Read Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The Online
Authors: Bill James
Tags: #SPORTS &, #RECREATION/Baseball/History
Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (13 page)
How Did He Change the Game?
In many small ways. McCarthy was the first manager to divide his pitching staff into starters and relievers, ending a fifteen-year period in which all pitchers did both.
I believe that McCarthy, as a part of his “professional image” campaign, was the first manager to insist on a dress code for his team when they were traveling. This is now standard among coaches in all sports, especially college coaches.
HANDLING THE PITCHING STAFF
Did He Like Power Pitchers, or Did He Prefer to Go with the People Who Put the Ball in Play?
He liked power pitchers. Within reason, he was willing to put up with pitchers who did not have outstanding control.
Did He Stay with His Starters, or Go to the Bullpen Quickly?
Early in his career, McCarthy did not use his bullpen. In his first two seasons with the Cubs (1926–1927) McCarthy had no pitcher with more than two saves (figured later, of course). He had no bullpen in his early years with the Yankees.
In 1936 he split his staff into starters and relievers, with Pat Malone and Johnny Murphy leading the relief corps. The 1936 Yankees had 21 saves, far more than any other American League team. Murphy was McCarthy’s relief ace for several years after that—in a sense, the first career relief ace. Yankee save totals built up over the years, and they led the league in saves several times under McCarthy.
Not to make too much of this, but managers are often forced out of the profession when the game passes them by. In McCarthy’s era there were managers who continued to expect their best pitchers to win the game, and never did adapt to the idea of using relievers. McCarthy adapted.
Did He Use a Four-Man Rotation?
It wasn’t really possible to do so in McCarthy’s era. His best starting pitchers in the late thirties, Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing, usually started no more than 30 times a year. In 1941 and again in 1942 he had seven starting pitchers who started 13 to 27 times apiece.
Did He Use the Entire Staff, or Did He Try to Get Five or Six People to Do Most of the Work?
He didn’t ride his top starters real hard; he used all of the starters. The workload of his relievers, including Johnny Murphy, was very light.
How Long Would He Stay with a Starting Pitcher Who Was Struggling?
If it was one of his best pitchers, a long time. Several of McCarthy’s teams led the league in both complete games and saves.
What Was His Strongest Point As a Manager?
I believe that Joe McCarthy was the greatest manager in baseball history. He had a tenacious memory, never forgot any little thing that an opposing player might do, for example. He was well organized. Unlike McGraw, who tried to handle every detail of his team’s routine, from hitting ground balls for teenagers to checking the hotel receipts to see what his players were eating, McCarthy hired good coaches and relied upon them.
He had definite ideas of what kind of players he wanted, and what he wanted them to do. He was tolerant of diverse players—drinking men, players who had the reputation for being trouble. He laid out clear expectations for how they were to behave, and as long as they were within those guidelines, they were okay. He did not like players who were “colorful” or who wanted to be the center of attention. He didn’t like players who were emotional. He wanted players who were calm, mature, and focused on the job.
McCarthy communicated well with his players—not by talking a
lot
, but by talking very little. McCarthy’s absolute conviction that there was no shortage of good players gave him the upper hand in his relationship with his players. That conviction was based on two things:
1) McCarthy could see ability in a player who hadn’t done anything in the past.
2) He had no fear of using a young player.
If you want one example of what made McCarthy successful, the best answer is in Hack Wilson. For New York in 1925, Hack Wilson hit .239, and was sent out. The Cubs drafted him off a minor league roster that winter.
There is a story, which is printed in several books, about how the Giants lost Hack Wilson … it has something to do with a roster foul-up, somebody was supposed to protect Wilson and didn’t. It’s just that: a story. After Wilson got to be good, writers would ask John McGraw how he let Hack Wilson get away, and he’d tell this CYA story about how some team secretary or minor league franchise operator messed up on him. If you know anything at all about John McGraw, the idea of his sending a young player he liked to the minors to let somebody else teach him to play baseball is ludicrous. The fact is, McGraw had concluded that Wilson couldn’t play.
Hack Wilson hit .239 the season before McCarthy got ahold of him; he drove in 30 runs, and his career high remained 57. He played for McCarthy for five years, during which his averages were .321, .318, .313, .345, and .356. He played almost every game, led the National League in home runs four times, and his RBI counts were 109, 129, 120, 159, and 190.
McCarthy left, and the next year Wilson hit .261 with 13 homers and 62 RBI. He never hit .300 again, never came close to leading the league in home runs or RBI again, and drove in 100 runs only one more time.
If you look at Vern Stephens, twenty-some years later, the pattern is almost the same: Stephens was vastly better for McCarthy than he ever was before or after.
What made him that way? Hack Wilson’s biography, by Robert S. Boone and Gerald Grunska, gives two hints:
When reporters asked Hack the reasons for his 1931 eclipse, he replied that Hornsby had locked his bat on 3–1 and 2–0 counts. “Joe McCarthy always had me hitting. That gave me an edge over the pitchers.” (page 112)
McCarthy not only knew that Wilson should be allowed to swing when he wanted, but he also understood that his slugger had an unusual need for public approval. If the crowds failed to applaud, McCarthy would take their place. McCarthy also brought a toughness to the Cubs organization. (Page 62)
Well, the right to swing away may have had something to do with it, but I think the key was that McCarthy laid down rules and enforced them. Wilson was a player who needed those rules. McCarthy
knew
what time his players went to bed. If Wilson stayed out late one night he might not say anything, but if he did it again it was time to sit him down and have a talk with him.
It was people skills, in short—not people skills like Chuck Tanner, where everybody liked him and did whatever the hell they wanted to, but
practical
people skills. Chuck Tanner knew what his players
wanted
. Joe McCarthy knew what his players
needed
.
If There Was No Professional Baseball, What Would He Probably Have Done with His Life?
He’d have become the chief of the Philadelphia Fire Department.
Pie Traynor was discreet enough not to stick needles under another team’s fingernails, but then, Pie Traynor didn’t have an army of local reporters looking for a story, either. The chronology of the 1938 Pirates closely parallels that of the 1934 New York Giants. Both teams, at various points, had records of 8–3, 13–10, 43–25, 48–28, 52–30, 57–32, and 61–35. Both teams had five-game leads in early September, and both teams still held the lead with a few games to play. Both teams lost the pennant by 2 games.
There is an exception to every rule, and the 1938 Pirates are the exception to the rule that the press will fry you if you get ahead and then lose a pennant race at the last minute. The Pirates, 62–35 on August 9, went 24–29 down the stretch, and were beaten by a Chicago team which is arguably the worst championship team the National League has ever had. In spite of this, the pennant race has been written into history not as a collapse by the Pirates, but as a victory by the Cubs. The “Homer in the Gloaming” is essentially all that is now remembered of that pennant race.
The
1939 Spalding Guide
blamed the collapse of the Pirates on their starting pitchers:
There was not much fault to find with the batting of the team. The trouble was with the staying power of the pitchers. They could travel along at a good gait until toward the close of a game, when they would show a tendency to weaken.
The Pirates had finished almost last in the league in complete games, with 57. In the 1930s this was considered a character flaw. Mace Brown, a reliever, led the team in wins, with 15. It was the first time in baseball history a pure reliever had led his team in wins.
The 1938 Pirates were 34 runs better than the league average in runs scored, 43 runs better than average in runs allowed—thus, the statement that the batters were good but the pitching failed is incorrect. Forbes Field was essentially a neutral park at this time, with a small tendency to favor hitters, rather than pitchers.
What did happen to the team? Reversing John Foster’s appraisal, I would give Pie Traynor good marks for his handling of the pitching staff. He got above-average performance out of an undistinguished pitching staff by giving his bullpen a chance to help Fout. He was ahead of his time in the handling of his pitching staff.
But, like Leo Durocher in 1969 and Don Zimmer in 1977, Traynor rode his starting lineup into the ground. All of his regulars except the catcher had more than 600 plate appearances, and all played more than 90% of the team’s games. His catcher, Al Todd, caught 132 games, more than anyone else in the major leagues. The guy wasn’t even very good; why couldn’t Traynor afford to give him a day off now and then? A player’s stats look much more impressive with 600 at bats than they do with 450, so this gives the impression that the Pirate offense was strong. The Pirates scored 4.90 runs per game through August 9, but slumped badly in the closing weeks, while the team ERA actually improved.
That was Pie Traynor’s fourth full season as manager of the Pirates, and the fourth time he had kept the team in contention. The team had gone 86–67, 84–70, 86–68, and 86–64. They had an off season in 1939, and Traynor never managed again.
Unlike most of their modern counterparts, the major league managers of 1934 all had been, or were still, outstanding players. The playing credentials of seven of them were good enough for admission into baseball’s Hall of Fame.
—G. H. Fleming,
The Dizziest Season
Fleming is, of course, drifting out to left field when he says that all of the managers of 1934 had been outstanding players. Joe McCarthy never played in the major leagues, and several of the other managers (Connie Mack, Casey Stengel, Bill McKechnie) were certainly not outstanding players.
As long as there have been managers, there have been managers who were not outstanding players. In 1885 there were twenty-one men who managed major league teams for ten or more games, eight of whom had never themselves played in the major leagues:
| 1885 | |
|---|---|
| Outstanding Players | 3 |
| Good Players | 5 |
| Fringe Players | 5 |
| Didn’t Play in the Majors | 8 |
| Good or Outstanding | 38% |
This count is somewhat misleading, for two reasons. First, the leagues at that time were very new. Probably some of the managers of 1885 had been good players or even tremendous players, but were finished or nearly finished before the the two major leagues of 1885 (the National League and the American Association) were organized. Second, the job of “manager” was not as well defined then as it is now, so that at times it is even somewhat difficult to say in retrospect whom we should consider the “manager.” There were, in the 1880s, bench coaches, playing coaches, owners-who-also-ran-the-team, and people who were called “managers,” but whose duties were more in line with what we now consider a traveling secretary.
But we have to start somewhere. The use of outstanding players as managers became more common over time, so that by 1945 about 82% of major league managers had been good or outstanding players:
| 1885 | 1901 | 1916 | 1930 | 1945 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outstanding Players | 3 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 8 |
| Good Players | 5 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 6 |
| Fringe Players | 5 | 5 | 14 | 7 | 2 |
| Didn’t Play in the Majors | 8 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Good or Outstanding | 38% | 56% | 43% | 53% | 82% |
To draw up this chart, we made arbitrary decisions about who was a good player, who was a fringe player, etc. You would agree with 95% of these classifications; they’re mostly obvious. In both 1930 and 1945, the one major league pilot who hadn’t played in the majors was Joe McCarthy. So to some extent, Fleming is on track. The managers of that time
did
include many men who had been outstanding players.
For the last fifty years, we’ve gone in the other direction. The percentage of major league managers who were outstanding players has steadily declined:
| 1945 | 1960 | 1975 | 1990 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outstanding Players | 8 | 6 | 5 | 3 |
| Good Players | 6 | 6 | 7 | 10 |
| Fringe Players | 2 | 8 | 13 | 12 |
| Didn’t Play in the Majors | 1 | 1 | 5 | 8 |
| Good or Outstanding | 82% | 57% | 40% | 39% |
To have a major league manager who hadn’t played at all in the major leagues was still uncommon until the early 1970s. By 1990, the last point of our study, 61% of the managers were either fringe players or had not played in the majors. The three 1990 managers who were listed as outstanding players were Frank Robinson, Joe Torre, and Red Schoendienst, although arguments can be made that Davey Johnson and Lou Piniella would also deserve to be called outstanding.
It may be that the percentage of managers who had been outstanding players was pushed downward from 1950 to 1990 because many of the best players were blacks and Latins, who were almost never hired to manage. In recent years Felipe Alou, Cito Gaston, Don Baylor, and Dusty Baker have all gotten a chance to manage, and have all had some success. Thus, it may be that the number of managers who were outstanding players is now headed
upward
, not downward.
| Master Of the fourteen highest-scoring teams since 1900, nine were managed by Joe McCarthy. Six of those nine teams were Yankee teams. The 1931 Yankees, McCarthy’s first New York team, scored 1,067 runs, the most of any team since 1900. The 1936 Yankees scored 1,065, second-most since 1900, and the 1932, 1937, 1938, and 1939 Yankee teams are also among the top fourteen teams in runs scored. But of the five highest-scoring non-Yankee teams since 1901, three were also managed by Joe McCarthy. The most runs ever scored by a non-Yankee team were 1,027, by the 1950 Red Sox, managed by Joe McCarthy for the first half of the season. The 1930 Cubs, managed by McCarthy until the closing days of the season, scored 998 runs, missing the modern National League record by only six runs. The 1929 Cubs, despite an injury to Rogers Hornsby which basically wiped out the season of the greatest right-handed hitter in National League history, still scored 982 runs. This is the third-highest total in modern National League history—but the ninth-best total for a team managed by Joe McCarthy. |
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