Are Managers Overrated?

Do Managers Make A Difference?

If Tony LaRussa bolts St. Louis should anyone care?

If Joe Torre bows out for more free time in the L.A sun, will the world end?

It seems this season we will be keeping a watchful eye on the futures of a few high profile managers, but why do we care? Are baseball managers really that important?

We know that managers have different expectations placed upon them. Joe Girardi is expected to take his team to the World Series. As is Mike Scioscia (Angels), Charlie Manuel (Phillies), and Tony LaRussa (Cardinals). However, we can’t expect Ron Washington (Rangers) and Jim Riggleman (Nationals) to achieve the same thing. But there is one thing every manager is expected to do: win.

Certainly the quantity or quality of their wins differ from team to team but, nonetheless, they should be winning more games than they did the year before. But you can’t put a team’s success or failure to win on a manager.

Take the 2007 Yankees led by Joe Torre. They were a poor team lucky to make it into the playoffs only to get bounced in the first round. This meant the axe for Joe. In comes Joe Girardi and only two years later the New York Yankees win their 27th World Series Ring. What changed? The manager? Yes.

But perhaps something easier to understand the pitching staff in 2007 included Andy Pettitte, Rogers Clemens, Mike Mussina, Phil Hughes, Ken Igawa, and Chien-Ming Wang.

In 2009 it was C.C Sabathia, A.J Burnett, Joba Chamberlain, and Andy Pettite. So it looks like you can be successful if you replace two guys of retirement age (Clemens and Mussina) and two starters who were underachievers (Hughes and Igawa) with a Cy Young winner (Sabathia) and a young gun with a proven arm (Burnett). Let’s not forget either that unlike ’07 when Alex Rodriguez hit .267 in the divisional series, A-Rod hit .455 in the ALDS in ‘09.

Point being is that while baseball managers may be valuable to a team, nothing is more valuable than production on the field.

So what do we do with managers who have been recognized as good at their job? Generally speaking: we fire them. Take the winners of Manager of the Year: since 1983 in the American League, only 4 managers have won MOTY and have not gone on to be fired.

There is, as always, a reasonable explanation for their demise and it goes back to the first point: players matter most. Managers don’t. Take Jack McKeon, the beloved 2003 Florida Marlins manager. He took his team from irrelevant to a World Series ring. But 3 seasons later, the man who got so much credit for taking a team to the World Series was stepping down at the end of another disappointing season.

What had changed in that time? Staff ace Josh Beckett was gone. A. J Burnett was gone. Derrick Lee, Ivan Rodriguez, and Juan Pierre had all said goodbye. Once again it comes back to players. It is no wonder why MLB managers get paid an average of 1.3 M, easily the lowest of the three major sports.

Let’s not look at this as an indictment of managers. MLB managers certainly attribute to key decisions and living in Chicago I have seen my fair share of bad managers. We can all also agree that some managers have the right temperament for a particular team. A young team needs a guy who holds them accountable and can also teach. Where as a veteran team might need a manager who just keeps the train moving, so to speak.

So if we can all agree that a MLB manager isn’t all that important to winning, then why fire them at all? The reason is that a manager can contribute to a team’s losing ways far easier than he can help them win.
Moving Pujols to 9th in the lineup and limiting Chris Carpenter to 60 pitches a game would certainly hurt your team. So a manager is fired to give a team a boost. It’s a move done to send a message to others and lets face it: a general manager fires the manager. It’s much easier to for Kenny Williams to say Ozzie Guillen is not a right fit for the ballclub anymore rather than to say that he constructed a bad ballclub, even if everyone knows the latter is true.

But making a change to make a change isn’t the answer either. Moving Riggleman from the Nationals dugout won’t make the team perform better unless the guy that replaces him knows something he doesn’t or is capable of something special. Managers can’t prevent injuries. They can’t prevent slumps at the plate, and they cannot prevent better teams from beating them on most days.

I know this season will have its usual round of MLB Hot Seat and we’ll be watching the futures of Torre and LaRussa, but at the end of the day the only thing worth watching are the players out on the field. They will most certainly make the most difference.

@Mikearta

Do Managers Make A Difference? February 22, 2010 – Michael Cahill If Tony LaRussa bolts St. Louis should anyone care? If Joe Torre bows out for more free time in the L.A sun, will the world end? It seems this season we will be keeping a watchful eye on the futures of a few high [...]