For Those About To Rock

by Eric Simon on May 22, 2008 11:08 PM EDT

I guess because they think I'm some kind of expert on the Mets, people keep asking me what I think is going to happen with Willie Randolph. Or, what I want to happen. What's clear is that Randolph's grip on his job is its most tenuous in his three-plus year tenure, and the Mets aren't doing him any favors with their shoddy, uninspired play this season. It's also a bad sign when your boss won't return your calls.

So what do I want to happen? I generally believe that a manager has very little to do with the success of a baseball team. Managers are usually given far too much credit when a team performs well and receive far too much blame when a team falls on its face, and their actual role correlates more with that of a high-priced babysitter than any kind of management position. I suspect the difference between the best manager and the very worst is on the order of a handful of games a year, and that may even be pushing it. Crummy tactical decision-making is frustrating to watch, but its actual impact over the course of a season is relatively insignificant. Now, an extra win or three is nothing to sneeze at (see: 2007 Mets), but the value of a great manager to a team is likely something well shy of that of a star player.

Making in-game decisions is only part of a manager's job. The other part -- dealing with personnel, media, upper management -- requires an entirely different skillset, and its impact on the success of a team is even more nebulously-defined than its strategic counterpart. Which is more important? I guess the ideal candidate would be great at both, but teams have certainly flourished with one or the either or neither. Joe Torre had mountains of success in the Bronx, and is largely considered a mediocre tactical manager (if that) but a fine motivator of men. Bobby Valentine was a master tactician, but he clashed with his bosses and had an oft-prickly relationship with the New York media.

I'm far from thrilled with Willie Randolph as a manager, but ultimately I think he has little influence on what the Mets do once the first pitch is thrown. Is he to blame for the Mets' apparent disinterest of late? I don't really think so. If the Mets are really in a malaise -- and I have my doubts that they are -- if millionaire athletes can't find a way to motivate themselves for three hours a day, there's little that a manager making a tiny fraction of their salaries can do to flip that "give a crap" switch to "ON".

We'll all agree that the Mets look awfully bad right now. I don't that they've stopped caring, though I can understand if they're down on themselves a bit. Losing a lot of games in horrible fashion can do that to a club, and running into some bad luck (and bad officiating) along the way can only make matters worse. You want to dump the manager because that might fire up the club a bit? Fine, maybe it'll work. I would imagine that this collection of players couldn't manage to play much worse.

So let's say the Mets fire Willie Randolph tomorrow. Who takes over? Bench coach Jerry Manual is an obvious candidate. He has managing experience -- six years with the White Sox from 1998 thru 2003 -- and has plenty of experience with this particular group of guys. New Orleans manager Ken Oberkfell is another possibility. He won minor league Manager of the Year in 2005 when he managed the Double-A B-Mets and you know he's just itching for a shot with a big league club.

Having just said all that, I don't actually think the Mets are going to fire Willie Randolph this season. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but I don't think they will. I still think this team has a shot to be pretty good. Maybe not great, but certainly pretty good. They're one game under .500 which, despite falling below expectations, is nothing like awful. I don't mean to get all "bright side" on you, but there's quite a bit of season to be played and plenty of guys who are performing below their established levels of production. There's time to turn things around, and enough crummy teams in the league to beat up on should the Mets turn their fortunes around.

It's not as if Bobby V. is going to march through that door tomorrow. If you really think this is all Willie's fault, tell me why. If you just think he should be let go as the scapegoat for an underperforming ballclub, say so, and nominate someone to replace him. If you couldn't really care less who manages this team so long as the players start "playing baseball" and stop "taking dumps on the field", I'd like to hear that, too.

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Comments

Willie

Eric,
I do agree with alot of what you said. 1.) There is still a long season to be played. 2.) I doubt that Willie has a lot of influence on the day to day effort of the players. 3.) It could be a lot worse than 1 game under .500 for this underachieving team.

What I do think is an issue with Willie and the current staff as a whole is the complete lack of consistency from any of the players. Whether it is the bullpen, starting rotation, talent brought from the minors or the millionaire stars, I never feel like this team has any rhythm.
I don’t know if that is a function of a dysfunctional locker room or a team dominated by successful vets, but player development and consistency is just an on-going problem and I do think Willie has something to do with that. Do I think he should get fired? When you get swept by the Braves and have just won 2 games this year while losing 7 to them., I think there is some doubt he will make it through the season. I am certainly not giving up on them, but they are just not fun to watch right now. And besides the two games against the yanks, I have hated watching them. Even Santana has been boring.

by losangelesmets on May 23, 2008 12:45 AM EDT reply actions

agree

by DoctorK16 on May 23, 2008 5:35 AM EDT reply actions

Disagree

I think you undervalue the worth of a good manager. And by “good,” I mean a manager who is adept or at least competent at handling all aspects of managing a major league baseball team—the tactical and the strategic, getting the most out of his players during a game and over the course of a season.

The talent on the field is of course the most important criteria in determing the success of a ball clup. But I think a good manager is worth more than just a couple extra wins a year. How many is hard to say. 4-6? Like team chemistry, team and individual morale is important, even at the professional level. Just because it defies quantifification doesn’t mean it’s trivial.

And it’s not just about wins and losses. It does matter how you play the game, and the way the Mets have been playing lately is not admirable, to say the least.

I liked Willie as a player and I’m glad the Mets gave him a chance to manage. But I believe he hasn’t done a good job either as a tactician or as a leader.

by TomDC on May 23, 2008 9:59 AM EDT reply actions

Not so far apart

I said, “I suspect the difference between the best manager and the very worst is on the order of a handful of games a year”, though I doubt Willie Randolph, all things considered, is the worst or even in the bottom 5 managers in baseball.

We also have to consider that managers have far less leverage with their players than they did some years ago. There was a time when a manager would rip or bench his best players, chew them out, or worse. That doesn’t happen anymore, and I suspect a lot of it has to do with the rise in player salaries and the corresponding strength of the MLBPA. It used to be that managers stuck around far longer than they do now, and players that were underperforming were shipped out in favor of new blood. Nowadays, the player is king and when a team underperforms it’s the manager that gets dumped. Fair or not, it’s one of the reasons that managers may have less of an impact on team play than they have in the past.

by Eric Simon on May 23, 2008 10:16 AM EDT up reply actions

the one hand, the other hand

I agree that Willie’s tactical boners do more damage to the fan’s sanity than to the team’s standings. Seeing him mismanage his way to a pinch hitting appearance from Tom Glavine in the ninth inning last year was galling, but it’s hard to say they would have won the game without the mishap. Making Jorge Sosa his top man out of the bullpen wasn’t wise, but his options have been limited this year by the breakdown of Aaron Heilman and last year by the existence of Guillermo Mota.

Whether a manager can whip a team into top shape is a more nebulous matter, as you say, and it would be hard to prove that Manager X would get 10 more wins out of this bunch. But does anyone believe that Willie Randolph is getting the most out of players and that they’re playing crisp, inspired baseball? Does anyone think that Randolph has control of the clubhouse and the respect of his players? I doubt even one observer would sign onto either notion, which makes me feel that replacing him with Manuel or Oberkfell would do no harm at worst, and could even give the team a noticeable boost.

by Simons on May 23, 2008 11:37 AM EDT reply actions

I'll take door number 3

“If you couldn’t really care less who manages this team so long as the players start “playing baseball” and stop “taking dumps on the field”, I’d like to hear that, too.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. If the Mets would win 102 games, Rob Dibble could be the manager for all I care. While I don’t care much for Randolph, I’m far more pissed at the players right now.

Flushing, Queens: soon to be known as Johan's-burg!!!

by Greenpoint Ian on May 23, 2008 11:43 AM EDT reply actions

Well, but that's a truism

If the Mets won 102 games, of course you wouldn’t care who the manager was. I’d be fine with a Al Sharpton-David Duke GM-manager team if it got the Mets to 110 wins. (Plus it’d be great comedy – those two should have a reality show together.)

Heck, if the Mets won 102 games, many people would probably giving Rob Dibble credit for being a great manager and firing his team up.

Of course, Rob Dibble is a blathering idiot who probably couldn’t fill out a lineup card properly and we’d wind up forfeiting games or some shit, but that’s besides the point.

by JoshNY on May 23, 2008 4:45 PM EDT up reply actions

Inspiration

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
Vince Lombardi

Never underestimate the value of an inspirational leader!

by D.Rocco on May 23, 2008 1:01 PM EDT reply actions

You want inspiration?

Let’s replace Willie with Larry Bowa. Then SNY could replace its boring post-game broadcast of Willie’s soporific press conferences with a live feed of Bowa smashing urinals with a bat after every loss. Tell me you wouldn’t watch that!

by madisonmetsfan on May 23, 2008 2:03 PM EDT up reply actions

Inspiration and fire are great

but baseball is a totally different game than football or basketball. In those sports, when you’re fired up and the other guy isn’t, you’ll beat him or at least hold your own. In baseball, you can be as fired up as you want, but if the pitcher is painting the corners with 95 MPH fastballs and throwing filthy sliders, what can you do?

by gogomets on May 23, 2008 2:05 PM EDT reply actions

p.s.

eric, you write very well. I’m sure you’re a very busy person, but try to write more of these opinion pieces! They’re easy to read and don’t have the journalistic cliches of mainstream media.

by gogomets on May 23, 2008 2:06 PM EDT up reply actions

Noted, and thanks

Been a busy week, and I’ve been sick, but look for more good stuff in the near future.

by Eric Simon on May 23, 2008 3:46 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah....time to hit the "panic" button.

Eric,
I wish I shared your guarded optimism about this team turning it around. However, that much-repeated fact about being around .500 since last Memorial Day doesn’t lie – this is a perenially underachieving team.
As a fan, is it too much to ask for someone like Luis Castillo to throw to the proper base? Or for Moises Alou not to injure himself when he stands up? After last year’s debacle, I thought a fire would be lit under this team….unfortunately, that fire has only caused nonstop crapping of the pants.

by Panic In Flushing on May 23, 2008 5:00 PM EDT reply actions

OJT....

I guess this has been a tough training period for Randolph. When Randolph is not the manager of the Mets, anymore, will he get another job? I wonder what lesson he will take from this job to another one if he does manage another team? Someday he won’t be managing the Mets…. I wonder who will be managing them?

"We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgment." Friedrich Nietzsche, "All Too Human" (1878)

by wgarrett on May 23, 2008 6:41 PM EDT reply actions

I'll be at the game tonight -- a few rows from DW

Any advice for cheers?

I’ve seen quite a few Mets jerseys out on the streets of Denver today—maybe we’ll have a real presence at Coors tonight.

by RobM on May 23, 2008 6:42 PM EDT reply actions

Is there a way to figure out who's a great manager?

I tend to agree with you that managers don’t really make that much of a difference…but then, my mind goes back to a Bill James article that I read fifteen or twenty years ago. In the article, James tried to figure out who the alltime best managers were. The way he did this (as I recall…it’s been a while since I read the article, apologies if I’m remembering wrong) was sorta crude. He came up with a measure of expected wins that was based on the previous year’s record combined with a regression to the mean factor (that is, a team that did really well will tend to get worse and v/v.) Then he looked at how differently teams actually did. His pick for best manager of all time based on this system, and by a wide margin, was Billy Martin, whose teams won something like fifteen (!) more games per year than expected, on average.

I’ve often wondered if the smart people at The Hardball Times or Baseball Prospectus, or another one of those “places” where they figure out how many games a team should win based on their projections of the players on the team, could do a year-by-year analysis of what a team should do, compare with what they did do, and figure out if the manager makes a difference, and if so, who are the good ones.

Of course, I’m not so sure about those projections. Didn’t THT pick the mets to win 99 games this year?

by AlbaNate on May 24, 2008 11:56 PM EDT reply actions