Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 10, 2003
Larry Dierker

Dr. Manhattan alerted me to this post, based on this Rob Neyer interview with Larry Dieker. I'd like to comment on both.

First on the Neyer interview. Larry Dieker has written a book in which he discusses his life in baseball. It turns out Dieker is a fine writer and a sabremetrician to boot. But he also talks about balancing his desire to do the mathematically correct thing with doing what the players expect of him:


"When I became the manager, I kind of knew what were the smart things to do. But I also knew that if I did all of them, it would be at the expense of my credibility with the players. With that in mind, I just had to use my instincts to both win the game and keep the whole team in the spirit of pulling together. I didn't want to come off as an egghead guy who was just looking at numbers and ignoring people, and sometimes those considerations ran into each other."

This is actually the right way to do things. Being a manager has two aspects; you have to manager a game, but you have to manage people, too. Davy Johnson was great at the game, but he lacked in managing people. Joe Torre's not that great at the game, but he's fantastic at the people side. Both can work, given the right team. Dieker, to his credit, tried to do both well. I'm looking forward to reading his book.

Dr. Manhattan at Blissful Knowledge brings this column over to Moneyball and the A's, asking:


But it stands to reason that Beane wouldn't mind having a manager like Dierker, who would commit to the sabermetric program out of intellectual conviction rather than career preservation. So who would be the best candidate?

Now, for some reason, I thought the answer would be Dieker. But no, Dr. Manhattan has another idea:

The perfect managerial match for Billy Beane would share his intellect and volatility. He would not be afraid to cause controversy in his commitment to doing what he felt was the right move (in baseball terms: to tell his detractors and the media to go f$#% themselves). And a connection to the Mets wouldn't hurt.
Bobby Valentine, would you like to move to Oakland?

I think this would be a terrible move. There is a reason good-cop/bad-cop works. People need an alternative point of view. If you put Valentine in charge of the A's, you'd have bad-cop/bad-cop, and that would be just too much intimidation. You need the guy who can call the star who just got chewed out by the GM into his office and say, "Yeah, he's a jerk, but he pays our salaries. Let's try it his way for a while and see if we win."

Secondly, Beane wants people who come cheap, and Valentine would not come cheap.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:29 AM | Books | TrackBack (1)