Now that the Washington Nationals' 2015 playoff aspirations have been plausibly quashed*, and Matt Williams' boneheaded miscalculations have been picked apart like a Thanksgiving turkey, I have some questions for all the baseball writers who voted him Manager of the Year in 2014.
*I know, this is asking for trouble. But although leads this large have evaporated in shorter periods, the odds are squarely against the Nats, particularly because they have played so miserably all season.
Did the all the smart decisions just leak out of the head of last year's best NL manager?
Or was a he just the random monkey in front of a computer keyboard who produced MacBeth in 2014?
Was he a dope who received too much credit for the team's primacy in the NL last year?
Or is he a genius being unfairly tarred with the brush of his squad's 2015 failure?
Or is he perhaps neither a dope nor a genius, but just muddling along, and happened to be holding the reigns when his team spiked the finish in 2014 (45-23 after the All Star break) and spit the bit in 2015 (22-29 after the All Star break)?
Finally, whichever theory you now subscribe to, how stupid do you feel for electing him Manager of the Year in 2014?
The wildly varying demonstration of skills that should correlate heavily from one year to the next is yet more proof, as if there was any doubt in the first place, that no one has any idea who the best manager is, particularly in a given season, because most of the good work managers do is in the clubhouse, away from public view. Anyone who wants to claim that they know the best managers is going to have to explain why those with reputations as savants -- Joe Maddon, Bruce Bochy, Terry Francona, Mike Scioscia, etc. -- are rarely so honored.
I have the explanation. It's because the honor is meaningless. Abolish the Manager of the Year award.
Showing posts with label Manager of the Year. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manager of the Year. Show all posts
11 September 2015
19 November 2014
Are the Post-Season Awards A Sign We're All Growing Up?
The post-season awards in baseball have served as an occasion to highlight the chasm between advanced baseball analytics and the sports' hidebound writers, broadcasters and self-proclaimed cognoscenti.
This year, however, there's not much opportunity for that. For one thing, the gap is narrowing. Sports media have adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, OPS and WAR, and while they continue to cling to pitching wins, seem to understand better the need to examine the larger picture when examining player performance.
In addition, several of the big awards seemed predestined, as if Martin Luther himself had cast a ballot. For example, Clayton Kershaw, already the best pitcher on the planet, turned it up a notch in '14. Even statheads can't argue with 21-3, 1.77 and 11 strikeouts per nine innings, particularly when he posts a league-leadoing 7.5 WAR despite missing the first month of the season.
And Mike Trout, the MVP-in-waiting, led his league in runs, RBIs and total bases while clubbing 36 home runs and playing a premier defensive position. He, too, paced the circuit in WAR with 7.9. Setting aside the argument whether pitchers should compete for a second award, these two were the clear MVP champs.
Likewise Rookie of the Year, where Jose Abreu and Jacob deGrom ran away with the hardware, or Kershaw at Cy Young, a conclusion so obvious it could less be said to be foregone than fifteengone. Only AL Cy Young was up for discussion, with Cory Kluber squeaking by Felix Hernandez.
Parsing the two was an academic exercise -- they posted similar won-loss records, innings pitched and runs allowed. King Felix allowed fewer baserunners; Kluber fanned more. Hernandez suffered from King Felix fatigue among the voters, and also from the legitimate belief that Cleveland is a tougher place to pitch than Seattle. If that was the finger on the scale provided Kluber's margin of victory, bully for the voters.
That there is a manager of the year award is a testament to writers' overblown self-importance; they can't possibly know which managers are best. That said, Buck Showalter seems a reasonable choice given his previous performance and his team's unexpected accomplishments. Matt Williams seems like an odd choice in the NL both because the Nats were generally considered the best team and because many observers view him as a work in progress. Perhaps most damning of all is Ned Yost's third place finish in the AL: his play-calling has come under withering criticism from knowledgeable analysts.
But that's the point about managers, isn't it? In-game strategy is much less important than in-clubhouse moral-building, and that's the part of the game even sportswriters generally don't see. Which is why the award is nonsense no matter who votes on it.
This year, however, there's not much opportunity for that. For one thing, the gap is narrowing. Sports media have adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, OPS and WAR, and while they continue to cling to pitching wins, seem to understand better the need to examine the larger picture when examining player performance.
In addition, several of the big awards seemed predestined, as if Martin Luther himself had cast a ballot. For example, Clayton Kershaw, already the best pitcher on the planet, turned it up a notch in '14. Even statheads can't argue with 21-3, 1.77 and 11 strikeouts per nine innings, particularly when he posts a league-leadoing 7.5 WAR despite missing the first month of the season.
And Mike Trout, the MVP-in-waiting, led his league in runs, RBIs and total bases while clubbing 36 home runs and playing a premier defensive position. He, too, paced the circuit in WAR with 7.9. Setting aside the argument whether pitchers should compete for a second award, these two were the clear MVP champs.
Likewise Rookie of the Year, where Jose Abreu and Jacob deGrom ran away with the hardware, or Kershaw at Cy Young, a conclusion so obvious it could less be said to be foregone than fifteengone. Only AL Cy Young was up for discussion, with Cory Kluber squeaking by Felix Hernandez.
Parsing the two was an academic exercise -- they posted similar won-loss records, innings pitched and runs allowed. King Felix allowed fewer baserunners; Kluber fanned more. Hernandez suffered from King Felix fatigue among the voters, and also from the legitimate belief that Cleveland is a tougher place to pitch than Seattle. If that was the finger on the scale provided Kluber's margin of victory, bully for the voters.
That there is a manager of the year award is a testament to writers' overblown self-importance; they can't possibly know which managers are best. That said, Buck Showalter seems a reasonable choice given his previous performance and his team's unexpected accomplishments. Matt Williams seems like an odd choice in the NL both because the Nats were generally considered the best team and because many observers view him as a work in progress. Perhaps most damning of all is Ned Yost's third place finish in the AL: his play-calling has come under withering criticism from knowledgeable analysts.
But that's the point about managers, isn't it? In-game strategy is much less important than in-clubhouse moral-building, and that's the part of the game even sportswriters generally don't see. Which is why the award is nonsense no matter who votes on it.
11 October 2014
Looking Forward To A Retirement
During a recent meaningless end-of-season game between long-eliminated teams, the announcers embarked on a discussion of their choices for the big awards. It was the usual stuff -- should Clayton Kershaw be considered for the MVP, should Mike Stanton be dinged for his team's performance, does Robinson Cano get credit for Seattle's giant leap forward, that kind of thing.
And then came the manager of the year award. This is the hole into which baseball people pour all of their ignorance.
What ensued, as usual, was not a disposition on managers, but on the most surprising teams. The assumption is that when a team appears to outperform its talent, the manager must have been working some magic. It's the same logic by which we credit or blame the President of the United States for the state of the economy.
That dynamic led to some hysterical assertions. The in-the-stands reporter touted Buck Showalter for manager of the year because of how 31-year-old Steve Pearce contributed 10 times more wins against replacement than in his previous seven-year career, leading the O's to lay waste to the AL East. The same reporter noted how Showalter's team overcame the decline of Chris Davis, who misplaced 90 points of batting average and 27 home runs from his breakout 2013. By this logic, the skipper earns points for employing over-achievers but is not responsible for under-achievers.
The color analyst touted Ned Yost for AL manager of the year, citing the surprising rise of the Royals. Yost is generally considered one of the more daft field generals who required the intervention of George Brett and the front office to construct productive lineups. Once learned, his expertise extended to filling out the same lineup much of the season and relying on a trio of shutdown relievers to shorten each game to six innings.
I suspect that if the award were being bestowed at the end of July, the A's Bob Melvin would have run away with it, much as his Oakland squad was unexpectedly running away with the league's best record. Evidently Melvin contracted a major case of stupid, because the A's hardly won a game in August and September.
The manager of the year award is a joke and should either be retired or entrusted to managers and GMs to vote on. Sportswriters and broadcasters have little basis for choosing the best manager and have proved that time and again.
And then came the manager of the year award. This is the hole into which baseball people pour all of their ignorance.
What ensued, as usual, was not a disposition on managers, but on the most surprising teams. The assumption is that when a team appears to outperform its talent, the manager must have been working some magic. It's the same logic by which we credit or blame the President of the United States for the state of the economy.
That dynamic led to some hysterical assertions. The in-the-stands reporter touted Buck Showalter for manager of the year because of how 31-year-old Steve Pearce contributed 10 times more wins against replacement than in his previous seven-year career, leading the O's to lay waste to the AL East. The same reporter noted how Showalter's team overcame the decline of Chris Davis, who misplaced 90 points of batting average and 27 home runs from his breakout 2013. By this logic, the skipper earns points for employing over-achievers but is not responsible for under-achievers.
The color analyst touted Ned Yost for AL manager of the year, citing the surprising rise of the Royals. Yost is generally considered one of the more daft field generals who required the intervention of George Brett and the front office to construct productive lineups. Once learned, his expertise extended to filling out the same lineup much of the season and relying on a trio of shutdown relievers to shorten each game to six innings.
I suspect that if the award were being bestowed at the end of July, the A's Bob Melvin would have run away with it, much as his Oakland squad was unexpectedly running away with the league's best record. Evidently Melvin contracted a major case of stupid, because the A's hardly won a game in August and September.
The manager of the year award is a joke and should either be retired or entrusted to managers and GMs to vote on. Sportswriters and broadcasters have little basis for choosing the best manager and have proved that time and again.
04 October 2013
The Firing of Dusty Baker
Current Cincinnati GM Walt Jocketty, who served for 14 sparkling years in the same position with St. Louis, has forgotten more about baseball than the entire membership of Rho Beta Iota fraternity will ever know. So if he actually did fire Dusty Baker today after six seasons because the Reds skidded to six consecutive losses to end the season, he should be rushed to the hospital for an emergency brain scan.
Jocketty has been too successful for too long to make a move so utterly lacking in sense that even a Kardashian should know better. Even great teams endure winning lulls during the course of a long season. Judging a field general's 972-game performance with the club by one bad week (against a formidable and highly-motivated opponent) is like demoting a star player because he's oh-for his last five games.
The silliness is even more fundamental than that. Evaluating a manager based on his team's record is like appraising an movie actor based on the screenplay. In each case, their performance has some impact on the final product, but it's vastly less important than other considerations.
In reporting Baker's firing, many sports news outlets examined his managerial won-loss record, as if that would reveal something about his managerial acumen. It hardly needs to be explained that managers are entirely dependent on their teams' talent; Moe, Larry and Curly could have skippered the 1998 Yankees to the World Series while this year's Astros were beyond the help of Jimmy Dugan himself.
Like an iceberg, much of a manager's value is accrued out of view. But after 20 years in the position with the Giants, Cubs and Reds, two things are clear about him: 1. players love playing for him and 2. he might be the worst tactician in the history of the sport.
If a team values stubborn intransigence in their chief on-field strategist, Dusty is their man. He refuses to acknowledge the importance of on-base percentage, despite its objective truth. He cost the Reds dozens of runs over six years by leading off speedsters with abysmal OBP and he cost an impressive list of top-shelf pitchers (notably Kerry Wood and Mark Prior) significant portions of their careers by almost-literally working their arms off.
Which makes his firing all the more puzzling. Dusty's entire managerial career is a miracle, a 20-year exaltation of rampant ignorance, validated three times by the very lords of ignorance -- baseball writers -- with Manager of the Year awards. The truth is, Dusty should never have been hired, but once in place never ceased being what he was hired to be.
As is often the case, all this is much more an indictment of the people paid to analyze the game than the people who perform on the field. They will continue to use won-loss records as a proxy for real evaluation tools without ever acknowledging their utter futility. As for Dusty Baker, his teams won 90+ games three of the last four years. Some desperate front office, like Seattle's, will be sufficiently bamboozled to hire him so that he can bat Neifi Perez leadoff.
Jocketty has been too successful for too long to make a move so utterly lacking in sense that even a Kardashian should know better. Even great teams endure winning lulls during the course of a long season. Judging a field general's 972-game performance with the club by one bad week (against a formidable and highly-motivated opponent) is like demoting a star player because he's oh-for his last five games.
The silliness is even more fundamental than that. Evaluating a manager based on his team's record is like appraising an movie actor based on the screenplay. In each case, their performance has some impact on the final product, but it's vastly less important than other considerations.
In reporting Baker's firing, many sports news outlets examined his managerial won-loss record, as if that would reveal something about his managerial acumen. It hardly needs to be explained that managers are entirely dependent on their teams' talent; Moe, Larry and Curly could have skippered the 1998 Yankees to the World Series while this year's Astros were beyond the help of Jimmy Dugan himself.
Like an iceberg, much of a manager's value is accrued out of view. But after 20 years in the position with the Giants, Cubs and Reds, two things are clear about him: 1. players love playing for him and 2. he might be the worst tactician in the history of the sport.
If a team values stubborn intransigence in their chief on-field strategist, Dusty is their man. He refuses to acknowledge the importance of on-base percentage, despite its objective truth. He cost the Reds dozens of runs over six years by leading off speedsters with abysmal OBP and he cost an impressive list of top-shelf pitchers (notably Kerry Wood and Mark Prior) significant portions of their careers by almost-literally working their arms off.
Which makes his firing all the more puzzling. Dusty's entire managerial career is a miracle, a 20-year exaltation of rampant ignorance, validated three times by the very lords of ignorance -- baseball writers -- with Manager of the Year awards. The truth is, Dusty should never have been hired, but once in place never ceased being what he was hired to be.
As is often the case, all this is much more an indictment of the people paid to analyze the game than the people who perform on the field. They will continue to use won-loss records as a proxy for real evaluation tools without ever acknowledging their utter futility. As for Dusty Baker, his teams won 90+ games three of the last four years. Some desperate front office, like Seattle's, will be sufficiently bamboozled to hire him so that he can bat Neifi Perez leadoff.
12 August 2012
Dissecting a Common Fallacy
In the practice of rhetoric, deductive logic makes two demands:
- Deductive validity.
- Truthful premises.
For example:
Mike Trout is the best player in the American League this year.
Mike Trout is a rookie.
Therefore Mike Trout is the Rookie of the Year.
It's valid and true. Although true, this isn't deductively valid:
Mike Trout is a rookie.
Mike Trout has the highest batting average in the league.
Therefore Mike Trout is the Rookie of the Year.
Many sports radio talk show hosts are inadequately schooled in logic. Consider this segment paraphrased from a recent ESPN radio broadcast:
"Who are the managers of the year in the AL and NL? How about Davey Johnson? The Washington Nationals have the best record in baseball, three great starters and a different hitting star everyday. Even if they shut down Strasburg, they're looking good."
"The Reds have won five in a row even without their star Joey Votto. Dusty Baker is a veteran manager with a World Series on his resume. How about Clint Hurdle? He has the Pirates primed for their first winning season in 20 years."
"Bruce Bochy has kept the Giants atop the West. Maybe he's the guy."
"In the American League, the Yankees will win the East despite a rash of injuries, but before you crown Joe Girardi, Ron Washington has the Rangers ahead in the West."
This segment was based on several unstated fallacies:
1. The manager of the year is the skipper of the most surprisingly good team.
2. The manager is responsible for his players' performances.
3. You can measure how good a manager is by how often his team wins.
3. You can measure how good a manager is by how often his team wins.
4. That the manager has guided a team to a pennant in the past has some bearing on his performance this year.
5. No actual data, anecdotes, research, knowledge or information is necessary to determine a manager's value.
Baseball writers have singularly relied on the first fallacy to elect their Manager of the Year each season, but there isn't a shred of evidence that there's any connection. Indeed, in every other sport we measure managers/head coaches by the sustained success of their teams, not by their episodic improvement from poor performances. Bill Belichick, Bobby Bowden, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, Scotty Bowman and their ilk are admired not because their teams have outperformed expectations but because they set the expectations high each year and met them.
Beyond that, notice that the radio host, by failing to recite a single observation to support her arguments, unintentionally acknowledged that she toils in total ignorance of the actual work these men do. For all the host knows, one or more of them is reviled or disrespected by his players.
The unfortunate fact for those attempting to parse managing performance is that the vast majority of a manager's role eludes the public lens: managing personalities, inspiring greatness, promoting teamwork, keeping a steady hand on the till from the first buds of spring through the changing of the leaves. Team performance on the field is a woeful proxy for that.
A small function of a manager's job is the In-game tactics. What little we can see suggests neither Baker nor Washington is even adequate. (After 50 years in the business, Dusty still thinks the quintessential leadoff hitter swipes 30 bases and makes outs 70% of the time.)
It got worse. Behold this matrix of convolution:
"But how about thinking outside the box? Sure, the Angels have Albert Pujols, but they're getting production from guys you don't expect, like Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo. Mike Scioscia deserves some attention."
It got worse. Behold this matrix of convolution:
"But how about thinking outside the box? Sure, the Angels have Albert Pujols, but they're getting production from guys you don't expect, like Mike Trout and Mark Trumbo. Mike Scioscia deserves some attention."
The cupboard is so bare of rational thought here as to boggle the mind. Primarily, the talk show host decided to abandon the core fallacy -- absolving the manager for taking a team of loaded dice and rolling craps -- and instead credit him for coaxing performance out of unexpected places (but failing to do so out of the big stars.) That particular pretzel logic is the perfect coda on an argument that captures, in one four-minute segment, why sports talk radio is a barren desert, and why Manager of the Year votes are completely, utterly, hopelessly irrelevant.
19 November 2009
Congratulations, You're Fired
Jim Tracy and Mike Scioscia were named Managers of the Year yesterday. Which means, of course, that they'll be fired. Nearly every manager is, eventually.
Sportswriters voting for manager of the year is like frequent fliers voting for pilot of the year. They can measure whether landings equals takeoffs, but beyond that, how can they possibly assess the work of the nominees when most of it takes place in private?
The primary job of a team manager is to be a leader, to keep his team productive and on-task over 162 games.(Or as Casey Stengel famously observed, to keep the two guys who hated him from the 23 who weren't sure.) While managers make some strategic decisions, most of them are rote. Over the course of a year, the difference between a good strategist and a bad one is probably two or three games. That means a league's best manager -- whatever "best" means -- could be hiding behind a 60-102 record.
Were Scioscia and Tracy better leaders of men this year than Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa, Joe Girardi, Jim Leyland and Hugo Chavez? This award suggests that sportswriters know the answer. In fact, what they know is how managers' teams performed compared to expectations, and vote accordingly. But the correlation between managerial skill and performance versus expectation is pretty weak.
In truth, if the award were for great managing, the same guys would win every year. If Tony La Russa is a genius, he's more or less a genius every year and should be Manager of the Year as often as Albert Pujols, the best player, wins the MVP. (Actually, Pujols has 400 competitors, La Russa just 15, so the skipper should pretty much monopolize the trophy.)
There's no question that Jim Tracy made some key moves that transformed the team from rocks to rockets when he inherited the Rockies from Clint Hurdle this summer. He also had to have caught lightning in a bottle, for which he got undue credit and now sports some nifty hardware. Players say they'd run through walls for Scioscia, and he obviously handled the aftermath of Nick Adenhart's death deftly, but it doesn't hurt that Jared Weaver, John Lackey and Joe Saunders can hurl.
Three of the last six Managers of the Year have been fired, so apparently the smartest skippers turned to dolts in two years' time. Either that or sportswriters don't really know what they're voting for.
b
Sportswriters voting for manager of the year is like frequent fliers voting for pilot of the year. They can measure whether landings equals takeoffs, but beyond that, how can they possibly assess the work of the nominees when most of it takes place in private?
The primary job of a team manager is to be a leader, to keep his team productive and on-task over 162 games.(Or as Casey Stengel famously observed, to keep the two guys who hated him from the 23 who weren't sure.) While managers make some strategic decisions, most of them are rote. Over the course of a year, the difference between a good strategist and a bad one is probably two or three games. That means a league's best manager -- whatever "best" means -- could be hiding behind a 60-102 record.
Were Scioscia and Tracy better leaders of men this year than Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa, Joe Girardi, Jim Leyland and Hugo Chavez? This award suggests that sportswriters know the answer. In fact, what they know is how managers' teams performed compared to expectations, and vote accordingly. But the correlation between managerial skill and performance versus expectation is pretty weak.
In truth, if the award were for great managing, the same guys would win every year. If Tony La Russa is a genius, he's more or less a genius every year and should be Manager of the Year as often as Albert Pujols, the best player, wins the MVP. (Actually, Pujols has 400 competitors, La Russa just 15, so the skipper should pretty much monopolize the trophy.)
There's no question that Jim Tracy made some key moves that transformed the team from rocks to rockets when he inherited the Rockies from Clint Hurdle this summer. He also had to have caught lightning in a bottle, for which he got undue credit and now sports some nifty hardware. Players say they'd run through walls for Scioscia, and he obviously handled the aftermath of Nick Adenhart's death deftly, but it doesn't hurt that Jared Weaver, John Lackey and Joe Saunders can hurl.
Three of the last six Managers of the Year have been fired, so apparently the smartest skippers turned to dolts in two years' time. Either that or sportswriters don't really know what they're voting for.
b
26 November 2008
The Blind Squirrel Theory
Several readers have asked why no diatribe about the award choices. The answer: I'm still recovering from shock. Writers managed to get all six major awards right. What's to say?
It doesn't hurt that the choices for all but AL MVP were Yale locks. Would anyone really argue that Geovanny Soto wasn't the NL Rookie of the Year? (Well, yes. Three so-called expert baseball writers cast ballots for Edinson Volquez, who didn't qualify for rookie status. Good thing we limit the voting to the people who follow the game daily.) Or that Tim Lincecum was the best pitcher in the Senior Circuit?
In the AL MVP race, there were two best choices and the BBWAA chose one of them. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
I could quibble over the large minority of voters who think Ryan Howard, he of the .339 OBP and miserable fielding, is his league's most valuable. I still shake my head over writers' mancrush on Justin Morneau, whose major accomplishment seems to be hitting behind Joe Mauer. But really, down-ballot debates are for geeks, obssessives and childless...um, uh, well I just don't want to engage in them.
Notice that I haven't mentioned the Manager of the Year Award. The truth is, there is no such award. There is simply an award for the manager whose team most out-performed expectations. I don't believe that anyone knows who is having a "good year" or "bad year" managing, short of an outright mutiny by the players. And the proof is that managers never repeat, even though it's fair to assume that whoever is the best manager in baseball is probably the best several years running. The reason is that once a team achieves success, they can't be a surprise the next year.
So bravo for a year in which the deserving were acknowledged. Don't count on it happening again. Blind squirrels don't generally regain their sight.
It doesn't hurt that the choices for all but AL MVP were Yale locks. Would anyone really argue that Geovanny Soto wasn't the NL Rookie of the Year? (Well, yes. Three so-called expert baseball writers cast ballots for Edinson Volquez, who didn't qualify for rookie status. Good thing we limit the voting to the people who follow the game daily.) Or that Tim Lincecum was the best pitcher in the Senior Circuit?
In the AL MVP race, there were two best choices and the BBWAA chose one of them. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
I could quibble over the large minority of voters who think Ryan Howard, he of the .339 OBP and miserable fielding, is his league's most valuable. I still shake my head over writers' mancrush on Justin Morneau, whose major accomplishment seems to be hitting behind Joe Mauer. But really, down-ballot debates are for geeks, obssessives and childless...um, uh, well I just don't want to engage in them.
Notice that I haven't mentioned the Manager of the Year Award. The truth is, there is no such award. There is simply an award for the manager whose team most out-performed expectations. I don't believe that anyone knows who is having a "good year" or "bad year" managing, short of an outright mutiny by the players. And the proof is that managers never repeat, even though it's fair to assume that whoever is the best manager in baseball is probably the best several years running. The reason is that once a team achieves success, they can't be a surprise the next year.
So bravo for a year in which the deserving were acknowledged. Don't count on it happening again. Blind squirrels don't generally regain their sight.
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