Managers Come and Managers Go

So yesterday, Joe Girardi was fired as the manager of the New York Yankees.  OK, it wasn't actually being "fired", this was in the sense that his contract was up and the Yankees decided not to renew it, but heck, tomato, tomahto; the outcome is the same -- gold watch and look for a new job.

Managing in New York has to be a real challenge.  You have a bunch of newspapers and screaming radio call-in listeners, and those are worse because, well, New Yorkers are unpleasant to listen to even if they're saying something nice to you.  It's sort of like wondering how Germans reproduce, since their language is immensely guttural, and listening to bar pick-up lines in German would turn off the most desperate girl.  And I speak German.

But I digress.

Girardi, who was a catcher in the majors for a long time, had managed the Yankees for ten years.  Was he successful?  Well, that's kind of hard to tell.  It depends on your standards.

We'll start by saying up front that I hate the Yankees with a white-hot passion that ... OK, you've read it a dozen times before. "Yeah, we got it, you hate the Yankees." I hear you.  So I am always inclined to regard their players as overrated and their fans as obnoxious.  I mean, Derek Jeter, even though he now owns a part of a different major-league team, is a saint in New York, and he was literally the worst defensive player (by Defensive Runs Saved) of any player at any position in the history of baseball.  It doesn't get more overrated than that.

Over those ten years, his Yankees won one world championship, their only one in the 21st Century.  They made the playoffs six times, but won the division only three times and were the wild card team three others.  Four times, they failed to reach the playoffs.  I think there are teams for which that would be a reasonable performance -- Detroit, maybe, or the Angels of whatever part of metropolitan LA they currently claim to represent.  New York is definitely not one of those.  World Series or bust.

[Aside ... every time I hear the formal name of the Angels, which last I looked is the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim", I cringe.  Anaheim is a different town, so it's either LA or Anaheim, right?  Reminds me of the "Honeymooners" episode where Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton come across a snack spread that they didn't know was actually dog food.  They try to think of a product name to get investment from Ralph's boss, Mr. Marshall, and Norton suggests "Kramden's Delicious Marshall."  Maybe you had to be there, but when I hear "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" I think of Jackie Gleason eating dog food.]

At any rate, Girardi's track record over those ten years might have been good enough for Kramden's Delicious ... I mean the Angels, but the Yankee owners and their fans expect a ring every year or so.  The question, of course, is the extent to which a manager can actually influence the won/loss record of a team enough to where it is worth replacing them -- or securing them for a long contract.

There is an interesting statistical analysis called the Pythagorean W/L record.  The concept is that, over a season, if, for example your team scores the same number of runs as it gives up, your record should theoretically be .500 (81-81).  If your record is better than that, it is because you "leveraged your runs better" and won close games, and therefore were better managed.  For not just equal runs, but for any run differential, there is an expected (Pythagorean) number of wins your team should have, and a W/L record very different from that suggests good or bad managing.

In six of the ten years, including 2017, Girardi's Yankees outperformed their Pythagorean record, and in two others the difference was negligible.  Only twice did they underperform the expected wins based on their run differential.  So I suppose you could say that he was pretty good, at least if you put much weight in the Pythagorean notion.  For the record, in the 12 years that his predecessor, Joe Torre, was the manager, they outperformed their expected W/L record nine times and matched it once more.  They made the playoffs all twelve years.

During both of their tenures (Girardi and Torre), the Yankees had gargantuan payrolls relative to the rest of the league, leading in payroll almost all that time and being a tad behind only the Dodgers the last couple or so -- but still huge.  During a lot of Torre's tenure, the Yankees spent almost twice as much as the next-highest-paying team.  If your team is going to dump a few hundred million a year on salaries, you ought to be expected to win.  And that's where the 60% making-the-playoffs record probably compromised Girardi's future.

As of the end of the World Series, Girardi's contract would have expired regardless.  It was a reasonable time for the Yankees to decide on their future dugout direction, without incurring a payout to end a contract.  So from the team's standpoint, if there were to be a fresh start, here was the logical time.

Their GM had been trying to clear out bad contracts and bring up a lot of players from the farm system.  That had been with mixed success; some could really hit and others were less than league-average performers, but it was at least a strategy, and they're a year or so into it.  Managing younger players -- and let's point out that for all the jabber in the press, the team is still not that young -- is a different skill set.  If they plan to continue another few rookie call-ups (and they'll have to dump even more contracts to make room to do so), perhaps a manager with a heavy track record in developing them might work.

The point?  I truly believe that the influence of managers is strongly overestimated.  There are indeed two fairly unrelated aspects to it; the clubhouse (handling players and their egos and issues) and the dugout (the strategy inside a game).  There is also the organizational aspect, preparing the players to play by a well-planned spring training program that results in teams as well-prepared to win in April as they will be in July.

What is promoted as a choice between a "young players' manager" and a "veteran" is really a decision as to whether the GM and ownership believe that clubhouse management or field generalship is more important, and what spring training is all about.

Joe Girardi had all that in his background, at least enough to take a highly-paid roster to the playoffs 60% of the time.  He will be replaced by someone whose principal attribute will be that he is not Joe Girardi.  The Yankees organization for at least eighty years has been unwilling to admit its mistakes (sort of like Obama, but I digress again).  They always had planned to take the same 25 players that came out of spring training through the entire season as if they could not admit to personnel errors.

The next manager of the Yankees will be there for a long time, for just that reason.  But I'm willing to bet at least 78 cents that it won't make a difference who it is.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.