Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (36 page)

The major league record for intentional walks issued in a season is 116, by the San Diego Padres in 1974 (John McNamara). The top ten, if you are curious, are as follows:

The top fifteen teams on that list are all National League teams, and you might assume that this was because of the DH rule.

Actually, it isn’t, at least not entirely. Probably because of the influence of the Dodger organization, the intentional walk has always been much more popular in the National League than in the American League.

The intentional walk became an official stat in 1955.1 asked my computer to draw up a list of the teams issuing the most intentional walks in the years 1955–1960, the preexpansion era. The 1959 Pittsburgh Pirates (Danny Murtaugh) issued the most, 84, but the top sixteen teams on that list are all National League teams.

I drew up the same list for the next era, the 1961–1972 era (postexpansion, pre-DH). In that era there were twenty-two teams which issued 80 or more intentional walks. Twenty-one of the twenty-two were National League teams, the exception being the 1972 Cleveland Indians.

Most Successful Managers:

1. Tommy Lasorda

2. Whitey Herzog

3. Tony LaRussa

The “success scores” for Lasorda, Herzog, LaRussa, and Sparky Anderson are all almost the same, all 16 to 18. There was no one manager who was tremendously successful during the 1980s.

Most Controversial Manager:
Pete Rose

Others of Note:

Roger Craig

Dick Howser

Davey Johnson

Gene Mauch

John McNamara

Typical Manager Was:
Hal Lanier or Gene Michael—a light-hitting utility infielder from the 1960s. Don Zimmer, Lee Elia, Steve Boros, Chuck Cottier. Doc Edwards and Pat Corrales are the same, except they were catchers. The percentage of managers who never played in the majors began to increase in the early 1970s. By the mid-1980s, about one-fourth of major league managers had never played in the majors.

Percentage of Playing Managers:
1%

Most Second-Guessed Manager’s Moves:

1. In 1986, Boston manager John McNamara always put in Dave Stapleton for Bill Buckner at first base when he had a lead in the late innings. In Game Six of the 1986 World Series the Red Sox scored twice in the top of the tenth inning, grabbing a 5–3 lead. McNamara forgot to put Stapleton in the game. A two-out ground ball went between Buckner’s legs, scoring two runs for a 6–5 New York victory.

2. With two out in the ninth inning of the fifth (and deciding) game of the 1985 National League Playoff, the Dodgers led St. Louis 5–4. They were one out away from going to the World Series. Runners were on second and third, first base empty, and the Cardinals’ best hitter, Jack Clark, was at the plate.

Most people assumed that Tommy Lasorda would walk Clark and pitch to the on-deck hitter, Andy Van Slyke. He didn’t. Clark hit a home run, and the Cardinals went to the Series.

Everybody in the world second-guessed Lasorda for pitching to Clark, including Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog, who said, “I’ve always figured that if I can pitch to a guy making $1.3 million a year or a guy making $100,000 a year, I pitch to the guy making $100,000.”

As I’ve written elsewhere, the percentage calculations which drive strategic decisions in baseball are normally so close and so complicated that it is categorically impossible to state with any assurance what the correct course of action would be. This case is an exception: Lasorda’s decision, although it didn’t work out, was unquestionably the correct one. To load the bases with a one-run lead to let a right-hander pitch to a left-handed hitter (Van Slyke) would have been lunacy.

3. In the 1981 All-Star Game, Jim Frey used all of his players, and had to allow his pitcher (Dave Stieb) to bat in the ninth inning, with his team trailing by one run.

Clever Moves:
Al Oliver was a left-handed line-drive hitter who hit the ball hard on the nose more often than any other hitter of his era. He wasn’t the
best
hitter, because there’s more to the game than that, but if you bought the theory that the hitter succeeds when he hits the ball hard, then Al Oliver was the best hitter in baseball.

He was old by 1985, DHing or coming off the bench to pinch-hit for Toronto, but late in the season, he was on a tear. The Blue Jays also had a very strong right-handed DH, Cliff Johnson, and they also platooned at several other positions. The Kansas City relief ace was Dan Quisenberry, a right-handed submariner who, like most right-handed submariners, had trouble getting out left-handed hitters. To make things worse, Oliver was a low-ball hitter.

In Game Two of the American League Championship Series, Al Oliver beat Quisenberry with a tenth-inning single. In Game Four, he beat him again, with a ninth-inning double. Oliver’s swing was a perfect match for Quisenberry’s pitches. One didn’t get the feeling, frankly, that Quisenberry would ever get Oliver out—and that fact essentially took the Royals relief ace out of the series.

Down three games to one, Dick Howser had to figure a way to get Dan Quisenberry back in the series. He got a shutout in Game Five, from a lefty, which made it three games to two.

In Game Six, Howser started a right-handed pitcher, which got Oliver in the starting lineup. He switched to a left-handed pitcher, ordinarily a starter, in the sixth inning. Al Oliver sat down—and Quisenberry came in to get the save, knotting the series at three.

In Game Seven, Howser started his best pitcher, Bret Saberhagen. Bobby Cox, gambling that Howser wouldn’t use Saberhagen as a decoy, started his left-handed hitters, including Oliver. Howser pulled Saberhagen after three shutout innings, bringing in another left-handed starter. This left Bobby Cox with an impossible quandary: leave his lefthanders in the game, possibly letting them bat three times each against a lefty, or take Oliver and the others out, and let Quisenberry back in the game?

Cox took Oliver out. Quisenberry finished up, and the Royals were on to the World Series.

Bobby Cox is a great manager, and Dick Howser, in all honesty, was not. But at exactly the wrong moment, Cox let Howser get one step ahead of him.

The most
important
smart move of a manager in the 1980s was Tony LaRussa’s decision to make a relief ace out of Dennis Eckersley. Eckersley was a player known to carry around a huge ego, and he had won 150-plus games as a major league starter. By 1987 he seemed to be washed up. LaRussa, somehow, was able to convince Eckersley that he should accept the challenge of being a relief ace—and for the next six years, he was probably the most effective closer in the history of baseball.

Evolutions in Strategy:
The sacrifice bunt, early in the decade, reached its all-time nadir in popularity as a strategic weapon.

The stolen base, which made a comeback in the 1960s after decades of obsolescence, reached its plateau in 1976, and has remained at essentially the 1976 level ever since.

Evolution in the Role of the Manager:
Free agency fundamentally reshaped the role of the manager, probably to a greater extent than anything which had happened since the coming of general managers in the 1920s. Free agency—the right of a player to pick up and move once the season was over—transferred power from the manager to the player, and thus forced managers to become salesmen, rather than autocrats. With long-term contracts, a manager could no longer tell a player “Do this my way or get out.”

The most common way of looking at this is to say that the managers at that point lost all control of the players. A more accurate way to look at it, I think, is to say that the managers

a) lost
some
control over the players, and

b) were forced to become more resourceful in finding ways to maintain their authority.

An example of what
can
happen to a manager in this environment is Sparky Anderson with Mike Moore in Detroit, 1993–1995. Moore signed a long-term contract with the Tigers in 1993, but posted earned run averages of 5.22 in 1993, 5.42 in 1994, and 7.53 in 1995, despite which Anderson continued to run him out to the mound every fifth day until late 1995. Sparky’s view of the situation was, “We paid him a lot of money to pitch; I’ve got no choice but to pitch him.”

I don’t really understand the logic of this. I mean, you’re going to have to pay Mike Moore the money one way or the other, right? If you’ve got better pitchers, why do you have to keep pitching Mike Moore? What do you gain from it?

But in a more general way, there is no question that this does very often create a quandary for managers. If a player signs a five-year, $25-million-dollar contract, the manager, as a practical matter,
has
to play him until it becomes extremely clear that he’s worse than a replacement-level player.

Year of Birth:
1931

Herzog is within a few weeks of the same age as Mickey Mantle. Both were signed by the Yankees when they graduated from high school in 1949. Herzog got a bigger bonus.

Years Managed:
1973, 1975–1990

Record as a Manager:
1,281–1,125 .532

Managers for Whom He Played:
He began and ended his major league career playing for Charlie Dressen. In between, he also played for Cookie Lavagetto, Harry Craft, Bob Elliott, Paul Richards, Luman Harris, Billy Hitchcock, and Bob Scheffing. He also played for Ralph Houk in the minor leagues.

Others by Whom He Was Influenced:
Although he never played for the Yankees in the major leagues, Herzog was in the Yankee system from 1949 until April 1956, and was more influenced by Casey Stengel than by anyone else.

Characteristics As a Player:
Left-handed hitting outfielder, solidly built line-drive hitter, ran well until a leg injury in 1959 took most of his speed. Selective hitter, drew a lot of walks. Couldn’t hit left-handers, and had trouble with the breaking ball.

Herzog hit only .257 in an eight-year major league career, but with better luck he could easily have had a 1,500-game career. Three things prevented that from happening:

1) He was with the Yankees, who weren’t short of players. When Herzog hit .351 with McAlester in 1950, no one really got too excited.

2) He had reached Triple-A by age twenty (September 1952), but was drafted after the 1952 season and spent two crucial years in the United States Army.

3) On returning, he had a big year with Denver (1955) and was traded to the Senators, who parked his butt on the bench after he didn’t play too well in his rookie season. He got a chance to play again in 1959 and was playing extremely well for Kansas City, posting a .446 on-base percentage, when a combination of two quick leg injuries ended his season in early June. He was never a regular again, although he had some decent years off the bench.

WHAT HE BROUGHT TO A BALL CLUB

Was He an Intense Manager or More of an Easy-to-Get-Along-With Type?
He was fairly intense. He wasn’t grouchy, and he wasn’t a bitch-bitch-bitch type, but he established clear expectations for his players.

Was He More of an Emotional Leader or a Decision Maker?
Both, but I would say more of a decision maker.

Was He More of an Optimist or More of a Problem Solver?
He was a problem solver. You’ve seen the drawing of the two buzzards on a limb, and one of them says, “Patience, my ass. I say let’s kill something.” That’s Herzog; he didn’t believe in waiting around for something good to happen. He always wanted to
make
it happen.

He was like Casey in this respect, that what a guy did last year didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t read the stats and say, “Well, this is what this guy can do and this is what that guy can do, so I’ll play this guy.” That’s what 90% of the managers will do. Herzog looked at it more like “What are this guy’s skills, and what kind of effort is he giving, and what are this other guy’s skills, and what kind of effort is he giving?” He was going to play the guy who had more to offer.

HOW HE USED HIS PERSONNEL

Did He Favor a Set Lineup or a Rotation System?
He never used a set lineup. He moved people in and out of the lineup and up and down the batting order on a daily basis.

Did He Like to Platoon?
He did platoon, yes. Herzog knew that he himself couldn’t hit a left-hander, and looked for that in other players. Sometimes he saw it even when it wasn’t there. He platooned Andy Van Slyke, when he might have been better off to put Van Slyke in the lineup and let him play.

Because he had many switch-hitters in addition to his platoon tendencies, Herzog’s “Platoon percentages” (see “
The Manager’s Record
”) were extraordinarily high, probably over .85, possibly over .9, meaning that in some seasons 85 to 90% of his lineup would have had the platoon edge on a given day. The switch-hitters who were regulars for him included Vic Harris, Willie Wilson, U. L. Washington, Garry Templeton, Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Terry Pendleton, Vince Coleman, and Jose Oquendo.

Did He Try to Solve His Problems with Proven Players or with Youngsters Who Still May Have Had Something to Learn?
Youngsters, 90% of the time. Almost the first thing he said after he was hired to manage the Kansas City Royals was “Frank White is now a regular.” An exception would be the bullpen problem in St. Louis, when he went after Bruce Sutter because he didn’t want to put an an inexperienced pitcher into the closer role.

How Many Players Did He Make Regulars Who Had Not Been Regulars Before, and Who Were They?
In Texas, Vic Harris and Jeff Burroughs. In Kansas City, Frank White, Al Cowens, Willie Wilson, and U.L. Washington, plus pitchers Larry Gura, Rich Gale, and Mark Littell. In St. Louis, David Green, Willie McGee, Lonnie Smith, Terry Pendleton, Mike LaValliere, Vince Coleman, and Jose Oquendo, plus pitchers Joaquin Andujar (sort of; see below), Gary Mathews, Joe Magrane, John Stuper, Dave LaPoint, and Todd Worrell.

Many of these were unexpected promotions to regular status—for example, the Royals before Herzog were dubious about Frank White’s bat. The Yankees, who had Willie McGee, didn’t think he was regular material. Vince Coleman landed in the 1985 opening-day lineup after hitting .257 at Louisville in 1984, and Larry Gura was regarded as potentially a pretty decent middle reliever until Herzog agreed to give him a couple of starts and see what he could do.

The moves that best define Herzog, however, were the acquisitions of Lonnie Smith and Joaquin Andujar. Lonnie Smith was fast and a perpetual .320 hitter in the Phillies’ minor league system, but had led American Association outfielders in errors in 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979. The actual errors were just the tip of the iceberg; you really had to see him play. Lonnie had very small hands and feet. The small hands often allowed the ball to slip away as he was attempting to throw, and the small feet caused him to fall down in the outfield at least once every game. It wasn’t as damaging as it looked, because, since Smith fell down chasing the ball all the time, he knew that you couldn’t lie there and look embarrassed, you had to hop right back up and start chasing that ball again, and he did. His defensive effort was very good, and his arm was pretty good if he could get a grip on the ball. He threw out an awful lot of base runners who would try to take advantage of him. A single would bounce away from him, Lonnie would fall down, the runner would try to take second, and Lonnie would throw him out; this happened a lot, and he often led the league in assists as well as errors.

Anyway, Smith’s career had been on hold for at least five years, because the Phillies had Greg Luzinski in left field, and they just couldn’t feature this guy playing center or right, no matter what he might hit. Herzog said, in essence, “Okay, he’s got some problems in the outfield, we’re not going to worry about that.” He traded a couple of washed-up pitchers for Lonnie and put him in left field; Smith stole 68 bases and scored 120 runs, and the Cardinals won the World Series.

Joaquin Andujar was a hell of a nice guy most of the time, but he was one of baseball’s leading head cases. He spent six long years in the Cincinnati Reds system, because Sparky Anderson just couldn’t stand him, then spent five-plus years tormenting the Houston Astros with flashes of brilliance. He made the All-Star team twice with early-season runs, but finished 9–10 for Houston as a rookie, then 11–8, 5–7, 12–12, and 3–8. He was 2–3 at the strike in the 1981. That’s 42 wins and 48 losses, if you’re counting, and Houston manager Bill Virdon was mighty tired of counting.

Herzog said, in essence, “So the guy is a little bit different; we’re not going to worry about that.” Andujar went 6–1 for the Cardinals when play resumed in 1981, then went 15–10 in 1982, 20–14 in 1984, and 21–12 in 1985.

Andujar’s agent was David Hendricks; I knew David well in those days. David worked twelve hours a week, at least, trying to keep Joaquin focused. Herzog hated agents, but he understood that he and Hendricks had a common interest in keeping Andujar pointed at the goal line, and they worked at it together. Herzog understood something about Andujar that Bill Virdon had never been able to take in: The less he pitched, the crazier he acted. The worst thing you could do to Joaquin Andujar was to stop pitching him. For Houston, Joaquin would have a bad outing or two, then he would do something or say something inappropriate, and Virdon would send him to the bullpen to get straightened out. This remedy was 100% certain to make Joaquin do or say something even more inappropriate, and a cycle of frustration and failure was well established.

In St. Louis, Andujar would have a bad outing, and then he would do or say something kind of different, and Herzog would send him back to the mound and he would pitch a three-hit shutout. And people would slap their knees and say, “Boy, that Joaquin, he’s a character, ain’t he?” Whitey worked with Joaquin Andujar much the same way that Connie Mack had worked with Rube Waddell.

Did He Prefer to Go with Good Offensive Players or Did He Like the Glove Men?
Herzog’s offenses were always based around speed, which is more valuable on defense than it is on offense, so this dilemma never presented itself. The genius of Herzog’s system was that he was able to find the
offensive
ability within players who were generally regarded as
defensive
players.

Eight of Herzog’s teams led their league in fielding percentage. Despite Lonnie Smith, none led the league in errors.

Did He Like an Offense Based on Power, Speed, or High Averages?
Speed, obviously. Nine of Herzog’s teams led the league in stolen bases and eight led in triples, whereas none led the league in home runs or slugging percentage.

In the main, this was a reaction to the parks that he was given, which were large parks with artificial turf. Herzog wouldn’t have tried to play what became known as “Whitey Ball” had he been hired to manage, let us say, the Tigers. But it was also a perfect accommodation to Herzog’s philosophy, because what Herzog looked for were
athletes,
guys who could run and throw. Simply stated, the large parks tended to take the home runs out of the game and allow the best athletes to win.

Did He Use the Entire Roster or Did He Keep People Sitting on the Bench?
Herzog said many times that if a guy was good enough to be on his roster, he was good enough to play. He wasn’t going to have a guy on his bench that he was afraid to put in the lineup in a critical situation.

Thus, when September came and the rosters were expanded, Herzog would call up the fastest guy in his system, whoever that was, and start using him as a pinch runner, right in the middle of a pennant race. Everybody on his bench, for the most part, could count on 60 games and 125 at bats a year, with the exception maybe of a utility infielder, who might have 80 games but very few at bats, or a pure pinch hitter like Steve Braun, who might have 70 games but 70 plate appearances.

Did He Build His Bench Around Young Players Who Could Step into the Breach If Need Be, or Around Veteran Role-Players Who Had Their Own Functions Within a Game?
Young players in the main, with two or three veterans in clearly defined roles. What Herzog absolutely
wouldn’t
have on his bench was a twenty-eight-year-old guy who resented the fact that he wasn’t playing every day. He thought those kind of guys were poison. He wanted the guys who were
hungry,
who appreciated the opportunity, or those who had accepted that this was the only way they were going to be able to stay in the major leagues.

Herzog had wonderful benches; this is one of the most important, but least recognized, features of his style. On his 1977 team in Kansas City, which won 102 games, he had Joe Zdeb and Tom Poquette, who platooned in left field, Pete LaCock, a left-handed hitting first baseman, and John Wathan, a right-handed hitting catcher/first baseman/outfielder who was always one step faster than you thought he was. All of these guys hit .290 or better, and they understood that their opportunities were limited, so if they wanted to stay in the majors they had better get in there and figure out some way to make something happen. On his best team in St. Louis he had Tito Landrum, Art Howe, Steve Braun, Mike Jorgensen—the same kind of guys.

GAME MANAGING AND USE OF STRATEGIES

Did He Go for the Big-Inning Offense, or Did He Like to Use the One-Run Strategies?
He liked speed, as opposed to one-run strategies. His best teams were mostly below the league average in sacrifice bunts, although his 1986 team, which finished under .500, led the league in sac bunts.

Herzog’s teams, in addition to being fast, were enormously aggressive on the bases, thus ran themselves out of many innings. Hal McRae, one of Herzog’s favorite players, used to run into 25 outs a year, at least. If a ball might be a single or a double, Herzog expected you to leave the batter’s box thinking “Double.” Another manager might yell at you for getting thrown out. Herzog would get on you if you didn’t get a base that you could have gotten.

Did He Pinch-Hit Much, and If So, When?
He pinch-hit a good deal. His best teams all led the league or were near the league lead in pinch hitters’ batting average, in large part because he gave his bench players enough at bats to keep them sharp.

Was There Anything Unusual About His Lineup Selection?
One of his teams had a lineup of Jack Clark and seven leadoff men. That was a little unusual.

Herzog’s lineups were dominated by a certain
kind
of player—a thin, fast guy, often a switch-hitter, who might not have been valued by many organizations. It’s not just that Herzog let these guys play, but that they played
better
for him than they did for anybody else. Dave Nelson played one year for Whitey Herzog, and hit .286 with 43 stolen bases. The rest of his career, he was a .230 hitter. Herzog communicated to these players what he wanted them to do: slap the ball over the infield and run like hell.