Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 593: Reimagining the Manager

Episode Date: December 29, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Zachary Levine about whether baseball could benefit from a coaching shakeup akin to the New Jersey Devils’ experiment with a three-headed head coach.

Put some football on the tube and crack yourself a beer. The NBA's on NBC, the Deuce has PGA. And baseball's like some distant dream of warmer, brighter days. Good morning and welcome to episode 593 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben.

Hello. And, you know, if we recorded eight episodes in the next three days, we could end the year on a multiple of 100. I'm up for it. We're joined today by Zachary Levine, who is a friend of the show. I can't remember, did we determine that you're the most frequent guest?

I think there was a tie in there somewhere. You and Russell. Russell might have been right up there, too. Not anymore. I appreciate the invitation. Don't sleep on Jason. Jason Wojcicki is up there, too. Not anymore. I appreciate the invitation. Don't sleep on Jason. Jason Wojcicki is up there, too. Up there, but not as up there. I'm pretty sure Jason's not ahead of Zachary.

I don't know. He might be sliding him. So, Zachary's here to inspire us to talk about something. But, Ben, do you have any Three man banter I really don't I'm glad that Zachary is here Even more than usual because he is saving us

We're just going to put our feet up On the podcast desk And let him Take the reins Because I have nothing to say about baseball right now. Maybe that will change in the next half hour or so. Yeah, there haven't been any games played in the last five days. And it's a traditionally slow – some holidays, like GMs will pull off the occasional Thanksgiving signing or mega deal.

But Christmas usually is... Christmas Eve, Roger Bernardino signing? Yeah. That happened. We have a transaction analysis tomorrow of the last five days worth of moves. And here I am trying to think of a Delman Young pun, which is all you need to know.

This was my favorite time as a beat writer was this week between Christmas and New Year's because covering the Astros, the Astros front office was actually closed these days. I think a lot of them around the game are. I don't think there's an official dark period where nothing can take place, but this is as close as you're going to get to it. Did you ever write a column or a piece about Christmas presents for the Astros? Did you ever do one of those? I hope not. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if I did, but I hope I didn't do that or New Year's.

Right, that was my next question. surprise me if I did, but I hope I didn't do that or New Year's resolution. Right, that was my next question. The problem is that there's a lot of overlap between those two things, so you really have to choose a holiday. I'm sure somebody is pulling double duty this year,

but it's hard to think of a separate list of resolutions for the team that has been given everything. Anyway, yeah, well, that's where we we are do you have any banter Zachary I don't think so I mean I uh I'm not uh I'm not like you guys I'm not up on uh television series or anything like that I uh I'm I tend not to be one of these people who after a baseball season just looks out the window and waits for spring.

I do get into the other sports. It's a very unproductive way to spend the winter. Yeah. I have some banter that's well-suited for you, particularly. Did you see this thing with the Mets, World Series odds? Oh, I saw that. They were posted. Was it?

Yeah, it was Mandalay Bay posted them or the MGM chain posted them at 12 to 1 or something like that. Yeah, they went from 25 to 1 to 12 to 1 like suddenly. And that's the same as the Tigers. It's about where the I think it's where the Giants started the offseason. Although the Giants are now ahead of them somehow. I'm not sure how. This is good for me, right? I had the Mets in our World Series odds climbers draft.

Did you? Well, it would be great for you. So yeah, it has the Mets like the 6th or 7th most likely team to win the World Series. Do you think it was on the basis of uh grant brisby's rumors that the the nationals were talking a major trade from his rumor that he couldn't print if they were though what would you necessarily conclude that the nationals were getting worse i mean the nationals uh mike grisso doesn't make bad trades no he doesn't make i mean the only thing The only thing they've been strongly rumored on this offseason Was a dump wasn't it

It was getting rid of Jordan Zimmerman And also Desmond's been kind of Loosely floated I think there was There wasn't it sort of Like a rumor Twice removed from any credible source That like Desmond and Zimmerman

or something like were offered to the Mariners. Wasn't that it? Something like that? Maybe. I know they have their whole team coming up for, or not their whole team, but they have a lot of salary coming up for free agency before the 2016 season. So is it Zimmerman, Desmond, and then one of them.

Yeah. And Strasburg next year. Yeah. And Pfister is also coming up. So I don't, I don't know if it's one of those guys. I don't know if, I mean,

part of it is, I mean, Las Vegas, just seeing where the money is and where they're exposed. And there's a chance that they just took so much on uh on the mets when they were listed at 25 to 1 or when they were listed at 40 to 1 earlier in the off season that they're trying to get out of from under some of their exposure on them and try to cut off anyone from wagering on them. So you mentioned which casino had those odds. Is there ever a significant difference between books at different casinos?

Is there a place where you could find the Mets at 12 to 1 and 25 to 1 at the same time? I'm not sure there would ever be a gap that big. My guess is that online wagering, you'll be able to do a little better than in-house in Las Vegas. I think actually one of the first pieces I wrote for BP was about futures wagering and just the difference in what you can find, part of that being the difference between what you can find online and the difference in what you can find in-house at a casino where you're getting a lot of tourists, you're getting a lot of Mets fans or Cubs fans or people coming into town and buying a ticket on their way out. You don't really have to give strong odds.

It wouldn't surprise me, but with how futures wagering works, the house edge baked into that, even if you do go across town and get something a little better, you're still not going to be getting a lot of value out of that. Yeah, they have so much room on these because there's so much house advantage baked into this that it's like they can screw up by a lot and still be making money, right?

Yeah, I mean, the one that, was it Molly Knight posted the photo on Twitter the other day? Yeah, yeah. Of the odds, and just the whole board says kind of stay away from it. There's so little value in anything there. Yeah, well, in fact, I'm looking at Bovada. Is that how you pronounce what Bodog is now? And so they still have the Mets at 25 to one, but pretty much every team on this picture that Molly posted has better odds, or better odds, worse for the better, but better odds to win than Bovada has. Every team almost across the board. So this is largely a joke

of a proposition. You can't possibly win on this board. Yeah, it's definitely for tourists. It's not for someone who's trying to find value or make a real serious play. And if there is that difference, that big difference between the 12 and the 25, I'm guessing they took a lot of early action on the Mets. Maybe they were a little bit late to move that line after I don't even know what. I can't imagine it was the Kadir move or anything. In fact, it's actually the Mets, the gap between the Bovada and

Mandalay Bay or whatever we're looking at for the Mets is no bigger than, like the Twins, for instance, is 150 to 1 on one and 80 to 1 on the other. Sorry, and 60 to 1 on the other, which is the same proportion, I think. My math

is not that great. There's a bunch of bets that are way, way different. I wouldn't think that just to what you were saying about Cubs fans coming into town, Mets fans, I would not think Mets fans would bet on the Mets. To me, that seems like one case where you would have a big reverse effect because I've never met a Mets fan who's like, put it all on this team.

All right. So, Zachary, what are we talking about today? So, in the spirit of my sort of getting into other sports in the baseball offseason, I know this is not the biggest hockey-talking podcast in the world. We've done a whole episode on hockey, actually, one time. I have. Yeah, the band-aid had to show up. You were conspicuously absent.

But there was some big hockey news over the weekend that got me thinking about a topic in baseball, and it was the New Jersey Devils, who, in going back and doing some research on it, their general manager Lou Lamorello took over in 1987. I was reading a Yahoo article and it said this is his 19th coaching change that he's made since 1987. He fired the head coach. He had a bad start to the year and fired the head coach on Friday, the day after Christmas. And then Saturday, there were rumors going around for a day because they said they would name their new coach on Saturday. And instead of naming one coach,

they named they will be led by a threeperson coaching team with nobody really in charge. He named Scott Stevens, former Devils defenseman, Hall of Fame type player. Adam Oates, former RPI engineer, if I can get the 518 shout out in there, who was a former Washington Capitals coach. And he named himself the third one. He said he will be behind the bench for a short period of time. He isn't sure how long, but right now there will be three head coaches on the bench, three head coaches on the bench, which is a departure from the usual one head coach, a couple of assistants, and a goaltending coach. They're keeping all their assistants, so there's going to be like six coaches on the bench right now.

And what it sort of got me wondering was, I mean, not specifically about three managers managing in baseball, but we've seen this offseason a lot of change in what the org chart of a front office looks like, that the GM isn't necessarily the top position anymore. A lot of times there is a more senior person over the general manager, and I know you guys have talked about who gets on, if you're calling to make a trade, who you get on the phone with. And just the sort of growing acceptance of a non-traditional organizational structure in the front office

and change to what the GM title means. And what I was sort of wanting to ask you guys about was whether you think in the next however long you want to say, 10 years, you think that we would ever see a change to the structure in the dugout, this sort of manager and then bench coach and hitting coach or two, pitching coach, bullpen coach, first base coach, third base coach, and then maybe a video guy. Whether, I mean, 30 teams all use this as their general structure. We've seen teams not have a bench coach before. I think Jim Leland a couple years ago didn't have a bench coach, although Brad Ausmus does. So I guess my question to you is whether you think that baseball would be

accepting of the first team that tries to really shake this up. And I don't mean add a second hitting coach or add a little something, but really change the hierarchy in the dugout staff and what you think that might look like. Rensselaer Polytechn the hierarchy in the dugout staff and what you think that might look like. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the 518 area code, is that what that's a reference to? Yes. Yeah, that's my hometown team.

Troy, New York, representing Troy, New York? All right. I'm coming to you from Syracuse today. 1985 national champions. I am right down the street in Albany. So I'm curious what the street in Albany. the baseball one in a lot of ways. And yet, it doesn't seem like the fact that baseball's statistical movement has become so ingrained and established and accepted largely doesn't seem to have paved the road for the one in hockey at all. There seems to have been just as much blowback to

this trend in hockey as there was in baseball 10, 15 years ago. And I'm just imagining what the reaction would be to this new arrangement if it were to happen in baseball. Do you know whether this has been widely ridiculed or praised? It has been widely ridiculed, but I think a lot of that is colored by the team that did it and the fact that this is a GM who has, I mean, he's made his whatever it was, 19 coaching changes in 27 years. And somebody who is not afraid to get himself involved in ways that general managers typically don't. And also just the fact that he's had teams,

they're a team that went to the Stanley Cup finals, I think, three years ago and have just no patience with anything. So I think that a lot of the reaction isn't so much to this triumvirate of coaches or whatever you want to call it as much as it's to this team still not knowing how to run an organization. So are they – I'm looking at their franchise encyclopedia, by the way. Other than the last five years when they've only been to the playoffs once, they basically made the playoffs like 20 years in a row and won three Stanley Cup finals.

What is their reputation as far as being on the vanguard of hockey sabermetrics? Is this a team that is seen as statty? Is this perceived as a progressive move at all? Is this a team that's seen as progressive? You know, I've sort of lost track of what their reputation is the last few years. I know they've hired an analyst who, I think if I'm not mistaken, was famous as maybe a poker player, something like that. as maybe a poker player, something like that.

But their reputation was sort of ahead of the game through most of his tenure as GM. What's often referred to as the neutral zone trap style of play, which is a really low-scoring style of play that they sort of pioneered. They won three Stanley Cups between 95 and 03 using this really slow, hard-to-watch defensive style and really put what worked for them ahead of any aesthetics for the game and drew some criticism and drew some praise for not caring what it looks like and just going for an unconventional thing that works. And it did work. And then the league caught on and then they had the lockout and the game kind of started to open up a little bit. The rules changed a little bit, maybe in part because of

what they did. But they have been perceived as ahead of the game probably about 10 years ago, but I don't think that since the lockout they've been considered a leader real strongly in this area. All right, so I have a first take, and this might not be my final take, but I have a first take as to how this applies to baseball specifically or how it would play in baseball specifically. The idea of having a dugout shakeup that maybe removed some of the central accountability of the manager. I think the problem with baseball coaching in general is that we have almost no way of knowing who's good and who's bad. almost no way of knowing who's good and who's bad.

And maybe after a number of years, like Russell has written a lot about this. He's written about hitting coaches, about pitching coaches. And it seems like after a decade or so, Russell feels confident enough to say, okay, this guy is maybe adding some plus, some minus. But it takes a long time, and I don't know that anybody is real confident in putting specific numbers on it.

And that's sort of the case for, I mean, those are hitting and pitching coaches. time, and I don't know that anybody is real confident in putting specific numbers on it. Those are hitting and pitching coaches. Those are the easiest, I would say, to measure. A bench coach, impossible. A bullpen coach, impossible. And for the most part, a manager, impossible. That's a real challenge if you're trying to hire and maintain this personnel. And so I think that one of the benefits of having the centralized manager, the manager in the middle who has ultimate accountability, is that at the very least, you know that one guy in the middle has huge incentives to win and to do anything he needs to to win. Because managers get way too much credit when the team is good and way too much blame when the team is bad, but at least knows

that if they lose, he's going to lose his job. And if they win, he's going to go to the Hall of Fame and be rich and powerful. Now, he doesn't have all that much power, but at least he has incentives to do every single thing he possibly can to try to win. And they don't always do everything they can to try to win, but at least the incentives are there. Now, if you break up the accountability among five people where there is not one obvious scapegoat for a bad team, then I'm not sure anybody has that incentive. It becomes very difficult to judge anybody. You wouldn't really know who is to blame, I don't think, for good seasons and bad seasons. And I'm not sure that you would have the incentives for kind of optimal decision making in that scenario. So the obvious comp, I guess, is to the Cubs College of Coaches experiment in the early 60s, where instead of having a designated permanent manager and designated permanent hitting coach

and pitching coach, they just rotated among several guys, and each one served as interim manager for some portion of the season and the idea behind that I believe was to minimize the the trauma that the organization goes through every time a manager gets fired because a manager leaves and he takes his whole coaching staff with them or they all leave and then the new guy comes in and he puts in place an entirely new coaching staff. And the idea was that there would be some organizational consistency with this arrangement, even if a coach or multiple coaches were to leave. And then there was also maybe a benefit of exposing the players to the wisdom and knowledge of more coaches than just one as the manager. And of course, this didn't work very well. The Cubs during those years were very, very bad, despite having very good players. I don't know, maybe they would have been pretty bad anyway,

but the perception is that it was a complete failure. I'm looking at their Wikipedia page right now for this. And there's actually a section that is simply called Chaos, which is a spectacular amount of editorializing for a Wikipedia article. Right. Yeah, the players didn't like it, the coaches. You'd think that the competition could be a good thing in that a lot of coaches don't have a whole lot of incentive to work very hard because they're the manager's best buddy and he's not going to get rid of them they can just kind of coast by you'd think in this

arrangement maybe they would all be vying to be the best coaches that they could be but from what i understand that didn't really work so well. They didn't support each other, maybe because they all wanted that top job and didn't want to make the other guy look good. And they all had different philosophies of how to run a team. And so that would change constantly. So this whole arrangement didn't work out, was ridiculed, and hasn't been tried again. And it seems to me that it's just kind of contrary to the way that things have progressed in baseball and in most fields, which is just toward an increasing specialization. Rather than have a pitcher who pitches the whole game, you have a bunch of pitchers and you have a relief pitcher. And rather than having one or two coaches who do every job, you have an expanding coaching

staff where each member can specialize in a certain area and get better in that area by devoting more time to it. So this seems to kind of be a backwards step, an unspecialization, which is a strange thing that we don't see happen very often. So I would guess that before we'd see anything like this in baseball, we would see just a further expansion of the number of coaches who are allowed in uniform or the number of coaches who are sort of on the staff in one way or another. We saw it last winter with a bunch of teams hiring defensive coordinators or liaisons between the front office and the field staff.

And maybe we'll see it in the form of an in-dugout stat guy, which I think Billy Bean has said he expects to happen in the fairly near future. So I could see something like that happening. said he expects to happen in the fairly near future. So I could see something like that happening. But other than some scenario with a wonky idiosyncratic owner who puts his own GM in place and the GM is just drunk on power and does something crazy, this doesn't seem like something that would be adopted in baseball anytime soon. So I think that what would be an interesting somewhat reorganization, but without actually reorganizing anything, is to recognize that specialization has been taken only so far right now.

I mean, we have a pitching coach who clearly has a set of duties that are distinct from the manager, there's no reason that the manager has to necessarily be ahead of him in the hierarchy. The manager has his set of jobs, the pitching coach has his set of jobs, and if you think the pitching coach is more valuable than the manager, there's no reason that the pitching coach couldn't be paid more and the hitting coach couldn't be paid more. And so there might be a flattening of the, you know, of the dugout organization without any actual changes happening other than sort of a little bit of perception and a little bit of maybe money.

Or in that situation, who gets to make the pitching change? And I don't mean walk out there. I mean, who gets to say, pitching change and i don't mean walk out there i mean who gets to say no you're done now yeah i don't i yeah possibly although i would i sort of think that the manager uh i i like how it is right now where the manager is kind of in charge of managing the game and the pitching coach is in charge of telling him, hey, that guy looks like toast right now, and this other guy in the bullpen has been throwing poorly in his bullpens, the pitching coach as consultant on those decisions seems to be, to me, seems to be the appropriate relationship. But sure, there's no reason the pitching coach couldn't make those decisions.

I don't know why he would. I don't know why he'd have to. Pitching coach seems to me to be more about making sure pitchers pitch well and managers do fine deciding when one is necessary, but maybe not. I don't know. Certainly possible. Now, do you guys think if, say, and this is a little effectively wild email-y type of thing. But if baseball had been up until 2014, just a game with no coaching, just 25 guys going out there and they figure it out and pitchers come out when they're tired. And all of a sudden we put in this coaching staff, come up with this idea that these teams should be managed and coached and

have people analyzing video do you think that if they were starting this from scratch most teams would look pretty much the same in position in the positions that they hired and do you think they would look a lot like the structure we have now? Or do you think that if this were just invented today, that, you know, this wouldn't be anything like what they would look like? Yeah, I don't think there'd be a manager. When you put it that way, I don't think a manager would exist. I don't know about that. There are a lot of things in baseball that clearly fall into this category of this exists because someone decided that it should exist 150 years ago, whether it's errors or earned runs or whatever strangeness is still in the rulebook. But you need – I think there would still be a guy who is the designated decision maker slash fall guy slash public face for the media, right?

You need that. Why do you need to have – why does it make sense, contradicting everything I just said, why does it make sense that the same guy decides which hitters to use and which pitchers to use? Well, I don't know. Isn't that the way that leadership works in every industry, that you have people who are delegated to be the experts in certain areas, but there's someone above them who synthesizes their input into a decision and has some expertise that makes him good at that theoretically and lets him see the full picture while other people are looking at

smaller subsets of the full picture? Yeah, but you could argue very easily that that's the GM. And you could argue that in the baseball season, in the structure of baseball season, the day-to-day game situation, the lineup situations, that would be micromanaging if the guy with the 36 000 foot view or however many feet is typical in that view uh we're making those decisions maybe that would be considered micromanaging i mean there's no like zachary kind of implied there's maybe no particular reason that the pitching coach couldn't decide when a pitcher was appropriate or a hitting coach couldn't make the decision of which hitter is most likely to get a hit i mean that's his expertise right sure yeah could have a a pitching coach who is

uh i mean to make a pitching decision you have to weigh other factors too other than just is this guy ready right now or is he tiring or is he still strong you have to think about I don't know where your where your bullpen stands I guess that is something that the pitching coach would also theoretically be able to do just as well as anyone. But it's kind of a cross-disciplinary decision, at least in the National League, where you have to pinch hit for a guy. And that's a decision that crosses the line from offense to defense and roster management and you have to have a sense of of the game situation and how likely you are to win or lose and how high the leverage is and i don't know how how deep your personnel is i guess theoretically it's something that most pitching coaches could probably handle well it's

you could i mean i think that it's fair to say that somebody other than the pitching coach could be more qualified to make that decision. You could have a specialist in pitching game decisions, but I don't know that I would say that it follows that the same guy would be most qualified to make hitting game decisions. There's no reason to think that the guy who is best at both of those tasks, at both of those skills, managing both of those aspects of the game, would be the same person. Unless, going back to my original, the point is to have one person with accountability who takes it. I mean, I think I mentioned this about a year ago when I was reading The Power Broker. So, sorry if I'm repeating this, but one of the great insights of that book, which is about Robert Moses, who basically built all of New York by being a dictator who took insane amounts of control through back channels and politicking, is Moses' philosophy was that the most democratic thing you can have is basically one person with almost absolute power who is accountable to the voters, who is accountable to the people, but at least

once he is in power can do things. The problem is that when you have power distributed among so many governing bodies and agencies and politicians, not one of them is accountable for anything, right? And so maybe that's the whole point of a manager is that you need to have somebody who is going to be able to step up and say, knock that off, my job is on the line. And if you have too many people who have equal power, then nobody is necessarily going to be empowered to do that. Right. The one that I could see, like if we were building this from scratch, the one that I would see being very different is the bench coach.

Is that the bench coach wouldn't come from the same, I guess, lineage that produces managers. The bench coach wouldn't be part of that progression. I mean, even if we were keeping the manager position, I would think that the bench coach would be much more of a tactician. Would be a tactician in a statistical sense. Know probabilities and be much more schooled in lineup construction, the sort of statistical things that we all want to see in the dugout when we talk about extensions of the front office. And I think that if we were starting

this from scratch, there would be a lot less inertia kind of preventing that and that having both the manager and the bench coach who have sort of a duplicate backgrounds or, you know, progressions to that point would be, wouldn't be the way they would go. But if I can change direction with another question related to the Devils thing, how many of the 30, and I guess I'll say general managers, but take that word for what it's worth now, I guess, presidents of baseball operations, whatever you want to call it, how many people in front offices now could, if their team started 30 and 50, fire their manager and replace their manager with themselves and not just get crushed for it?

Do you think there's anybody in a front office position in baseball who could make that decision and install themselves and even have 50% of the people think that, hey, this even could be a good idea. You're talking sort of, you're mostly focused on politically and less on who has the actual skills to do it? Yeah. Who has perceived skills to do it, I guess? Yeah, who has the perceived skills to do it. Who has perceived skills to do it, I guess.

Yeah, who has perceived skills to do it. Like if Jeff Luno fired his manager and replaced him with himself, I would think he would get crushed for that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he probably would because of the narrative, right? But if Dave Stewart did it, particularly because if Dave Stewart had just been named manager three months ago, nobody would have blinked.

Yeah, Dave Stewart, well, it would have to be a former player, right? So Jerry DiPoto, maybe? Or people have been accusing Billy Bean of basically being the manager for his whole tenure as general manager and just using a figurehead manager who does what what he says or orders so you think it would definitely you think it would definitely have to be a former player i mean just because it's all former players like if uh if walt jockety were uh named himself

manager does anybody remember if walt jockety was a former player or not i mean he's been in baseball forever. Why couldn't Walt Jockety? Sandy Alderson or someone. I mean, Bobby Cox, basically. Has anybody gone from GM to manager since Bobby Cox? There were a bunch of guys right around that period, but I think that was the end of it.

I can look that up quickly. But yeah, Bean, the idea would basically be that people would, the same people who've been criticizing Bean all along would have their criticisms vindicated maybe, but it wouldn't really change anything all that much. I think it's a fairly small number. And I assume we're talking about the GM would give up his job as GM in this scenario, right? It's amazing how recently people did both jobs concurrently.

Like I think Cox was maybe the most recent to float between both jobs. But like Whitey Herzog and Jack McKeon, which isn't all that long ago, were managers and GMs at the same time, which seems unbelievable now. And it basically happens in other sports, right? Like the head coach in football has enormous power for player personnel decisions. I don't. right, Zachary? Yes. Yeah. In football, I don't know if they are the official general managers, but yeah, they, a lot of them, that's, you know, how they, that's how they are wooed and recruited is

being promised control all over. Like, that's how, I think that's how people who clearly don't need, like a Bill Parcells type who clearly doesn't need the job and he gets wooed to go to Miami or wherever he went just saying that their promise to him is control of over player personnel. And there's some line about, if I'm going to cook dinner, you better let me shop for the groceries, or something like that.

I don't remember the exact wording of the line. Off the top of my head, I've very quickly gone through the teams. I think only three teams currently have a GM who's a former player, the Brewers, the Phillies, and the Diamondbacks. And the Angels. And the Angels, yeah. Sorry, four. And the A's.

And the A's. Yeah, I guess I was not counting the ones that we mentioned already. Yeah, I guess I was not counting the ones that we mentioned already. Yeah, so I don't know. I could see it working in an interim situation. If some manager really spectacularly crashed and burned, and it was part of the way through the season, and you're not going to conduct a whole round of managerial interviews during the pennant race or something, or obviously it would work better for a team that was out of it already because then the stakes would be much lower. But if it were an interim thing

and the GM recused himself from GMing and was a former player, maybe it could kind of work. Terry Ryan played double A. Uh-huh. Injuries. He Ryan played double A. Uh-huh. Injuries. He went 10-0 with a 1.70 ERA

at Class A. It's the Aaron Small season. Aaron Small reference. Yeah. Didn't see that coming. I so I don't think that's exactly what zachary wanted to know i mean basically we're basically telling zachary none of the ones who

weren't qualified before they became gm basically right yeah that's that's what we're and and that's what you're saying i was not conceding that i was not conceding he has to be a player rule but other than about three of them i would con concede that. There's a couple that I could say, oh well, he's a baseball man. He's been around long enough. Kevin Towers might be awkward the first few months or something, but Kevin Towers I could see managing. I could see Jockety managing. There's a few of them in there. Towers played, right? Not major league level, but he played.

What did he play? Baseball. Oh, let's see. Playing career. Seven seasons in San Diego's farm system, AAA. Yeah, so they are a year ago, Towers. Mm-hmm. Now, do you think having someone...

Sabian feels like he could, but... I mean, Sabian is definitely an old cuss enough. Yeah, he's got to be grizzled. Yeah. Play... No, coached college before his scouting career. Played... All his scouting career. Played small college and then coached college and then scout. Do you think it's a ridiculous premise that someone could do both?

Yeah. Do you think the jobs are just too big now? Yeah, I definitely do. They're both 85-hour-a-week jobs. Mm-hmm. Well, we are united on that front. And, like, well, to be fair, though, of those 85 hours a week, like, 50 of them overlap, right? Like, the GM is just sitting watching a lot of these games.

He's doing some stuff. I don't know what GMs do during games, to be honest. I'm not sure. Do you know, Zachary? Yeah, they are. They're usually, as far as I can tell, in the box, in some kind of a baseball operations box. They're on their phones all the time.

So that's kind of when they do their work? They do a lot of work during the games. There's some, I would imagine, small ambassador-type things that they're asked to do during the games. But I don't think you would lose that much if that person had to be in the dugout for three hours. Also, to be fair, there are 168 hours in a week, which is almost two times 85. That only describes, only Ben has 168 hours available to him in a week.

The rest of us have 120 hours available to us. Maybe. All right. So you're saying I could do this. I'm saying you could. Okay. All right. And it looks like Bill Parcells was an executive for the Dolphins but never coached them,

so I will cut out here and stick to baseball. All right. All right. Well, thank you for bailing us out, Zachary. This was, I think, an above-average discussion on a below-average topic pool day. It was a fun one. Good. Will you be retweeting it to that effect?

Sure will. All right. Looking forward to that. Okay. So we'll be back with a year-ending show on wednesday i suppose yes sir okay uh so please support our sponsor the play index at baseball reference.com use the coupon code bp when you subscribe to get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription please support the podcast in other ways by rating and

reviewing it and subscribing to it on iTunes. Send us some emails for Wednesday at podcast at baseballperspectives.com, year-ending emails, and join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can find Zachary on twitter at zachary levine and writing at baseball prospectus of course thank you gentlemen we will be back later this week thank you happy new year guys