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Are Managers Worthy of the Hall?

By Gary Armida

Recently, the Veterans Committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame announced its ballot. On the list were seven managers. Some names like Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, Gene Mauch, and Davey Johnson will look familiar to many fans. These men are viewed as great managers of their time. The current list of managers in the Hall of Fame includes pioneers Connie Mack and John McGraw along with greats Sparky Anderson, Bucky Harris, Joe McCarthy, and Casey Stengel. In all, there are currently 16 managers who are in the Hall of Fame based primarily on their managing record.  These names read like a “Who’s Who” of baseball history. These men have guided their teams to World Series titles, thrilling victories, and helped create baseball history. In all due respect to their accomplishments, they do not belong in the Hall of Fame. While many traditionalists will yell about strategy and a manager’s influence on a team, it is clear that a manager does not achieve greatness without great players.

Exhibit A-Players Matter

Here is a picture of four managers. The obvious statements based on the charts would be that Manager C does not belong in baseball, while Managers A and B are not too impressive either. Clearly, Manager D is one of the greatest managers of all time and should not be mentioned in the same breath as the other three.

As you may have guessed, this was a trick. The chart represents the career of one manager who had four different stops in his 25 year career. Hall of Famer, Casey Stengel was a great manager for 12 seasons and one of the worst for the remaining 13 years. It helps to have had Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford for most of those 12 great seasons. When not managing the Yankees, Casey managed only one team to a winning season. This is one illustration why managers should not be elected to the Hall. Managers are products of their team. Without a good team, a tactician is nothing. Stengel has a reputation as a manager who was innovative. He is generally known for his use of platoons. Why did these tactics only work with the Yankees? The answer is quite simple. Casey had the players to execute his system.

If one wants to take a modern day look, here’s another case study:

A non-baseball fan would look at this chart and wonder why Jim Leyland has had a managerial job for 16 seasons. He has the worst winning percentage out of the four managers listed. A person would easily select Cito Gaston or Bob Brenly as the superior managers. Mike Hargrove is included as he managed in the same number of seasons as Leyland with a better winning percentage. However, most baseball fans acknowledge Jim Leyland as the better manager. Gaston was never known for his tactical baseball, but he was able to roll out a lineup that included Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Pat Hentgen and other stars of the early 90’s. Hargrove’s record is bolstered by the fact that he managed the dominating Cleveland Indians of the mid-90’s with Kenny Lofton, Albert Belle, and Manny Ramirez. Brenly had Schilling and Johnson to carry him through to the World Series title. Leyland, although he had  successful seasons with the Pirates, was often the victim of managing a small market team that cut more payroll each year. His lone title came with the Marlins when they fielded a fantasy team roster. In fact, Leyland guided teams to losing records in nine of his 16 seasons as a manager. How ever he is regarded, especially against the group above, Jim Leyland was only as good as the roster given to him. It can be stated that managers do not have a great impact on a team. A good team will win in spite of its manager (see Grady Little’s .552 winning percentage or Charlie Manuel’s .537)

Exhibit B-The information age

The argument here is not that managers are useless like many Moneyball supporters will decree. Managers know baseball. They know tendencies, they know their teams, and they know strategy. The issue is that all managers know this stuff. All managers know the value of the stolen base. They all know when to execute a sacrifice bunt or when to order a pitchout.

The argument is that all managers have this knowledge. Baseball is one of the few games that has always had an equal playing field, on the diamond. In the early days teams would play each other quite often as the league was smaller. This would allow for players and managers to really know the league and individual tendencies. In the modern era, all teams have video, all teams have advanced scouts, and all teams have binders full of information like what a player swings at with a two ball count with a runner on second, in July, at 5:04 PM in 82 degree weather during a full moon.  You get the idea. The information is there. Players will come in early to look at video, pitching coaches will dissect a pitcher’s pattern, and scouts will tell you the exact location of a certain pitch in a certain situation. A team is never unprepared for a situation as there is always data. Managers simply give the information to the players so they can execute. In the end, it is up to the player to execute. A manager, no matter how versed in the strategy of baseball, cannot overcome a lack of execution.

Exhibit C-Not even mediocre

The clearest indication that managers should not be included in the Hall of Fame is seen on the career winning percentage list. 30 percent of the top 100 have career winning percentages below .500. Hall of Famers such as Connie Mack (.486) and Bucky Harris (.493) are included on that list. The sub-.500 list includes managers known as “winners” or “solid baseball men” like Tom Kelly (.478) and Gene Mauch (.483). Again, this is the top 100 managers of ALL-TIME. If managers were Hall of Fame worthy, more than 70 percent would have had a winning record for his career. The bottom line is that baseball is a player driven sport. It cannot be influenced like a football coach who calls the plays on every down. Baseball is ultimately the hitter versus the pitcher.

The Exceptions

Of course, there are always exceptions to the argument. While most managers are a product of their players, some managers make themselves Hall of Fame worthy by being innovative. A manager that forges a new style of play or changes the game by the strategy that he implements belongs in the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, there are not many managers who were daring enough to try something different. Baseball is a game of tradition, so it is resistant to “radical change”.

One such manager is Whitey Herzog. “The White Rat” took his lesser talented Royals teams to three consecutive ALCS and then later took his Cardinals teams to three world series (winning one) with zero homerun power. His teams constantly finished at the bottom of the league in homeruns. However, Herzog developed teams based on speed with players like Amos Otis, Frank White, and then later with Vince Coleman and Willie McGee. He won in a radically different fashion than the rest of his competition. In this case, the manager influenced the game. When all other teams were based on the homerun, Herzog’s squads were stealing, hit and running, and stretching hits into triples. One could argue that his teams were simply a throwback to how the game was played in the early days. That is easily refuted for two reasons. One, not many teams were predicated on this type of baseball throughout history. Two, if it were so easy, more teams would be copying it.     

Another exception would have to be Tony LaRussa. LaRussa completely redefined the use of the bull pen during his tenure with the Oakland Athletics. He introduced the concept of the modern, one inning closer in Dennis Eckersley. Previously, closers were used for at least two innings. LaRussa also defined roles such as the lefty-specialist or the “get one batter” pitcher. He took left handers like Rick Honeycutt and Greg Cadaret and made them effective by limiting them to facing left handed batters. A bull pen was once littered with pitchers who were not good enough to start. Closers like Goose Gossage would often pitch three innings to earn a save bull pens were not stocked with quality relievers. Once LaRussa’s A’s began winning and the bull pen played a major role, other teams began developing their bull pen in the same fashion. The Yankees of the late 1990’s had a setup similar with Graeme Lloyd, David Weathers, and Mariano Rivera getting to John Wetteland and then later with Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Stanton, and Jeff Nelson getting to Rivera. Today’s teams all have bullpens set up this way. As controversial as LaRussa’s idea was at the time, it is now the standard practice. There are few words more scary to baseball people than ”closer by committee”. LaRussa, from the manager’s chair, changed the game forever.

The Conclusion

This is not an attack on managers. They are all knowledgeable baseball people. As stated above, they each know the complexities of the game. There is value in the position. Some managers fail because they are poor managers of people. It can be said that a manager’s main job is to keep is players happy. That is where a manager like Joe Torre distinguishes himself from someone like Grady Little, who lost his clubhouse in Los Angeles late last season. The argument has nothing to do with their baseball knowledge. It has everything to do with their impact, or lack thereof, on winning baseball games.

If the Baseball Hall of Fame is designed to celebrate the very best of baseball, managers cannot be included. A manager’s performance is simply based on his player’s performance (just ask Lou Piniella about his Tampa experience). Players are held to a high standard in order to get into the Hall. A player must display a certain level of excellence over a long period of time. If the player has a few sub-par seasons, he will not gain admittance. Or, if the player is consistent, yet unspectacular throughout his career like Jim Rice, he will not gain admittance. Having managers such as Connie Mack who had 25 losing seasons (out of 53) or any of the other 14 managers (Joe McCarthy is the exception) who didn’t avoid at least one losing season in the Hall lessens the luster of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Special thanks to FCP reader, Douglas Hill, for suggesting this topic.