October 27, 2003
Foundation
Edward Cossette at Bambino's Curse writes today about the impending release of Grady Little and how the Boston media is reacting to it. They are especially afraid of the sabermetric manager. He quotes Michael Gee of the Boston Herald:
Your new skipper will manage the Sox according to a 150-page order written by Epstein and Bill James. He'll be a cipher. If he's a passive cipher, guys like Pedro and Manny will run roughshod over him. If he's an abrasive cipher like Bobby Valentine, there'll be knife fights in the clubhouse by Mother's Day. Either way, good luck.
I wonder if Gee ever read a Bill James Abstract? If you do, you'll find that the two managers James has the most respect for are Earl Weaver and Whitey Herzog. Both were sabermetric managers, even though I doubt either would admit it.
Here's Davey Johnson on Weaver:
"While I never thought I'd become a manager, I always paid attention to choices managers made: when they took out pitchers and how they set up defenses," says Johnson. "The consummate innovator and genius of the human psyche, Earl regularly tried to seize advantages, so I tried to convince him to computerize his notecards. I'd say 'Earl, do you know anything about predictability, standard deviation charts?' He probably looked at my stuff at night, but first he'd throw it in the garbage, and order me back to second. That's how I wound up being called 'Dum-Dum.' "
See, Earl knew how to survive. If the players and media people of the day saw him looking at charts like that, they'd run him out of town. But if you look at the way Earl managed, it's clear he was a big believer in OBA and Slugging, and he didn't like giving outs away with one-run strategies.
But David, you may ask, Herzog loved little ball! Yes, but the teams Herzog managed played in parks where little ball was the appropriate strategy. And Herzog used the stolen base right; in his tenure in St. Louis, from 1980 to 1990, the Cardinals led the NL in stolen base percentage at 74.2%. The next closest were the Reds at 71.9. That's a bigger lead than the Reds had over the 6th place club!
The other sign that Herzog used little ball properly was that he didn't bunt much with his #2 hitter. The Cardinals were 10th (out of 12 teams) in sacrifice bunts by the #2 hitter during his reign, while they were third overall in sac hits. Herzog wasn't wasting an out in the first inning.
So the question I've been asking myself since reading Moneyball is, "Why don't these teams hire someone like this to manage? Why put so much control in the hands of the GM? Why not hire someone who understands your plan and has the intelligence to implement it?"
In the 2nd book of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, he posits that it's an unstable situation to have a strong emperor and a strong field general, since the success of the one will threaten the stability of the other. Maybe that's the case in Oakland. But I don't think Boston really wants that. Maybe they'll hire Larry Dierker. He strikes me as perfect for the situation.
Posted by David Pinto at
09:54 AM
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Management
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