Mike Scioscia
For Scioscia, it’s his second award, the other coming when he led the surprising 2002 Angels to the promised land. Unlike that year, this time he won it while leading a team that entered the year the favorite to win the division (which is an oddity for a Manager of the Year winner).
One key factor helping Scioscia (aside, obviously, from his team winning 97 games and the division) was rallying the club together after the shocking and sudden death of pitcher Nick Adenhart at the beginning of the season. While Scioscia is to be commended for managing the clubhouse in such a way as to keep the team focus and ready, I have some subtler reasons for appreciating his performance in 2009.
First, 2009 was indicative of a long-standing trend by Sciosica’s Angels: they did as well as anyone could reasonably hope they would. While they were preseason favorites to take the West, 97 games was still a tall order. Though they won 100 in 2008, they did so despite outscoring their opponent by less than 70 runs. I don’t necessarily think that all pythag deviation is solely caused by luck, but that was frickin’ huge difference. At the beginning of 2009, SG’s Preseason Projection Blowout predicted they’d win only 85 games.
Instead, they won 97 – which for once was equal to their pythag projected finish; blowing out SG’s projections by over 11 games. Actually, that’s fairly typical for a Scioscia led team. A few years ago, SG agreed to do Diamondmind Preseason Projections for me for every team going back to 1998. Between that and the published projection SG’s done at the Replacement Level Yankee Weblog, Scioscia’s Angels have exceeded projections in 8 out of 10 years. Overall, they’ve won 54.3 games more than expected, which is easily the most by any manager in that period.
The above information isn’t the most precise gauge of managerial ability. That’s putting it mildly. I asked SG to run the sims with the thought that I’d put the results in my book. However, the signal-to-noise ratio in the results was weaker than I wanted it to be, and opted not to use it. That said, though there is a lot of static in the results, it’s not all static and Scioscia is top dog over the past dozen seasons. Scioscia has the knack of getting his players to perform as well as possible year after year, and that’s one of the reasons why Anaheim has enjoyed its success. This year, for example, saw the rather amazing achievement of every starter in the lineup posting an OPS+ of 100. The front office deserves credit for assembling that talent, and the players deserve the most credit for hitting as they did, but it’s just another example of athletes maxxing out on their potential under Scioscia’s wing.
What I’m especially impressed by is how the Angels won as the 2009 Angels defied the typical construction of a Mike Scioscia team. Scioscia typically relies heavily on his bullpen, but this the relievers were a big disappointment. On offense, he’s prioritized contact hitting and downplayed plate discipline and power hitting. As a result, Anaheim teams usually have an AVG-dominated offense featuring few strikeouts, walks, and relatively little homers.
In 2009, however, the Angels, struck out at an average clip while walking likewise. They still had a high-AVG lineup, but in all other ways it cut against the typical tendencies of a Scioscia-managed teams. I’m aware GMs are in charge of roster construction, but managers have some input. The greater the skipper’s prestige, the more authority. Scioscia, with his decade-long contract and World Series ring, has considerable leverage. Plus it’s worth noting he got along very well with the previous GM who assembled all the classic Scioscia clubs.
Scioscia didn’t have the team he wanted, so he made the most of the team he had. That sounds like faint praise, but for a lot of managers (or anyone in a position of authority, I suppose), it’s the sort of thing many botch up. The more success one had in the past, the more resistant they often are to change. Instead, Scioscia was receptive. If Scioscia remained stuck in his ways, the Angels wouldn’t have spent much of the season with the league’s best record.
Jim Tracy
As for Jim Tracy, he’s had a bizarre career arc. He was a widely respected manager after his first four seasons in Los Angeles. (Most notably, he decided to take the well-regarded but underachieving prospect starting pitcher Eric Gagne and install him as team closer. That worked out pretty well). Then, in his fifth year, the entire thing cratered in rather spectacular fashion. Not only did the team suffer a 91-loss season, but Tracy’s feuding with team GM Paul DePodesta was so ugly that I read one Dodger fan write that it was the only time he’s ever wondered if the manager was trying to lose.
From there, Tracy landed for a pair of disastrously bad campaigns with Pittsburgh. While the team was bad before and after his arrival, his own performance was so poor he couldn’t even keep the job half as long as Lloyd McClendon, no one’s idea of a baseball savant. Checking the internet (I’m thinking specifically the posters at Baseball Think Factory here), the only bile that even compared with the scorn Pirate fans unleashed on Tracy was what the Cub fans felt toward Dusty Baker.
At the time, I figured Tracy was the modern day equivalent to Chuck Dressen. Back in the 1950s, Dressen gained a reputation as a great baseball manager after having several years’ success with the Dodgers (the same team that later employed Tracy). Then Dressen left after a contract argument and spent the rest of his career drifting from team to team. In his book on managers, Bill James wrote Dressen had one foot in Cooperstown and another on a banana peel, and put his full weight on the banana peel.
I’m not saying Tracy ever had a foot in Cooperstown, but he – like Dressen – did a complete about right after establishing himself. As a result, when I heard the Rockies hired Tracy, I wasn’t too impressed. It sounded like the old Senators hiring Dressen – a nice sounding move that would aid the franchise little and just further diminish whatever lingering luster the manager had.
Obviously, Tracy’s luster wasn’t diminished. Instead, the Rockies played like baseball freaking demigods. Despite playing in the NL’s toughest division, a team that started the year 18-28 under previous skipper Clint Hurdle ended the year on a 74-42 kick with Tracy.
How much credit should Tracy get for that? Well, let me put it to you this way. Prior to 2009, 101 teams began the year with an 18-28 record. NONE ended the year with a .568 winning percentage. None even came close. The best previously was the 2006 Angels (managed by Scioscia, of course), who finished 89-73 (.549). Only nine even had winning records. (aside from the ’06 Angels, the other eight were the 1902 Indians, 1925 Cardinals, 1967 Angels, 1974 Pirates, 1983 Pirates, 1986 Reds, 1990 Rangers, and 1990 Giants).
Flipping it around, only once in baseball history has a team who ended the season with a .568 or better record had a worse record at the 46-decision marker than the 2009 Rockies: the 1914 Braves. History knows them as the Miracle Braves because they won the pennant despite have the league’s worst record on Independence Day. For perspective, over 600 teams have ended the year with a record of at least .568.
Obviously, in order to achieve this distinction, a lot of things have to happen. Simply put, everything has to go wrong early on and everything wrong later on. A lot of that is outside the manager’s control. That said, if everything is going right –well, the manager is one of things. I can’t see a team experiencing such a historic turnaround unless the guy running the club is having a good season. I have no idea what the future holds for Tracy at this point.
I have some other things I could say about those who didn’t win, but that’s all the time I have for right now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment