Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 31: Davey Johnson, How Much Managers Matter, and the Ideal GM-Manager Relationship

Episode Date: August 29, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss sabermetric managerial favorite Davey Johnson’s impact on the Nationals, whether certain managers can make their players play better, and what the ideal relationship between a GM and manager might be.

Good morning and welcome to episode 31 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Baseball Prospectus podcast in New York, New York. I am Ben Lindberg in Long Beach, California in his Honda Fit. It is Sam Miller with the door closed today. The door is closed. I'm roasting. And why is the door closed? We got a complaint about the crickets. Yes. I noticed myself last night that the crickets were particularly loud, but I thought it was a pleasant sound as I am a city boy who doesn't get to hear crickets except when I talk to Sam every night. Well, I bow to the pressure of basically any person who tells me to do something, and it was only one complaint. If I got one person saying they missed the crickets,

then tomorrow we can have a reunion, a big reunion show with the cricket. If Sam gets, let's say, at least two emails tomorrow requesting crickets, then we will have the door open on the Honda Fit tomorrow so we can just control Sam's recording situation and in temperature by reader request or listener request. It is really really hot in here. Okay then let's talk about things. Before we begin begin i have an omission oh no um i got a tweet from vanessa dembski who pointed out that uh she's a new subscriber to the podcast which we appreciate and she pointed out that most frustrated braves fans could tell you without citing babbitt that mccann hits into the shift way too often. So apparently that is a thing that people have, have advanced as a explanation for why his average is so much lower this year

and why his BABIP is so much lower is that he is hitting into the shift often. Fascinating. Yeah. I don't know if that can explain the entire drop, but perhaps I will have to look into it. So onto our new topics. What is yours? Davy Johnson.

Really? Is that seriously? Is that yours is Davy Johnson? Yeah. What are the odds? I was actually dreading this show because I couldn't quite put you on a topic, and I was afraid you were going to either pick something I had no clue on or you were going to pick something I didn't want to talk about. And so I was kind of going through the possibilities and this is fine. I mean,

I don't like this show going more than 10 minutes. So this is great as far as I'm concerned. I have a backup, I guess. No, you don't. You said Davy Johnson. We're talking about Davy Johnson. All right. Doubling Up. I like Doubling Up episodes. Okay. This said Davy Johnson. We're talking about Davy Johnson. All right. Doubling up. I like doubling up episodes. Okay. This is the third double up episode, and I've liked all of them.

All right. Let's talk about Davy Johnson. Well, so do you want to start, or should I start, or do you just – The background? Yeah, I can – you want me to go? Sure. Sure. So for most of my time reading Baseball Perspectives, Davy Johnson was held up by stat head writers as the, you know him returning was like the idea of Neutral Milk Hotel returning or something like that. It was just this super hip idea.

And the funny thing about it is that, to be honest, I never really knew why everybody liked Davey so much. I know he didn't intentionally walk many guys, but otherwise I just knew that people liked him and I didn't really know why. And so he's having a great year this year. And one thing that's interesting is that he isn't actually that unorthodox compared to his peers. He basically is intentionally walking as much as anybody else. He's sacrificing about league average. And I wouldn't really be able to explain why stat heads love him. And yet I have, I mean, he is having a great year. And I do think that he is probably...

When you say he's having a great year, do you mean... I'm saying the Nationals are having... Yeah, the Nationals are having a great year. Do you mean the Nationals? I'm saying the Nationals are having a great year. And so this week Jason Wirth said that they wouldn't be in first place if Jim Riggleman were still the manager. And Johnson also drew a distinction between himself and Riggleman. He said that the old regime was too obsessed with going the other way at the plate instead of taking what the pitcher gives you and hitting a little more aggressively. going the other way at the plate instead of taking what the pitcher gives you and hitting a little more aggressively and i think this is interesting because we tend to mostly acknowledge that manager influence is hard to identify and it might be overstated but rarely do i see any analysts give

the manager credit for the players playing well that's just sort of, I think, kind of just assumed to be to the players credit, not the managers. And Chris Jaffe wrote a great book a few years ago called Evaluating Baseball Managers. And part of his premise is that the manager does affect how well players play, and that you can measure this and that some managers show a persistent ability to get good performances from hitters or from pitchers or from both. And Johnson at the time ranked 11th all time on the list for getting extra runs out of his hitters based on what they did for other managers. Exactly. Yeah. And then he was ranked 25th all time overall as a manager. And so I guess if I were to have a question about Davey Johnson,

I would probably just want to know whether you think that it's good analysis or dangerous analysis to tie a manager to his player's performance. And also, how would you decide who to vote for for manager of the year? I think it is unsatisfying analysis because there's no way to verify it, I don't think. I mean, even if you compare what a player did for certain managers, I don't know, it seems to me like there could be some sort of confounding variable there, and you have to adjust for a whole lot of things

to make sure that you're comparing it. I mean, you're factoring in aging and park, and, I mean, it could be another coach or something. I know when people used to do those studies on the Braves pitchers and Leo Mazzoni and saying that he had some measurable effect on them, it was kind of hard to separate him from Bobby Cox, who was also there. So I don't know.

I think statistically it's very difficult to do and not something that I would necessarily find very convincing. But I think it exists. I doubt it's the sort of thing that, I mean, I doubt any manager just sort of radiates some aura that applies equally to all his players or even most of his players. I would think it's more of a sort of an isolated thing where the manager is able to unlock some potential from some particular player more so than affecting everyone equally or possibly it is just sort of an attitude uh but i i find it

hard to accept that a kind of a manager just implementing some mindset on the team could improve the entire team just because every player is different and has a different personality and it's hard for me to imagine a manager's motivation tactics motivating all of his players at any one time well i don't think anybody's saying all of his players or the entire team i mean if a win is worth five million dollars and a manager can squeeze 10 runs out of his offense more than another manager that's a pretty good return considering most managers, I don't believe, make $5 million in a year. And, I mean, there's always, I think, a strong temptation for writers and beat writers and such to attribute far more than one or two

or three wins to a manager. And I think that probably it is pretty obvious that if managers could swing teams fortunes by the 10 or 15 or 20 wins that manager of the year voters want to credit them with, they would get paid a lot more than three and four million dollars a year. I mean, if the sport is not dumb. GMs are not dumb. And if a manager had that power, then you would see managers making $30 or $40 million. I think that that is the idea or that is the attitude that probably manager of the year voters have, and that's nonsense. voters have, and that's nonsense. However, I mean, we're just talking about maybe a couple wins,

maybe a couple wins would make a manager a great success, probably, don't you think? Yes, definitely. I mean, I think people often think about it as, I mean, they compare it to having a boss that you like. Everyone has i wouldn't know anything about that yeah right i mean most people have had the experience of working for a boss they don't particularly like and maybe have worked for one they don't mind at least um and i just want to be i want to be clear here that i was talking about ben ben is the boss i don't like any previous managers i've ever had or bosses i've ever had that was not about you that was about ben ben is the boss i don't like any previous managers i've ever had or bosses i've ever had that was not about you that was about ben it was terrible yes uh and so people i mean i think i have probably worked harder for certain people than than other people in the past um

because if you have a great relationship with your boss, you perhaps want to please him and will not mail in your performance as you might for some other boss. And so people sort of see it as a similar situation that a player might want to play hard for his manager, which I understand, but I also think it's very, very different in that when we work for a boss, we are trying to do that in a self-serving way also, in that we want to advance our own career prospects. And a player just sort of always has a lot of motivation to do that just because a player is never very far away from being a free agent

and being on the open market, and he's sort of always playing for the 29 other teams. So I don't know. I wonder whether players would really give so much more effort for a particular manager that it would be a huge effect. But as you said, it doesn't have to be a huge effect. It can be a small effect and still be important. I actually wanted to talk about Davy Johnson, but not about Davy Johnson so much as an incident he was just involved in, Davey Johnson so much as an incident he was just involved in, where he and Mike Rizzo,

who is the general manager of the Nationals, were, I guess, overheard arguing in a very heated way following the Nationals' loss to the Phillies on Sunday, which was a sloppy loss, and it was their fourth loss in a row, and maybe some frustration boiled over about that. And Rizzo said that the argument lasted a couple minutes, followed by a calmer conversation of 15 minutes. And at one point, according to the report, Johnson, and I quote, sarcastically suggested that Rizzo should manage the team himself. And so they kind of got together for the press and the cameras today or yesterday, if you're listening to this on Wednesday, and just kind of made up. And Rizzo said, Davey and I talk after every game. We talk about the goods and the bads of each and every game. And this was probably, I was a little too emotional. We're both pretty passionate and I was a little frustrated. I probably could have tabled it until the next morning, but I didn't. So we don't know exactly what they

were arguing about. But I mean, I think it's hard to not wonder whether this has anything to do with Strasburg. Yay, we got there. Yes, we got there. And he started last night, but we're not going to talk about that. But, you know, Rizzo has kind of been reported all along as the guy who is driving this. Johnson has been portrayed as a guy who's just kind of going along with it because he's getting the order from above. So I don't know that this has anything to do with that. But I kind of wonder what you think the ideal relationship is between a general manager and a manager what is best for the team um i wrote

something i guess earlier this year about how i thought that these days uh the front office should really take a more active role in making team decisions um just because the I feel like the information I guess that the balance of information has shifted towards the front office as opposed to the coaching staff these days just because there are so many people in the front office who are devoted to analyzing things in a way that they weren't 20 years ago or so. And so that is a perspective that in many cases the coaching staff doesn't have and maybe has a longer view of things or a more nuanced view of things. Not that the manager and the coaching staff should not have a very important role in deciding things because they know the players and are around the players and know how the players react.

But I sort of felt that maybe tactical decisions, maybe there's some sense to the front office controlling that a bit more these days than they used to. And of course, the problem with that is that the managers who are around today are used to autonomy and being able to make those sorts of decisions themselves. So it always creates a conflict and a tension between the two. And just having spoken to a few front office people about that over the years uh i know they are often frustrated um or at times certainly frustrated by decisions made by their manager their coaching staff uh that they just kind of let go because it's it's a political thing and it's not worth making a huge issue over it. I mean, how do you see that relationship breaking down today? Is it any different than it might have been decades ago? I don't know. I think that there is a group mentality that a manager builds with his team with his players that is

crucial to getting through a long year that is in a way sort of militaristic and isolated and and I think that probably it would not go over well if the players felt like the decisions were coming from the guys in the front office. And so I think the manager serves as a sort of a crucial buffer between those guys in suits who negotiate and take you to arbitration and the team itself. So I think that probably the ideal relationship is that you have a manager who is open to lots of information being presented to him, who listens to rational arguments and who you can trust to behave rationally. And if you don't have that manager, then you start looking for another manager. But that probably if you can't trust your manager to make decisions that reflect the front office, then it's probably the wrong manager. And it's probably not a great idea to start micromanaging. That's my sense. Yep, I agree with that. Okay,

so we have covered Davy Johnson from multiple angles, and we will end there. That has been episode 31. We will be back with episode 32 on Wednesday.