Baseball in the Trey Time: Barely Managing?

Welcome, one and all, to another long-winded chat between Cecil and I about baseball. We're considering making this an annual tradition, one in which we gather 'round the AC coil out back and burn ants with magnifying glasses in the heat of July. There's guaranteed to be lots of ass-crack sweat. And lemonade. Today's topic? The skip.

Bankmeister: A little over a year ago, you and I spoke at some length regarding what we called "America's pasttime of the past." Given that we grew up absorbing baseball with our fathers, I thought it made for an interesting conversation, and made for good inspiration for our second chat. The position of manager, though, has been on my brain quite a bit of late. Guys like Joe Maddon down in Tampa Bay, guys like Clint Hurdle and his success in Denver last year, specifically. But the manager position of our childhood always fascinated me and still does. The quirkiness of Billy Martin, and Tony LaRussa when he was with the As, along with Joe Torre when he managed Atlanta come to mind. Two guys that really intrigued me were Sparky Anderson and Tommy Lasorda. I'm curious -- has the importance of manager in MLB changed? If so, is it for the better or the worse?

Cecil: I think what's changed is our appreciation of the job of manager -- and the growing respectability of statistical analysis has, to a large extent, been the catalyst.

It used to be that a manager whose team won was automatically good. Credit was given to, say, Billy Martin for "getting the most out of his guys," playing the right hunch at the right time, etc.

Now, Billy Martin lost with plenty of good teams. And when he did win, you could certainly make the argument that he was doing so with Yankees squads loaded with talent (Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry), quality role players (Mickey Rivers, Bucky Dent) and veteran leadership (Munson again, who was practically a manager himself). So while he certainly took credit for those squads -- and bashed all of us stat-lovin' eggheads in the process any chance he got -- it's not like he was doing anything particularly special. He filled out a lineup card and threw tantrums, just like every manager since John McGraw.

Not to pick on Billy specifically, even though he seemed like a world-class prickface, but he kind of epitomizes that old-school managerial "personality" to me. A guy who got credit that he maybe didn't wholly deserve.

I mean, come on -- you or I could have managed Sparky Anderson's 1984 Tigers team to a World Series.

B: Interesting. Is that to say then, that our appreciation of the job has declined, that we've come to some consensus that it's not that difficult of a job? If that's the case, why are managers always the fall guys? Is it solely because a GM or an owner has to show its fan base that something is being done to right things, even if it's secretly not all that substantial?

C: By no means do I wish to denigrate the job of Major League Baseball Manager. It certainly does take a lifetime of constant study to stand on the dugout's top step, spit seeds and say "we're in a rut right now" at the post-game presser. Sometimes they'll even pull a -- shudder -- double switch, and we all know what kind of preparation and training that requires.

Sarcasm aside, the fact that we've all kind of come to the realization that being a manager is a lot easier than, say, being a good player, or a lawyer, or a really competent short order cook, is exactly the same reason the manager is the fall guy. Because he can be. Because you can find another career minor leaguer just as capable of saying "yessir, boss" to the GM and filling out a lineup card.

And yes, absolutely that's why it happens. Fans want action -- they don't live the world of baseball like players and coaching staffs do, they don't care whether the bullpen is wracked by injuries or if the star is doggin' it on the sly. They want someone fired. And you can't fire the players, or the GM, or the owners. Even though Rockies fans wish that wasn't the case.

B: Okay. Since we've agreed that we're all only secondary Rockies fans, what about the Cubs? I'm going to assume that you don't recall much of the Leo Durocher or Lee Elia eras. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

Assuming that's the case, I'll assign you the daunting task of breaking down Cubs managers in your lifetime. Can you make the argument that some were better than others? If so, can you do it without counting solely on the won/loss columns? We'll start with Jim Frey. Discuss.

C: Jim Frey was a nice old fella who rode a fantastic effort from Rick Sutcliffe to the NL pennant...series, where they lost to the fucking Padres. I got a little sick in my mouth just now. He didn't last too long after '84, as I recall.

B: Then Gene Michael:

C: Gene Michael and Don Zimmer will get lumped in together, because they both presided over bad teams with little or no personality. Sometime around Zimmer's tenure they also had some ancient old guy for a little while, I think. God, those teams were awful. No wonder Cubs fans loved Ryne Sandberg with such outsized fervor -- he was literally the only reason to watch them, other than Old Style.

B: Jim Riggleman:

C: Jim Riggleman encapsulates the notion I'm trying to get across: he's a career baseball guy who's had a (very) little bit of success and a whole lot of failure, but keeps getting work in the big leagues. You can't tell me that Jim Riggleman is a better or worse manager than 85 percent of the guys currently holding down jobs, which is only reflective of how many mediocre skips there are out there.

B: Don Baylor:

C: I could write basically the same thing about Baylor, but he at least seemed to be something of a bat whisperer. Where he went, teams hit. And he was a decent fella, which counts in his favor, and also was hit by more pitches than anyone in baseball history. As a strategist, though? An innovator? A great baseball mind, if such a thing exists? Not really.

B: Dusty Baker:

C: Ah, but Dusty -- Dusty is something else. He came to Chicago with a reputation as a real sharpie, because he always seemed to be leading patchwork Giants teams with only one real star to the playoffs. That particular set of scales fell from our eyes quickly, didn't it? He turned out to be a pitcher-destroying baseball cro-mag who had some sort of insane aversion to runners "clogging up the basepaths." And his goddamn kid was everywhere. I honestly think Dusty Baker might be mildly insane.

B: Lou Piniella:

C: Lou was never one of my favorites. I always thought of him as something of a fraud. Why, I don't really know...maybe it was his tenure in Tampa Bay, or the fact that he always had Seattle squads that were absolutely loaded. I wanted the Cubs to hire Girardi. Right now, though, I love the guy. Second coming of Casey Stengel.

B: Okay. I think those are good analyses, and particularly, I agree with you on the Piniella front; I think, for reasons I can't explain, that fraud is a perfect word to describe him. The guy/point I want to focus on though, is Riggleman. It seems to me that -- and yes, you're right about him somehow equating to 85 percent of the other guys out there. Of that pack of n'er achievers, it seems that the Rigglemans are like the weeds in a healthy backyard; a few of them pop up every season, but once they perenially annoy you, you kill them off permanently. The point is that I'm stunned he's still around and employed in Major League Baseball.

Back to the win/loss column, though. How do you explain Clint Hurdle and the Rockies last year? It's not like they showed significant improvement over the course of consecutive seasons, and then in 2007, everybody expected a World Series campaign out of them. Or even Piniella. Why can either of these guys get a shockingly good season out of their club that, minor changes aside, wasn't very impressive in the most recent years. What's to say that you or I, as you put it with Sparky's '84 Tigers, couldn't study stats like fiends, then perch atop the steps, spit seeds and fill out cards?

C: Oh, I don't think there would be anything to stop us -- other than the world of Major League Baseball, which doesn't want dodgy blog-types crawling out of our holes and taking jobs away from ex-backup catchers.

As far as Clint...well, I wanted to like the guy. But there's no way he can take credit for that run -- OK, sure, every move he made down the stretch worked out, yes, and that was a big part of it, but that's not managerial genius, that's just the roulette wheel. Every move he made earlier in that season seemed to be encased in a thick blubber of Stupid. Balanced against each other, it works out to being average.

He's one of those Baylor types that makes a good hitting coach -- even though, unlike Don B., he couldn't do it himself -- but he's also got a touch of the "if you didn't play the game, you don't know what you're talking about" attitude to him. Which pisses me off. Particularly when he's excusing 1. bad baseball or 2. the Rockies' ownership group, which evidently thinks he's Shanahanian.

B: Roulette wheel, huh? So success in the bigs is a game of bounced balls and spinning wheels finding each other at the right time in the spheres of cosmic randomness?

C: Well, when you say it like that, yeah, that is kinda it. That and having a good team.

It's like Blanche said about Sciosciaball. It works great -- providing that you have the big bats to clean the bases. Hurdle used to play small ball, hustle ball as much or more than just about anyone, and the Rockies still stank. Then they grew Holliday, Atkins, Hawpe etc. Funny how having big league position players made him a much smarter manager.

B: Okay. Well let's stay in this decade and look at our three favorite House of Georges clubs. We'll start with Old No. 7's Red Sox and Terry Francona. He spent four years with the Phillies, and they were never even a .500 ball club. Then he Rigglemans around for four years, and plop -- winds up skipping the Sox. Before Francona, Grady Little inherited a pretty good club from Jimy Williams, but then bam -- two titles. The Sox had a pretty darn good club, but couldn't quite hit the bull's eye, then they do it twice (in convincing fashion) in four years under Francona's watch. What's the ratio? Loaded team, decent manager? Average team, good manager? Or do you give the front office all of the credit for continuously bringing in the sticks, the gloves, and the Tommy Johns?

C: The exact calculus you request escapes me, but then, math was never my subject. More a lunch period kinda guy, I guess.

I think that a good team can make a bad manager look average or above (see Little, Grady, right up until the denouement), and a moderately competent manager looks like a genius with a great squad (Casey Stengel, Joe Torre, Billy Martin, Terry Francona, and on and on and on). These days, with the way modern baseball is organized, I think that yes, you have to give the front office as much credit, in most cases, as you do the managerial staff. Like I keep saying, any one of us HoG farmers could fill out a lineup card and spit seeds -- but navigating the financial trapeze of big league ball, keeping a farm system humming along and making sure everyone in the organization's Ts are dotted, those require a more specific, hard-to-find skill set.

You can find a Jim Riggleman in just about every minor league park in America. Can you locate a Billy Beane in every organization? A Theo Epstein?

B: Okay. So in your estimation, Epstein deserves the Boston cheddar for the two recent titles, and only a few shreds go to Francona. What about your Cubbies? Does Jim Hendry take the regular-season success of this year, and Piniella gets the same slice as Francona? Is this formula of recognition applicable to successful/improving teams around the horn? And do they equally split the criticism if the club isn't doing well? Or do we revert to the old front-office-is-fine-it's-management-that-sucks adage when a team is flailing? And to answer your questions: No. You certainly can't.

C: I should say, before I completely devalue the job of manager, that there is a specific area where a lifetime in baseball, playing the company man, is a huge assist: dealing with the team itself. And that's where the rubber meets the road for our purposes. You and I might be able to approximate the decisions of a Riggleman on a game-to-game basis, but obviously no collection of major league ballplayers is going to listen. A truly good manager excels in this area, beyond any sense of strategic acumen.

Which is why I'd say that Francona gets more than a little ched for the Series wins. He has the touch in the clubhouse, keeps things light, etc. I don't know if Piniella gets quite that slice--he's much more of a self-salesman, so it's hard to tell from the outside whether or not he has that managerial je nais se quois (which literally means "I do not know"). I suspect he does in differing degrees.

By that I mean, on a young and relatively crappy team finding its way (the Rays formerly known as Devils), he's applying gas to the clubhouse and looking to sneak out in the fiery aftermath when no one's paying attention. When he's with a good, veteran squad ('90 Reds, the Cubs right now) he's a better manager, keeps things on a muchmore even keel.

As far as applying this "formula" that we've been concocting -- I don't think there's a set way of evaluating this for every team and front office situation across the board. Everyone's set-up is different: Epstein and Beane do things one way, Dan O'Dowd does them another, Jim Bowden consults a magic 8-ball, etc. I tend to think, at least in baseball, that it's more appropriate to blame the front office and ownership, given the nature of the game.

B: Pure genius. So Lou wouldn't be a good fit for the Royals, then, but if a job opening in Arizona suddenly came about, he'd be relatively successful?

Of course said "formula" can't be applied across the league. And I agree with blame being placed on the front office and ownership. I guarantee you most every Royals fan (over the last 10-12 years) would tell you the same. When David Glass took over ownership, things -- whether they were a coincidence or not -- began to fall apart. They got worse, and worse, and worse, until, perhaps, Glass got sick of hearing about it from the fans and the media, and everyone in between.

The problem was, that under (former) GM Allard Baird, no skipper could succeed, even with the talent Baird was occasionally nabbing. Glass finally decides to go a different direction, hires Dayton Moore, and he hammered out like 14 trades or something crazy right away. Then he gets Trey Hillman to fill out the card and spit seeds, and the Royals have one of the best first halves of a season the franchise has seen in some time. It would appear that Hillman is doing the same things for which you say Francona deserves his cheese.

Obviously, the Royals still have a long way to go, but assuming that they'll get a good chunk of the way there, it would be interesting to assess the credit divvying. Say they contend for a wild card spot next year, and say they win the Central in '10. How much goes to Moore for assembling the talent and the coaches, and how much goes to Hillman for being the company man, getting his players to listen and adhere to his strategy?

C: Well...it's tough to measure exactly who gets which amount of credit, but I'm sticking with my theory -- the front office should get the majority of blame when things go badly -- assuming they haven't adequately supplied the on-field staff with the players they need -- and also the lion's share of credit when things go well. I don't know much about Hillman, other than that he seems like a solid baseball guy who gets along well with his players, and aren't those exactly what we've claimed to be the best traits a skipper can have?

But it would be foolish to assume that there isn't anyone out there who could do much the same thing with the same group of guys. Talent trumps all.

B: They are. But what do you imagine the selection process is like? How do the Cubs nab an old curmudgeon like Piniella for their largely ready-for-contention lineup versus Moore going to Nippon, Japan to take a guy that just won a championship over there and decide he's the fit to put this young up-and-coming club on the right track? And for that matter, how did Epstein ascertain that Francona was his guy? Like I mentioned, his numbers with Philly were not that impressive.

C: The process itself? Shitfire. Names in a hat? Darts? I mean, a certain amount of guesswork is involved, but I would imagine that a lot of these guys get their first shot(s) because of how they were as players -- heady, good in the clubhouse, patient, etc. Joe Girardi, for example. Francona, too, although I'm too lazy to look up his career...he played in Philly, didn't he? I'm getting old. Piniella too, to an extent -- although he was a better player than either of those guys, he still had that red-ass mentality. GMs must imagine that carries over, and why wouldn't they? Anyone hiring Chuckie Carr for a manager's job these days?

That, I suppose, is just another reason to give credit up top -- the GM is the guy who has to fit the manager to the club, and not vice versa. No one builds their ballclub around a manager...well, someone might have in 1928, but we have telephones and internet pornography these days. We're a more advanced civilization.

B: Good points. All of them. So we've mentioned 1928, circa 1988, and a bit of the era surrounding 2008. What about 2038? What will be in store for the card filler/seed spitter 20 years from now? Will the position be less important than ever? non-existent? Will we see more Rosesque player/managers or GMs working out of the dugout or will it pretty much be the same?

C: I think it's going to be pretty much the same -- but then, I used to think that rotary phones were the height of technological advancement. I doubt we'll see any more player-managers...let's face it: Rose poisoned that well pretty thoroughly.

And I just think the day-to-day physical demands of playing modern baseball necessitate the separation of the two jobs. They never lifted weights or watched film in the old days, just cracked open beers and went huntin' for broads, so it's not like Petey couldn't handle the job alone. Shit, what did he need to do besides pencil himself into the lineup card every day? Now, he'd have to meet with the media and say all the right things after a game, be politic, etc. I just don't see how we can get back to that.

The Connie Mack-style suit and hat in the dugout, though, that I could see on a rebound.

B: Alright. We've agreed that the front offices and the ownerships deserve the credit for success, and the disgrace for failure. Let's attempt to put it aside, though, just for a moment, so that we may assess the skippers of our favorite clubs, and pretend that they're solely responsible. Give me a grade, if you will, for last year's season-ending record versus each team's 2008 performance if the season ended yesterday.

Boston Red Sox
2007: 96-66; .593 winning percentage (WSchamps)
2008 record through July: 61-47; .565

Chicago Cubs
2007: 85-77; .525 winning percentage
2008 record through July: 63-44; .589

Kansas City Royals
2007: 69-93; 426 winning percentage
2008 record through July: 49-54; .454

C: OK. Pretending that the manager is solely responsible, I say...

Boston: A. Uh, because they won the World Series in four straight last year and are flirting with a .600 winning percentage. They may be lagging a tad in the standings, but nobody thinks they're out of it.

Chicago: B+. Because they've clearly improved over last year. This is a case where it's hard to give the manager a ton of credit, but hey, we're pretending. So Sweet Lou earns his high B.

Kansas City: A++++. That isn't even a real grade. But Hillman deserves every bit honor for that extra .28 of winning percentage. Go Royals.

In conclusion, I'd just like to offer my skills as a manager to any club out there preparing to hire a Jim Riggleman. My qualifications? Love of baseball, peanuts, spitting and tight pants. I've occasionally thrown a fit in front of a roomful of reporters, and I have absolutely no issue giving professional athletes ridiculous, childish nicknames.