would it not? (Conceeding that leaving Shelton at home is strategy…) If that is the case, maybe this is an area where statistics fail us because a manager’s “feel” for his players is un-measurable. Clearly, the bottom of the 9th inning worked out just fine with a lineup order of Monroe, Polanco, and Mags.
I’m willing to conceed that there is a possibility that its just dumb luck that it worked. Are you willing to concede a possiblity that it wasn’t?
Oh, and don’t forget Aramis Ramirez can opt out of his contract after the world series. That’d make Lou really happy. Knowing that once again he’d have a major hole at 3rd base,just like his time with the M’s.
I’m willing to conceed that there is a possibility that its just dumb luck that it worked. Are you willing to concede a possiblity that it wasn’t?
Sure, there’s obviously a chance that Jim Leyland knows something about Craig Monroe, Neifi Perez, Ramon Santiago, Alexis Gomez, and Chris Shelton, and that something has influenced him into making decisions that look foolish to the outside observer but have some basis in actual logical thinking. It’s possible.
Far more likely, however, is that Jim Leyland was grasping at straws, trying to mix things up because his team isn’t particularly good at hitting the baseball, and the players performance was unrelated to Leyland’s lineup gyrations.
As we love to point out, anything can happen in a small sample. The Royals swept the Tigers to end the season and cost the Tigers the division title, and that series isn’t any more relevant to judging Leyland’s genius than the subsequent sweep of the A’s in the ALCS. Baseball’s a weird game, and weird things happen.
I’m just trying to point out that we should be much slower about rushing to judgments about causation just because something happens on a big stage. The media will have no problem giving a lions share of the credit to Leyland for the moves; I’m arguing that burden of proof lies on them, and “it worked” isn’t a good enough defense of the propaganda that is going to be flying about his managerial greatness.
It’s funny that just in terms of run differential, the Rangers had a better year than the A’s, which could mean that Texas (Showalter) did a worse job than the A’s (Macha) in squeezing out close games. Both were canned. Run differential probably had nothing to do with it.
If the question is, do managers make a difference in motivating their players to play better, I agree that they can’t and don’t.
But if the question is, does, or can a manager have an effect on the won/loss record, I say they certainly can.
They can have a pretty large marginal effect if they use their best players in the most highly leveraged situations, if they write up lineups that put the highest OPS’s higher up in the order, if they dispense with negative return strategies like bunting on the first pitch with man on second zero out (hey, at least make them throw a few pitches and maybe one will be in the dirt for god’s sake!), stop relying on “veterans” merely becasue they are veterans (see points one and two), and if they take ballpark effects and opposing team matchups into account when making decisions, and when all else is equal, they choose players with better defensive metrics, and who take more pitches per PA, etc… etc…
I know these are small matters, but add em up and you get the extra wins over time.
The key isn’t to get players to play better, it’s to realize that they have an equilibrium talent level and that the key to winning is to arrange them so they are in maximum exposure to situations that that contribute to winning (score runs, and prevent runs).
Now a final point. Most, if not all, candidates for manager are not capable of working with the ideas listed above, so in that sense, managers don’t make much difference. But if you can find one who can keep track of those things, they can make a difference.
Boy I get confused here. We hate Hargrove because he is incompetent and a lousy manager but then again, managers don’t matter one way or another, in fact they are fairly neutral to the overall out come… I think the reality is somewhere in between. People do matter and what they do does affect others. Baseball managers cannot win with a crap team but can get a talented team to perform (or not). As to the Tigers? They played like s__t down the stretch and were due to turn around, and did. The M’s tanked 11 times in a row and then did okay after that. All averages out. Now, I love Sweet Lou but he can’t tell talent form a hole in the ground, best not ask him what players he needs.
There, I hit three topics. Main point is managers do matter because it is a people game but good teams win and bad lose but good will also lose if mishandled. Grover sucks and it matters.
We dislike Hargrove because he’s one of the relatively small number of managers whose performance makes a notable difference in the performance of his team, and unfortunately, it’s in the wrong direction.
Re the ability of managers to influence games.
I think it’s far more difficult for a manager to create more wins than it is for a manager to cost his team wins.
Let’s assume that over the years managerial strategies and tactics have evolved to a point that are close to optimum. There may be small advantages here and there where an astute manager can eke out some advantages, but those will most be small incremental advantages. To the extent the moves are successful, other managers will add the strategies, and the advantages will diminish or disappear. So overall, there really aren’t any tactics a manager can deploy to create a huge advantage.
Conversely, in a setting that is closely optimized, there are a lot more things that can be done that will significantly disadvantage a team.
When we say that managers don’t have much impact, but then turn around and rag mercilessly on Hargrove, it’s really not as contradictory as it may seem. In fact, most managers are nearly interchangeable, and there isn’t that much difference between the best and the median. But on the flip side , the deteriments created by a bad manager can far exceed the advantages created by a good manager.
Oh, I get it, see the last line of my post. I do think that managers have a long term subtle influence that makes a difference. Short term, any manager could hammer the Yankees with Larry, Moe and Curly Joe, but over the course of a year, I think a manager sets a team tone that works or hurts, either through action or style. I think it is also time dependent. What motivated your guys this year won’t the next, White Sox. Leyland had an effect and his influence was perfect but it won’t necessarily work next year.
How about this: going from a competent to a great manager will gain you some, but not a lot of games. Competent to bad managers lose you a LOT of games….
#20: I’ve got a dim opinion of Hargrove because he’s the metaphorical little brother who knows your top five pet peeves and plans to continually tweak them while you sit next to him…….the next 700 miles of the car trip to grandma’s…..
my view on managers:
1. no manager can overcome a lack of talent;
2. Just like the majority of what is considered good pitching is really good defense, the majority of what is considered good managing is really good talent;
2. no manager can consistently motivate a team-certainly no manager can motivate a team that doesn’t have it within themselves to go all out already..
3. mangers don’t win or lose games….they can however make it more or less likely that their team will win/lose.
4. managers are overpaid.
5. A manager can be right and unsucccessful as well as be wrong and tremendously successful…
sounds like it’ll be Lou, Larry Rothschild, John McLaren, possibly Lee Eila… wonder if Matty Sinatro is waiting, hoping by the phone?
Isn’t it safe to say that Macha was not a manager who significantly, idf at all, decreased the chances of success for the A’s?
If this is true, and if it also true that a manager’s personality or style doesn’t significantly alter his team’s performance, then…
…why did Macha *really* get fired?
Erm, that should be “…if at all…”
#27: because he’s an *a$$* that nobody in the cluchouse *liked*…
why do I know this? it’s not because anyone in the Oakland’s FO has me on their speed dial….it’s because he was so hated that I could read about just how much guys hated him…..in the newspaper… thats pretty bad…
re: Uribe: “An arrest warrant issued Monday for Uribe was voided, but he had to turn over his gun to police and appear back at the courthouse later this week. Uribe was scheduled to report to his Dominican winter league team, the Escogido Lions, on Tuesday.”
Corey Brock has another mailbag up, including this classic:
“Do you think that if the team would keep the dugout a little bit cleaner and had a little more pride in it that it may help them play with more discipline on the field?”
Short of Mark Prior making a full recovery and throwing 230 innings next year
It would be just like Lou to pile innings onto a recovering Prior like that.
I don’t mean that in a good way.
They’re in a pretty mediocre division. While that arguably makes it easier to win, in the Cubs’ case I think that makes it easier to finish last.
#29: I understand that Macha was unloved. But that isn’t supposed to have any effect on the win column. Macha’s teams delivered wins. Lots of wins. Beane is supposed to care about wins, and he is probably expected to believe that a manager’s unpopularity does not cost wins. That’s why I don’t understand why Beane would fire a guy due to his unpopularity.
Perhaps Beane believes that managers don’t matter, so he may as well get one who will be more popular with players, just as a matter of convienence? If this is true, then Beane is apparently certain that his next manager will be as “successful” as Macha was in staying out of the way of winning. Since nobody can measure the degree to which a manager can pull that off, how does Beane know if the next manager will indeed be as “successful” as Macha?
But if players you value have said they will NOT come back if Macha stays, and if you believe those players and you want them back, and if you believe that managers are largely irrelevant, then it is a no brainer, Macha had to go.
#29: I understand that Macha was unloved. But that isn’t supposed to have any effect on the win column.
Um, I think there’s a difference between disliked and hate-and-I-
am-not-coming-back hate. I think even sabremetricians can realize that it’ll affect the win columns when the dislike is intense enough.
I’m a little confused, Dave. You say about Macha:
I’ve said it a few hundred times, and I’ll continue to say it; by and large, the effects a manager can have on his ballclub are overstated.
And then you say about Leyland:
…Mike Hargrove made some bad strategic moves during the season, but man, did anyone watch Jim Leyland in the ALCS?… Because the Tigers played well and the A’s did not, Leyland is hailed as a genius, but strategically, he made some lousy moves that turned out for the best.
I’m a little confused as to what you’re saying here. If managers have little impact on a ballclub, then Leyland’s moves should also have little impact. So, while Leyland’s moves are questionable, they’re as lucky as Macha leaving Street out there in the ninth. Street was the best possible guy Macha could have on the mound, and Magglio killed one pitch.
IOW, I don’t understand how you can sluff off Macha’s managing and then question Leyland’s moves. Seems like they’re two sides of the same coin to me.
I like to think about the effectiveness of baseball managers the same way I think of a president’s effect on the economy:
You can’t do much to make it better, but you sure can screw it up.
In both cases, the media loves to reward a manager/president who presides over a winning season/economy when, in fact, he had little to do with it, aside from getting out of the way and watching good things happen.
Dave,
Thanks for your insights….as usual both informative and thought provoking….however, re Leyland, the test of being a good manager is not whether his moves were “logical” or “statistically correct,” but whether they lead to a win. Leyland won, so he made the right moves. God spare us from a manager who makes the right decisions and somehow, darn it, we lost anyway!
Corey Brock has another mailbag up
Brock also implies that the Mariners have no confidence in Doyle and that they are shopping for a hard hitting rightfielder.
#34: Sounds reasonable. I might quibble that Payton and Sauerbeck are, AFAIK, the only FA’s among the guys mentioned in the Susan Slusser article. I wouldn’t want to have to make the case that those players significantly valuable…or even anything other than replaceable. Kendall and Bradley are the biggest names headed for FA after 2008, but I didn’t hear that they are threatening to walk if Macha returns.
Maybe Big Hurt hates Macha. I’m not certain that’s known.
Anyway, sure, if it were Chavez, Street, Haren, Swisher all threatening to leave, then I would certainly understand your point.
But if it’s true that non-detrimental managers are so rare, then why unload a guy who has managed a .568 ballclub over that four years?
IOW, I don’t understand how you can sluff off Macha’s managing and then question Leyland’s moves. Seems like they’re two sides of the same coin to me.
It makes sense to me, anyway. Just because Leyland made questionable moves doesn’t mean that he’s a terrible overall manager, or even that he did things much differently from what an average manager in his position would do. It’s not like Dave is calling for his dismissal or anything, he just thinks that they were bad moves.
And if anything, the fact that Dave thought Leyland made poor moves and he still wound up winning supports the point that decisions that managers make aren’t all that important because even when you make really bad ones, things can turn out right. (Conversely, you can make really good ones, and things don’t turn out right.)
Correction: Kendall and Bradley are due FA after 2007.
because the GM has personal, personnel & personality issues with him too?
#40: I don’t know that Dave would hold up Leyland’s decisionmaking in eight games as proof of anything.
At least that’s the way I think the sample-size caveat is supposed to work.
#42: I would agree that Beane must have personal and personality issues with Macha, which led to Macha’s dismissal. If those are the true causes, though, then I am left wondering if a good, analyst-approved GM is expected to leave those issues aside, and focus on the results.
Thanks for your insights….as usual both informative and thought provoking….however, re Leyland, the test of being a good manager is not whether his moves were “logical†or “statistically correct,†but whether they lead to a win. Leyland won, so he made the right moves. God spare us from a manager who makes the right decisions and somehow, darn it, we lost anyway!
I couldn’t disagree with this entire paragraph any more strongly. It’s just wrong on a lot of levels.
Most of the commentator coverage is that Leyland’s a genius. This is usually how it works when your team succeeds despite wacky moves.
I think after watching Bob Brenly in the 2001 World Series, I’m pretty much convinced you can win despite a mananger in a short series.
Hargrove’s many failings may ultimately have little to no effect on the win column. That in no way changes how annoying his stupid decisions are. When the Mariners win in spite of them, that win is less satisfactory; when the Mariners lose (because or despite them), they are all the more galling. Hargrove’s management detracts from our enjoyment of the game, regardless of their effect on the final score. That’s why we can, with perfect consistency, maintain “the effects a manager can have on his ballclub are overstated” and “Hargrove sucks as a manager.” The Mariners play to win games (presumably) but we watch because we enjoy baseball: Hargrove might have little effect on the former, but he can be a huge impediment to the latter.
This also applies to Leyland (or any other manager making questionable decisions).
I’m a little confused as to what you’re saying here. If managers have little impact on a ballclub, then Leyland’s moves should also have little impact. So, while Leyland’s moves are questionable, they’re as lucky as Macha leaving Street out there in the ninth. Street was the best possible guy Macha could have on the mound, and Magglio killed one pitch.
I’m saying Leyland’s moves did have little impact. He made some statistically poor tactical decisions, and his team won in spite of them, because tactically bad managerial decisions don’t mean much when your team is just outplaying the other team.
I wasn’t trying to criticize Leyland, who, by most accounts, is really good at the people aspect of managing a team, and not so terrible at the tactical aspect to discount his overall usefulness. I was just pointing out that even the glaring obviously poor tactical decisions aren’t bad enough to doom a team that plays well, so when people start saying things like “this team can never win with Hargrove at the helm”, well, they’re just wrong. Bob Brenly has a World Series ring, after all.
My impression is that Billy Beane does believe that managers don’t really matter. He ditched Howe without a 2nd thought after a 103 win season. I think Beane looks at the manager as a minor functionary, easily replaced if he creates too much trouble. News articles about a lousy clubhouse climate were too much trouble.
What’s the win expectation of a mediocre roster?
I think Macha’s A’s overachieved less than it appears at first glance. They were .574 overall (93-69), but they only played .531 (76-67) when they weren’t facing the M’s. If the M’s had played the A’s as well as the rest of the league, Oakland would have ended up with 86 wins.
(Oh, and switching 7 wins from the A’s to the M’s gives Seattle 85 wins for the year, and we all know how mediocre those boys were.)
37-
Let’s put it this way. Luck or talent level as a factor in who wins ballgames can easily swamp a managerial decision, or even a series of them in a short series (and luck becomes an even BIGGER factor in a short series- the 1973 Mets beat the Big Red Machine not because they were a better team, but because anyone can win a short series).
The Tigers are a good team because their pitching was half a run better than anyone else’s in the league in neutral parks, and they led the league by quite a bit in defensive efficiency- and they play in a ballpark that already depresses run production. I’m not surprised at all to see them win out in the AL.
Perhaps Beane believes that managers don’t matter, so he may as well get one who will be more popular with players, just as a matter of convienence? If this is true, then Beane is apparently certain that his next manager will be as “successful†as Macha was in staying out of the way of winning. Since nobody can measure the degree to which a manager can pull that off, how does Beane know if the next manager will indeed be as “successful†as Macha?
I don’t know, maybe because Beane will have a huge say in who the next manager is and he has a pretty good track record at evaluating talent (or an organization that does a generally excellent job at that, which as long as he pays attention to it amounts to the same thing)?
The A’s once again won the division and once again didn’t advance to the WS. Once again the naysayers crank up the volume. Maybe Beane has a “system” that somehow works during the season but not in the postseason; maybe the A’s have been unlucky; maybe they’re not as good as they appear, since they inflated their record by feasting on the hapless M’s all season. But disappointed fans expect something to change. And given the public dissent expressed by the players, that was going to have to be Macha. Beane appeases the players and at least some of the fans with one relatively easy move. And I’m sure he’s confident he can find another manager who can “stay out of the way” of a winning team. As off season moves go, it’s really a no-brainer.
#52: Fair enough. I would just add that if manager’s effect on the win column defies measurement, then I guess we’ll never know if it was a no-brainer.
Makes one wonder why the A’s, or some other pioneering team, shouldn’t just stop employing a manager altogther. The GM could just dictate guidelines to a few coaches. Since managerial decisionmaking doesn’t matter, why have a manager?
It’s a lot easier to fire a manager than fire a lot of players, simply put, and it’s not surprising at all that Beane’s reacting this way instead of doing a complete roster makeover to reduce the personality conflicts, seeing as he already is going to have to replace Zito…
I wasn’t suggesting that he fire a lot of players. I was just wondering if the change really needed to be made.
The GM could just dictate guidelines to a few coaches. Since managerial decisionmaking doesn’t matter, why have a manager?
The Cubs tried that – the “College of Coaches”. It didn’t do very well.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/College_of_Coaches
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_Coaches
Also, Dave didn’t say “doesn’t matter”. He said “by and large, the effects a manager can have on his ballclub are overstated.” That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or they don’t matter over the long term (read: a 162 game season or series of seasons). A strategy that gives you a 51%-49% break as opposed to 50-50 has a 11.7% chance of failing 3 consecutive times (as oposed to 12.5% for a 50/50 strategy) , but OVER TIME it could make quite a difference. This is why casinos ban card counting and make money the longer you play if the rules are in their favor…
Because if you don’t have a manager, there’s nobody to fire to get an easy fix in situations like this. Even a ship that can steer itself needs a Captain — both to stand on the bridge to look good when the weather’s sunny and to go down with the ship when it hits a reef and everyone else is jumping into the lifeboats.
I think Macha’s A’s overachieved less than it appears at first glance. They were .574 overall (93-69), but they only played .531 (76-67) when they weren’t facing the M’s. If the M’s had played the A’s as well as the rest of the league, Oakland would have ended up with 86 wins.
Oddly enough, the M’s were also 76-67 when not playing the A’s. Identical records against the rest of the world, completely lopsided against each other. Not sure if managers play a role in that or not. Since the results were so lopsided, I started looking at the season series game-by-game. I’ve made it through the first series (A’s win 3 games to 1), and basically, the a’s just out-pitched the M’s. Moyer and King Felix pitched decent games, but threw too many pitches, didn’t last through the sixth, and went up against Blanton and Zito, who simply stiffled the M’s bats. Meche and Pineiro were terrible, but Meche had the good fortune to pitch against Loaiza, who the M’s beat around like an NL pitcher.
Blanton in particular was brutal to the M’s. Looking at the pitch location charts, it really seemed he had a scouting report and knew how to use it. When he came into the strike zone, he put the ball in a distinct location for each M’s batter. The grouping were very tight. I don’t know if credit for that goes to Blanton, Macha, the Pitching Coach (I should look him up…) or what.
As for Lou, he’s not a miracle worker and needs a pitching coach to manage the staff (and physically restrain Lou from sending guys out in the 9th after 145 pitches), but he’s a good manager in terms of not leaving guys to rust on the bench (I’m looking at YOU, Hargrove).
#56: Pretty sure I wasn’t quoting anybody in particular when I said managers don’t matter. I know I don’t don’t want to get into a “Quote The Dave” contest, that’s for sure.
Anyway, is it not true that Macha had at least a non-negative effect on team wins, over the long term? Dare we say he had a positive long-term effect?
If so, then I still don’t get the Macha firing, if 1) personality/chemistry/people-skill issues aren’t supposed to affect wins, and 2) Macha actually DID have a neutral-to-good long-term effect on wins.
If he got fired because of the personality issues, then didn’t *somebody* believed that such things do affect wins?
No, there are several ways “personality/chemistry/people-skill issues” can be indirectly detrimental to the team. If Beane can’t get players to sign, no how no way, because they’ve been hearing from current A’s players (or just reading in the news) what a pain Macha is, don’t you think that would be enough reason to get rid of him even if it has no effect on the current team’s ability to win? Beane has enough constraints to deal with when trying to acquire/retain talent without having to contend with a poisoned clubhouse atmosphere, whether they’re winning or not. Assuming competitive offers from two different potential employers, do you want to go to work where everyone is fairly happy, or where everyone openly hates the boss? And your decision has nothing to do with whether the company is going to succeed (and you may very well help it succeed in either case).
And there’s the PR issue. Somebody has to be held accountable. Macha’s gone, end of that story. Even if Beane doesn’t believe the buck stopped anywhere near Macha (in fact, especially if he thinks that), the right thing to do is to throw the figurehead to wolves and let them feast while you go about the business of fixing what you think is really wrong out of the spotlight.
TBS got the TV rights to the LCS games for 2007-20013. They get the NLCS in odd years, and the ALCS in even years. That seems unusual to me, but I don’t have TV, so what do I know?
Does anyone know who TBS’s TV broadcasters will probably be? The Carays and Sutton?
20013. Jeez, that’s quite a commitment. 2007-2013.
#61: In the first case, I am not sure that the players Beane usually goes after are much inclined to quibble about managerial style. Also, once again, the only players complaining (on the record) are not major cogs.
However, the sacrifice-Macha-for-PR-purposes point is well taken, and probably true. I just don’t see how it jibes with the results-focused analytical position to which Beane would presumably adhere.
I’m saying Leyland’s moves did have little impact. He made some statistically poor tactical decisions, and his team won in spite of them, because tactically bad managerial decisions don’t mean much when your team is just outplaying the other team.
But one of those poor decisions was to start Alexis Gomez, who belted a homer to give the Tigers the lead. Yeah, they had a bullpen to cement that win, but that move, random as it was, made a difference. Neifi Perez was just noise.
I think what I’m unclear about is whether a single bad managerial decision in the playoffs has the same meaning as, say, the same bad decision made 100 times during the regular season. Leyland ran Ramon Santiago and Neifi out there as starters that much in 2006, and yet the team still won. Hargrove ran Bloomquist out as a starter 60+ times, and the team lost. In essence, do lineups really matter? Or do they only matter when a far superior player isn’t playing while a middling guy is?
It seems like, from a talent perspective, a successful manager will:
1. Know what talent is available on the 25-man roster at any given time
2. Assemble that talent into a lineup and rotation and bullpen that will maximize winning potential
3. Keep the talent happy as best as possible
I wasn’t trying to criticize Leyland, who, by most accounts, is really good at the people aspect of managing a team, and not so terrible at the tactical aspect to discount his overall usefulness. I was just pointing out that even the glaring obviously poor tactical decisions aren’t bad enough to doom a team that plays well, so when people start saying things like “this team can never win with Hargrove at the helmâ€, well, they’re just wrong. Bob Brenly has a World Series ring, after all.
Bob Brenly had Schilling, Johnson, and a shock Mariano implosion. Hargrove, OTOH, had far more talent and couldn’t win the Series in ’95 or ’97. So, what is the point of a manager?
I almost feel like asking Jeff to comment on Derrida and deconstructivism vis-a-vis the managerial position.
33. But if players you value have said they will NOT come back if Macha stays, and if you believe those players and you want them back, and if you believe that managers are largely irrelevant, then it is a no brainer, Macha had to go.
Lots of other good comments, I just want to add to this one. Suppose a ballclub for some reason kept the clubhouse at an infernal temperature of 95 degrees all the time? Or had plain lousy food in the clubhouse? Bad enough conditions that the players complained about it.
Would these conditions cost the team victories? Except maybe for an occasional player sensitive to heat stress, probably not. These are simply not things that are highly relevant to team victories, in the short run at least.
But just as sometimes a manager needs to go, a team needs to make sure the clubhouse is not at 95 degrees, and provide food for the players (have you ever taken the tour of Safeco Field, and seen the visiting players’ clubhouse and food facility? And the Mariners’ digs are presumably even more lavish).
These are not small expenses, but a club which fails to do the minimum acceptable effort at making its players comfortable is going to find itself with some mighty unhappy players. It might not matter over the course of a season, it might not be measurable (I don’t know of anyone who uses “clubhouse comfort” as a factor in won-loss record), but at the same time it is, as Abodacious said, a “no brainer”: you gotta spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If nothing else, eventually the players with choices of where to go will walk.
Managers are probably much more important to victory than clubhouses are. But even then their influence can be very small, in terms of determing wins and losses. Yet it is still an important act, to have the right manager (or more precisely, to get rid of the wrong managers), and to have an acceptable clubhouse.
I almost feel like asking Jeff to comment on Derrida and deconstructivism vis-a-vis the managerial position.
Classic.
#66:
I guess I’m just wondering how Macha’s neutral-to-positive long-term effects on wins were suddenly trumped by whining from some semi-valuable players.
In the case of Sauerbeck and Payton…are those guys so valuable that they can’t be allowed to walk?
If we’re going to sit here and say that it’s so easy for managers to screw up and cost the team wins, yet so difficult for them to do the opposite, then why was Macha let go? He clearly didn’t demonstrate a tendency to negatively affect the win column, over four years. Why dump a guy who can “do” what most other managers cannot?
Because guys like Payton and Melhuse didn’t like him?
I just don’t see how it jibes with the results-focused analytical position to which Beane would presumably adhere.
Beane’s not Mr. Spock, operating purely from analytics, and Mr Spock would be a lousy GM. There’s a huge touchy-feelie political/marketing/PR component to a GM’s job that has nothing to do with statistics (Bavasi is really good at it, as Dave has said more than once, and while giving it consideration drives a lot of us armchair GMs crazy, it’s an absolutely necessary component out in the real world). In that domain, perceptions matter even if they can’t be measured in any rational way. Beane clearly understands that aspect of the job, and he’s not going to neglect it just because it doesn’t jibe with a results-focused analytical position.
I almost feel like asking Jeff to comment on Derrida and deconstructivism vis-a-vis the managerial position.
I think perhaps he’d fall back on Wittgenstein: “What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.”
Beane’s not Mr. Spock, operating purely from analytics, and Mr Spock would be a lousy GM.
It’s lines like that one that keep me coming back to read USSM. Funny.
I would love to observe a year of Mr. Spock as GM. The pressers would be hilarious.
Simple — “neutral-to-positive” doesn’t need to be trumped. Being in the Earl Weaver/Joe McCarthy stratosphere of managers, now that would need to be trumped, because those guys are rare; but “neutral-to-positive” just isn’t hard to find, and if you have a guy sparking that much animosity, his “long-term effects on wins” aren’t going to be neutral-to-positive much longer. Fact of the matter is, just because a guy like Beane knows how to calculate OBP doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to ignore the human element. (Which is why this obsessive “how does this jibe with results-oriented analysis” bit is off the mark. Whether your bench players want to kill the manager is part of the results, too.)
He clearly didn’t demonstrate a tendency to negatively affect the win column, over four years.
We don’t know that. Perhaps another manager, who was able to stay more “out of the way” than Macha, could have seen the A’s win one or two more each of those years.
Why dump a guy who can “do†what most other managers cannot?
Lou won 116 games with the M’s, and had consecutive losing seasons with the Devil Rays. What did Lou “do” with the M’s that he didn’t “do” with the Rays? Maybe he was just spending less time at the ballpark because home was so close. Or maybe it had more to do with the teams than the managers.
If you believe managers have little effect on the record, then replacing one with another will have little effect either. You then have to look for other, non-winning related reasons. Whether it’s making it easier to woo free agents, to clear the decks in an effort to appease the fans, to offer up a sacrifice to appease ownership (lest you find your own neck on the block), or just to put an end to a lot of bad press that couldn’t be pleasant to endure, there are no end of plausible reasons that have nothing to do with the performance of the current team.
Spock might make a hell of a pitching coach. Is the guy on the mound starting to walk guys? Have Coach Spock go out and do the Vulcan mind meld on the mound. Suddenly he is a strike-throwing machine. (Recall the episode where Spock was able to convince the rest of the crew that the bullets at the OK Corral weren’t real? Compared to that, the focusing a wild pitcher should be a piece of cake.)
Kirk, on the other hand, would make a pretty good manager — though it would help if ownership gave him a Prime Directive to keep him from meddling too much (not that that would stop him). And occasionally he’d be off trying to seduce the Phillie Phanatic and any other vaguely green-alien-girl creatures that might wander past.
Bones McCoy, of course, would manage pretty much exactly like Lou. And would even sound like him in the press conferences.
Jesus I’m a geek (or at least I was in my childhood — I couldn’t tell you word one about any character on any of the sequel series).
#71: I say “neutral-to-positive” only to cast a wide berth around overstating Macha’s record as a manager. IMO, I think it’s safe to say that he has been a “good” manager. Not exactly going out on a limb there.
The comments in this discussion seem to indicate that bad managers that cost a lot of wins are easy to find, and good ones are not so easy to acquire. I’m basing my question on that sentiment. If you believe that most managers suck, or that it’s easier for managers to make sucky, win-costing decisions, then managers like Macha clearly have more value than most others. If you think that a manager is just some tool to be placed on the chopping black when you need to placate players, or press, or the public, then I agree that there’s nothing to discuss.
As I said before, if it had been guys like Swisher, Harden, and Chavez complaining about Macha, that’d be different. But, really, We’re talking about a few utility-type guys.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder why Beane would fire a good manager over what is essentially a “chemistry” issue.
I meant chopping block.
For God’s sake Grover, don’t make me send Mateo out again. I am a pitching coach, not a miracle worker . . .
The decisions Leyland made in the Detroit-Oakland series are absolutely in context with his entire career: he has always managed like that. I used to tear my hair (when I had enought to lose) with his handling in Pittsburgh, where, for example, he _insisted_ on batting Barry Bonds lead off almost the entire time he was there, and kept Jay Bell at SS despite sub-mediocre defense and no ability to get on base. His bullpen choices there, too, were continually of the wtf variety. Leylands manages on personalities first, hunches second, and names-from-a-hat for everything else. He’s a good guy, and a good man-manager, so that most of his guys like to play for him; very straight up and to a guy’s face. That said, Leyland is living proof that the manager position impacts performance by the 25-man far, far LESS than commonly assumed, yes.
I had an odd epiphany about managing effecting the playing tonight while watching the opening night of the production of Sondheim’s _Company_ at the 5th Avenue Theater.
I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, but there’s one actor or actress who I thought was absolutely positively abysmal. I mean, I think this character gets some of the best lines in the play, and they just killed them. I also thought that said person couldn’t sing, and not even in a good comedic way, but in a simply couldn’t sing sort of way.
Now, the funny part is, I sort of was trying to figure out… how much of this character sucking was blamable on the person, and how much of it was blamable on the director? Because I mean, in theory, the director should have been watching rehearsals and figured out that this person sucked and done something to correct it or at least lessen their impact on the show. But maybe this person was just incorrigible and/or a prima donna and went on sucking at the role regardless?
And so I sort of was thinking of that like in baseball terms. I mean, a manager can only do so much, but the players have to be the ones to get out there and make the plays and hit the ball. And a director can do so much to impart knowledge and concepts to their actors, but the actors are the ones out there on stage making or breaking the production, not the director. And sometimes the director doesn’t even have full reign over choosing their roster… err.. cast. And when the actors break a leg, what can they do about it?
Err, anyway, sorry for the tangent. Welcome back, Dave!
Deanna – wouldn’t this be the casting director’s fault? They would have to be the GM in the theatre-to-baseball relationship. So, if the person that sucked was an important piece to the play, that would be like a GM giving a manager a team with a crappy shortstop, or something. Then – what can the manager do? All he can really do is play with the cards he’s dealt…
Ultimately, this is why I believe that roster construction is soooo much more important than who the manager is. I mean, just look at Hargrove’s old Cleveland teams. From ’92-’99, the years that he was the full-time manager there, the Indians went 689-538 (.562), winning the division 5 times and going to the World Series twice. Does that make him a good manager? Not necessarily…he teams that were freaking stacked! Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Omar Vizquel, Sandy Alomar, Eddie Murray, Brian Giles, Matt Williams, David Justice, Roberto Alomar, Travis Fryman, David Bell, Richie Sexson, Bartolo Colon…holy shit, those teams were AWESOME!
Now, the funny part is, I sort of was trying to figure out… how much of this character sucking was blamable on the person, and how much of it was blamable on the director?
Director, for casting the actor. 90% of directing is casting the right person in the role.
So too is managing, I’d say; 90% of managing is using the right person in the right role. Which means Willie Bloomquist should be seen only in late inning pinch running, Mateo only in low leverage situations…..