Way back in the 20th century, Bill James wrote the first essential book about baseball managers. Chris Jaffe has just written the second.
- Rob Neyer, ESPN.com
Evaluating Baseball's Managers is a wonderful work of analytical and historical research, and an incredibly worthy addition to any library dedicated to the understanding of professional baseball.
- Craig Wright, author of The Diamond Appraised
Jaffe's work on managers combines his historian's attention to detail and nuance with a powerful analytical toolbox. I can think of no work on managers that as effectively and completely evaluates the men in the dugout. It is a leap forward in our understanding of these hardball leaders.
From now on, whenever I have a question about a manager, Jaffe's book will be the first and last one I reach for.
- Sean Forman, Baseball-Reference.com
This is one of the best baseball books I've read in a long time, a serious effort by a good writer with a love of history and stats and a fascinating subject that hasn't been studied much.
- Alex Remington, Yahoo's baseball blog, Big League Stew
"Evaluating Baseball's Managers" can be enjoyed whole or in smaller increments. It deserves a spot alongside [Bill] James' book in the small "managers" section of your baseball library.
- James Bailey, Baseball America
Baseball professionals, fans and students of the game alike have been needing Chris Jaffe's incisive research on baseball managers, since Casey Stengel roamed the earth. Synthesizing the best observation of soft management skills with the sophisticated quantitative analysis required to make sense of management practice across so many eras of the game, Jaffe's relentless inquisitiveness reveals more about long-serving baseball managers' on-field practices than any book yet written.
Evaluating Baseball's Managers will be an indispensable part of the collection of every serious student of the game's collection, and will, I suspect, open up a critical, ongoing, and howlingly entertaining, dialogue about the game's managers and their roles in the evolution of the National pastime. I love reading Chris Jaffe.
- Jeff Angus, author of Management by Baseball
These days it's tough to find an important aspect of baseball that hasn't been studied and analyzed a hundred different ways, but Chris Jaffe has done just that with a unique, compelling look at the men who run things on the field. Managers are often praised or vilified, with nothing in between, but Jaffe's book is everything in between. He examines not only who was successful and who wasn't, but what types of strategy and management styles got them there and, perhaps most intriguingly, what personality traits made them tick. This book is for you, whether you like hardcore numbers crunching and objective analysis or biographical sketches and interesting anecdotes. One-stop shopping for everything managers.
- Aaron Gleeman, NBCsports.com
In a baseball era in which virtually every action can be expressed in a number, there remains one elusive task for amateur statisticians everywhere: quantifying the contributions of the manager. Chris Jaffe recognizes tactical proficiency is secondary to what he calls the “softer people skills” of managing. When it came to handling rookies, for example, perhaps nobody was better than former Yankees skipper Joe McCarthy. By approaching this book with a healthy appreciation of the limits of the cold-blooded calculus favored by many sabermetricians, Mr. Jaffe does the most complete job yet of measuring the immeasurable qualities of baseball’s all-time skippers.
- Russell Adams, Wall Street Journal
Managers are the best untold story in baseball. Lots of books have been written by and about managers, but few have taken the broad view. In this fine survey of baseball's field generals, Chris Jaffe fills that gap. A natural sequel to Bill James' Guide to Baseball Managers, Evaluating Baseball's Managers touches on the evolution of managers, details their impact and individual tendencies, and discusses individual managers from the game's rich history. It's a terrific subject and a fun read.
- Dave Studenmund, The Hardball Times
The book serves a dual purpose- it provides fascinating content and insight into MLB’s managers, but also serves as a definitive reference for them.
You can’t open this book without learning new information about a group that has, to an extent far beyond that of pitchers and hitters, been subject to mere speculation in the realm of evaluation. A must-read- it definitely helped me get through the winter of no-baseball discontent.
- Howard Megdal, author of Baseball Talmud
Compared to Koppett, I'd say that Chris does a book in the Koppett "style", meaning that he gives you a good verbal picture of the manager, and he also gives you this statistical stuff that Koppett didn't have the resources to do. So it's kind of like getting two books in one. As good a writer as Koppett is, and he is very very good, if you have to read only one of the two books, read Chris'. It's like two, Two, TWO books in ONE!
- Brock Hanke, editor and contributor to The Big Bad Baseball Annuals. (Post #10 here).
It is phenomenal, by far the hugest step forward in our objective understanding of MLB managers and their impact undertaken since -- well, almost certainly since forever.
- Steve Treder, columnist for The Hardball Times
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