Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 723: Outlaw Relievers and New-Model Managers

Episode Date: September 11, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Chin-hui Tsao, Joey Votto, insect intruders, and the Indians’ defense, then discuss what we’ve learned about Brad Ausmus, Robin Ventura, and other new-model managers.

Good morning and welcome to episode 723 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi, how are you? Okay. Hey, in case you were getting your hopes up, the Brewers and the Pirates played a 13 inning game with expanded rosters and on at least one side literally nothing at stake. But they only got to eight pitchers each. We did not add to the nine-pitcher game tally. That's too bad because it's probably too late to call Ned Garver again where we are right now, which is too bad.

I don't know how we're going to follow him. Tough act. All right. I feel like I can say daily podcast again with more legitimacy. I felt like a fraud. A run of two. We've got a run of two now. Yeah.

We skipped that one day. The intention was there. Yeah, we didn't skip it. No, everyone else skipped listening. The listeners skipped it. Yeah. Yeah. So we're back on track.

Yeah. All right. I've got a few things to say. Do you have anything to say? No. Okay. So one thing I wanted to say, yesterday I brought up Sean Chacon and his incredible 2004 season because we were talking about how long a pitcher could last with a high ERA if he kept getting wins or good results.

And so I brought up Chacon's crazy 2004 season when he had a 7-plus ERA and walked as many batters as he struck out and still saved 35 games and was the Rockies' closer all year. So the one pitcher who got a save for the rockies that season who was not sean chacon is oh uh uh let me guess what year you will not guess 2004 uh armando reynoso no the one pitcher is qinwei sao who is a guy i have been wanting to bring up on the podcast for a while. And I was trying to figure out a connection. And this is an extremely tenuous one that I found.

So I'm going to bring him up now. So this guy was called up by the Dodgers earlier this year, which you might have missed. I imagine most people missed. And I think he has the most interesting backstory of any big leaguer this year, which you might have missed. I imagine most people missed. And I think he has the most interesting backstory of any big leaguer this year. He definitely has the best Wikipedia page of any major league baseball player. So this guy, he's 34. He's a right-handed reliever. He's from Taiwan. And he was a big time prospect. He made the Baseball America Top 100 list four straight years, 2001 through 2004. He peaked at number 15 on the list in 2001. And then he went down and then he went up again to

24 in 2004. So serious prospect was signed out of Taiwan after high school as an amateur. So it was sort of an unusual way that he got here. And he made the majors. He pitched for the Rockies 2003, 2004, 2005. And then he's been this journeyman with just a crazy journey for the last several years. When he was called up, I talked to the Dodgers and I asked if I could interview him. And they told me that he didn't really speak English. And I asked if they had a translator and they said no. So that was the end of that. And maybe they just didn't want him to do interviews, which I wouldn't blame them for. I'm sure you could get a translator, Ben, by the way. I'm sure there's somebody who listens who could translate for you if you want

to try again. Yeah, probably. Email podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Sure. It's Mandarin. Yeah, my wife could do it for you. No, I don't even have to have anyone email us then. I'd rather just wait till he's 89 years old and call him on Skype. That's the way that we interview ballplayers. So he was out of baseball. He pitched for the Dodgers in 2007, and then he disappeared. He pitched for the Brother Elephants, which is an excellent name for a baseball team, in the Chinese Professional Baseball League in 2008. And then 2009, he got into trouble. So after the Taiwan series, he'd been under investigation for game-fixing

allegations. The prosecutors announced that he had been accepting unsuitable benefits, including wine and sex, from the mafia, and therefore had allegedly agreed to throw two CPBL games in August 2009. One of those games was canceled due to a typhoon, and then he declined the other game when not enough of his teammates agreed to go along with it. He was not indicted, but then he was expelled anyway due to misbehavior, which ended his baseball career in Taiwan. He tried to come back and play indie ball, but was rejected repeatedly because of his alleged match-fixing. So then he ran a barbecue restaurant with a former Brother Elephants teammate, who was also expelled for game-fixing allegations. And then he withdrew his barbecue restaurant shares to open a beef noodle restaurant.

And Wikipedia says, alongside his then-girlfriend, surnamed Pan, or Pan. And then, April 2014, Pan, or Pan, told Apple Daily Taiwan that Cao had embezzled $50,000 from her and the restaurant. He fled with his new girlfriend and disappeared from the restaurant ever since. And then he denied any wrongdoing in a pre-recorded video but did not make a public appearance. And then he went to australia played for australia they suspended him for his former match fixing allegations and then the dodgers signed him so continuing the pattern of andrew friedman teams perhaps signing some unsavory characters they signed sao and he went to double a he went to triple a he struck

out a ton of guys and then they promoted him to the majors and so when he came back to the majors he won a game and he was the first pitcher since johnny lindell in 1953 to go more than 10 years between major league wins my favorite my favorite call-up of the season yes very surprising that a team would sign him right it is yeah no like indie league teams wouldn't sign him and the dodgers signed him yeah i mean how good how much could they have possibly thought thought he could be worth that they would sign a known match fixer. Yeah, well, alleged, but expelled from everywhere because of the allegations. I mean, like, how many wins would you? You're a cold-hearted, you know, actuarial math nerd.

How many wins would you need if you were the dodgers gm before you would sign him i mean would you sign let me ask you would you sign let's say uh that um ryan rayburn would come to you for free but he's an alleged match fixer. Would you sign Ryan Rayburn for that? Probably not, because I could probably find a close to Ryan Rayburn person who was not an alleged match fixer. I'm going to try to move up. Would you sign Neil Walker for virtually nothing if he had alleged match fixing on his resume i think i would really okay well i don't even i don't think i'd go there for walker what about i'm gonna try to shoot for in

the middle and this is tough but i'm gonna try to shoot for in the middle would you sign geo soto i don't think i'd sign geo s Soto regardless. Would you sign Yuzmira Petit? Ooh, I like Yuzmira Petit. Yeah. Wow. Probably. I don't know. I mean, it's only a legend, right?

Anyone can allege. You can allege that I fixed matches. So they signed him After Like four years out of the game Five years out of the game He is old and never accomplished anything Right

He's a top prospect And the Wikipedia page says he threw 100 It says he has recorded the fastest pitch by a Taiwanese pitcher At 100 miles per hour in 2005. That seems unlikely to me, just based on the data that we have for his velocity, the Baseball Info Solutions velocity data at Fangraphs. In 2005 for the Rockies, he had an average fastball velocity of 93.1.

So it seems unlikely to me that... and that was pre that was pre labrum surgery yeah right he also has he also has tj on his resume yeah he's cut everything so i'm kind of doubting that he actually hit 100 but it does say that in the 2004 olympics he was clocked at 99 he played in a lot of taiwanese olympic games so is it let me ask you this is it i don't know if the dodgers have any other taiwanese uh prospects in their system is it conceivable that they signed him i'm gonna look at the tulsa and oklahoma city teams it's not likely but is it conceivable they signed him to be the veteran Taiwanese mentor? Mentor the rookies in game fixing and embezzling? I don't mean that, but I mean, he's, you know, he's 34. He's been around. He knows the country. He knows when to get on the bus. He knows how to order at a restaurant. He knows how to be... He knows how to run a restaurant.

Maybe they like his beef noodle recipes. He knows how to be a Taiwanese ball player in a minor league city. So, yeah, I could see that. I mean, there would be some benefit to that. I wouldn't expect him ever to have been a call-up, and I guess you wouldn't waste a 40-man spot on that guy. And I don't see anybody on tulsa who appears to it would have to be like a you'd have to have a taiwanese top prospect right you wouldn't just do it for a regular guy it would have to be your blue chipper it would or you'd want to have a few or something yeah and it doesn't

look like that's the case i mean what i mean pitched pretty well. 39 innings in AAA, he struck out 42 guys. He was good enough to get called up. He's a grown-up playing in the minors. He's supposed to pitch pretty well in AAA. I don't know. Anyway, he pitched pretty well. Like, yeah, maybe he's worth a run over every other option in the world. Maybe.

And he might shave that run in a game. I am stunned that this signing happened and that I hadn't heard of it before this. Yeah, well, no. I'm also less stunned the dodgers didn't make him super available to you yeah me too well i'm setting a google calendar alert to call him in 55 years and we'll get to the bottom of this johnny lydell by the way lindell lindell whose record he broke dead ah it's a shame yeah ned garver by the way. Lindell. Lindell, whose record he broke. Dead. Ah, that's a shame. Yeah.

Ned Garver, by the way, he and I share a birthday. Yeah. We didn't even get into that next time. All right. So another thing. Did you see the Joey Votto ejection on Wednesday? Yes. Okay.

So I don't have to send you a video. That's nice. So Joey Votto, did those pitches, how did those pitches look to you? Because I, watching those pitches, and it seems foolish to question Joey Votto's strike zone judgment. He has the best sense of the strike zone of probably any player, and he's been playing at an MVP level for a while now. But those pitches didn't look particularly egregious to me. And I don't know if you had that reaction or if you want to review and then tell me what you think, but they didn't look like the sort of pitches that would prompt a mild-mannered

Joey Votto to explode the way that he did. And the data seems to support that every now and then on this show, I will use the called strike probability numbers that Harry Pavlidis and Dan Brooks put together. And they account for various things. They don't account for catcher because you might say, well, Francisco Cervelli was catching and he's one of the best framers. And so maybe he expanded the zone or something. But the strike zone probability stuff doesn't account for that. It just accounts for the location and the handedness of the batter and the pitcher and the pitch type and the count. And it could be any catcher or umpire.

So you can just evaluate it based on what the pitch was and where the pitch was. And so Votto saw five called strikes on that night. And I know there was one that he sort of half-heartedly swung at as if he felt like he had to swing at it because he wasn't sure where the strike zone was. And so he struck out and maybe he was frustrated about that. But the probabilities of the pitches that he took that were called strikes were 75.2 94.6 61.9 98.5 and the last one which he got ejected on was 34.9 so the only one of the five that was less, was more likely to be a ball than a strike based on where it was, was that last one.

And he was angry the whole game. And it just didn't seem like any of those pitches was particularly bad. And I know that there's an off-center camera angle, and that always makes it tough. And you never know what the umpire said, which that can make players mad independent of the call. But that didn't seem like a particularly bad example of umpiring to me. Wasn't it also that he had asked for timeout and didn't get timeout granted to him?

No, maybe. I was unclear whether. My understanding was that there was a timeout non-call uh in dispute but yeah none of the none of the calls were outrageous none of the calls well the the one the one that was most arguable was not an outrageous call uh and uh i always i always find the argument i think i've mentioned this but i always find the argument that well if joey vato right i mean if joey vato didn't swing at it, I mean, Joey Votto knows the strike zone better than anybody, and that's true, but Joey Votto also fights for the edges

of the strike zone more than anybody, and he is the one who is least likely to swing at a borderline pitch, even if it is in the strike zone, and he is the one who's most likely to try to fight for that pitch. I mean, to me, the fact that he's upset about a call means almost nothing because that's what his game is, is trying to get those calls. It was fine. It was a fine pitch. Yeah, okay. Just wanted to mention that. And one other thing I wrote about the Indians for today at Grantland, so it'll be up at some point today. And this was something that we haven't talked about for a while. At the

beginning of the year, maybe we talked about the Indians' defense and how it really seemed to be sinking them. They had a huge gap between their ERA and their FIP because their pitchers were allowing such a high batting average on balls in play. And, you know, Corey Kluber had a five ERA, seven starts into the year, and everyone was writing a what's wrong with Corey Kluber post. And the only thing wrong with Corey Kluber was that he played for the Indians and the Indians had a bad defense behind him. And it was like really bad. It was like they're going to miss the playoffs because of the defense. And without my really paying all that much attention, they totally made themselves into an excellent defensive team just on the fly mid-season.

And I ran some numbers and Rob McEwen at BP ran some numbers. The difference between their defensive efficiency at the end of April and their defensive efficiency now would be the biggest improvement of any team in the whole record of defensive efficiency, which at BP goes back to 1950. And they've been the best defensive team basically since the end of May which is really impressive they went from being one of the worst defensive teams to being the best or one of the best for the second half of the season and they did it in a kind of creative way part of it was just calling up Francisco Lindor which isn't something that every team can do. So they had the luxury of doing that, although they had to draft him or sign him and develop him.

But that and Giovanni Urshela, who came up to play third, and he's been good defensively. But they also did some kind of aggressive stuff. They traded their entire outfield. They traded David Murphy And they traded Nick Swisher And they traded Michael Bourne And they traded

Brandon Moss And they traded for Abraham Almonte Who is not really known as a center fielder But they've used him in center field And he's been good there And then they moved Lonnie Chisenhall From third who was a decent third baseman they moved him to right field with zero professional experience except

for the four games that he played in AAA there and he's been great like Mark Simon named him the best defensive player of last month they've just made themselves into a really good team at converting balls in play into outs kind of quietly. And it's probably too late. They're probably not going to make it. But I thought it was worth recognizing that they did that on the fly because it seems like that sort of makeover is generally an offseason thing. It seems like it would be difficult to make a bad defensive team into a great defensive team while you're playing baseball, but they did it. Good noticing. Yeah, thank you. Okay, other thing, there was a somewhat shady report just before we started recording about Brad Ausmus, and this was a report from a local Detroit news person that says that a source within the Tigers front office has told this person, local fours Bernie Smilovitz, over the past two weeks says that Brad Osmus will be out as Tigers manager at the end of the 2015 season because the new GM wants a fresh start. And I don't know how reliable the sourcing is here. I will note that Bernice Milovic's last tweet was on August 4th, and he said that Alavila's contract with the Tigers is for five years. So he was all over that news. But maybe there will be more reliable reports by the time people hear this episode.

But regardless of whether this report is ironclad or not, it certainly wouldn't be surprising news. It's been rumored before, and it makes lots of sense that he would be on the wobbly chair and that maybe that chair would tip over. maybe that chair would tip over. And I don't know whether it was you or someone else at BP who reran one of my articles from a few years ago as a way back article this week, the article about Brad Ausmus and the new model for managers. But that kind of made me think about how well the new model for managers has gone, because it doesn't seem like it's gone all that well. The thing I was noticing at the time was that there was just like a wave of new managerial hirings, which happens every now and then.

A generation ages out and a new generation comes in, and it's not unusual for former players to be hired. Obviously, that's kind of the norm. But the unusual thing was that a lot of guys were getting hired with no previous managing experience and no previous coaching experience even. They were just coming in cold, basically, a few years after they retired. And it was Ausmus and it was Robin Venturaura and mike metheny and mike redmond and walt weiss and i don't know if i'm leaving matt williams matt williams matt williams had been a

coach he was a first and third base coach which is obviously not quite the same but he was at least on a staff in the majors but it seems like like this wave of hirings has not been particularly successful. And the theory that I had, and that I think Colin Wires originally proposed when Weiss was hired, is that it reflected a change in kind of the balance of power or the sharing of responsibilities between the field staff and the front office and that you don't really need or even want a tactical manager anymore because maybe you're the front office you want to dictate the tactics and so you want a guy who comes in and doesn't feel like he's established and he's not gonna be a mike Socia and sort of mark his territory.

And he'll come in with no experience and he won't think he knows everything and you'll be able to dictate some things and tell him some things. And maybe because he's young and inexperienced, he'll be receptive to it. And so it made sense in theory for that reason. And yet of these guys, you know, osmus and matheny have had some success or they've they've managed successful teams but they've constantly been maligned for their tactical decisions and ventura is definitely on the wobbly chair and redmond has wobbled and fallen and Walt Weiss I don't know no one no one really pays much attention to to Walt Weiss I don't think but he certainly hasn't transformed the Rockies into a

contender or anything so the record of those guys and I guess it's not really fair to lump Williams in but if you want to lump him in as a guy who didn't manage at any level and wasn't a bench coach or anything, you can. Has it been long enough? Have we seen enough to say that this is not the best model for managers? I mean, I think that it was reasonable to have that as a hypothesis at the beginning. And I know that Matt Trueblood, this is one of his hobby horses. He hates when managers without experience get hired. He thinks that it's like a complete blind spot in front offices hiring that they would do this. There's no way that Walt Weiss is that much smarter about baseball than the other candidates,

but he is that much less experienced. baseball than you know the other candidates but he is that much less experienced and i think the speed of the game from the manager's chair is something that's hard to anticipate uh and uh there's also just not just the lack of experience but the lack of having been tested there's this i remember about eight years ago seven years ago malcolm gladwell wrote a piece for the new yorker about uh why it's almost impossible to predict which quarterbacks are going to do well. And he talked about it in the context of why it's also almost impossible to tell which teachers. You know, in teaching school, when you're getting your credential, it's very difficult for them to predict which teachers are going to do well until they've actually seen you in a classroom because classroom management is the actual skill that matters, almost the only skill that matters, and that can't be observed in any way other than

observing in action. And I think to some degree, the same issue probably is there for hiring managers. Now, I don't think that we have enough to say that this is a settled issue, but I know some people had the hypothesis. This is data for the hypothesis. And it's fairly compelling in as much as we have any idea who's even a good manager after having watched them. I don't know that I can tell you really to a great degree how good Ventura, Redmond, Weiss, and the others, Osmus, actually are. But, I mean, it's compelling.

So let me ask you, and maybe you've got to follow up, but the kind of mainstream narrative for why this was happening was that managers, that teams want to hire these players who had established themselves as smart baseball players and future managers. You start hearing future manager about a guy about the ninth year of his career, and so teams want to hire those guys. But because they were all raised and played their careers in the rich for life era, nobody wanted to go to AA and spend three years riding buses.

And so you had to let them leap the line. And so I want to ask you a question about that. But first, did you have any follow-up about the is this hypothesis settled? Really? is settled. Really? I mean, it seems like these guys, my thought was that they would be more receptive to front office input and would be more open-minded

just because they wouldn't have these tactics ingrained. But maybe that's not the case. Maybe... I don't... That explanation makes no sense to me. I would not assume that about a player who, particularly a player who hasn't really in any way been humbled as a manager and who probably thinks, hey, they let me do this with no experience.

It must be easy and I must be awesome. It's like, so I want to give another analogy. By the way, Craig Council is another one. Craig Council, okay. So Dr. Drew, you know, Dr. Drew, did you ever listen to Loveline, the radio show? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Dr. Drew, when I would listen to Loveline in 10th grade, would talk about how he had met a ton of celebrities in his life. And what he had always found is that the less you did to accomplish your

celebrity, the more insufferable you were. So if you were a singer-songwriter who wrote your own music and produced your own albums, you were probably a pretty cool dude or pretty cool chick. If you were a reality star who just got cast on a freak show and you got famous because you were the loudest freak show, or not, maybe you were just, maybe you're whatever, maybe you were alongside the loudest freak show, but you were just – maybe you're – whatever. Maybe you were alongside the loudest freak show. But you were almost always horrible.

And so you could maybe argue that a manager who is given the job without having had to earn it might actually be more confident that it might tell him – it might signal to him that he doesn't need to be humble about any of this. It's like how you're not supposed to tell kids that they're smart. You're supposed to tell them they're hardworking. Maybe putting a manager straight in the manager's chair without any of the hard work is telling them, you're smart. Don't worry about us. You're smart. And that's why it backfires.

If it backfires. I'm not saying it has, but if it does. If it did yeah well i mean these guys have been prone to the i'm using this guy in this inning because he's the guy for that inning kind of fallacy but then i don't know that they've been more more prone to that than than anyone else so yeah yeah so i want to pivot to my favorite game, if we can. Sure. All right. I'm going to name five guys.

Okay. And one by one, we're going to guess how much they made in their careers. All right. We're doing managers? Yeah. They're all managers of different generations, okay? Okay. All right.

First one, Clint Hurdle. How much did Clint Hurdle make in his major league career? I'll say, are we allowed to look at years? I mean, I know roughly, but. Yeah, sure. You can. 77 to 87. Uh-huh.

So 10 years. All right. So free agency era. And, you know, he was a bust. So he was bad by the time he hit free agency all right i'll say two million i'm not even confident that he was good enough that any of his salaries will be listed i'm gonna guess i'm gonna guess like like 800 000 okay all right uh the unfortunately they're not that he that ruins the game well though the thing is he was making the minimum for all of his good years and the minimum at the time was like i don't know 30

or 40 000 he made 120 000 in his last full season and that was probably like the only we don't know the answer because – but I would say based on just looking at this, I would be surprised if he even made a half a million. So maybe a little more than that. But all right, so we have a threshold. That's a guy who made about as much as like a high school assistant principal for nine years,

and then he had to retire. So not much money. All right. Mike Socha. Well, if I said $2 million for Hurdle, which I probably shouldn't have. Socha's career is from 1980 to 1992, 13 seasons, two All-Star games and uh one year getting mvp votes yeah i'll say four million okay i'm going to say yeah that's not bad i uh that's not bad. I would guess that it'll be slightly more than that. Yeah, I'm going to say like 5.2.

Wow, it's actually 10.1. Yeah, he cashed in in the free agency part of his career. He's made much more than that as a manager. So, Socha, well off, nice house,

not rich for life. Not until not until he became a manager. Right, based on his playing career. All right, Bob Melvin. Bob Melvin, 1985 to 1994. And to some degree, this will be interesting because very similar career to Mike Redman. Mike Redman was later but Redman played 13 years with 764 games and an 86 OPS plus

and Melvin played 10 years so not quite as long but 692 games so they played 65 games within 65 games of each other. They were both defensive no-hit catchers who didn't get recognition for, you know, anything notable, no all-star games or anything like that. I'll say 1.1 million. For Bob Melvin? Yeah.

I'm going to say 7 million. Wow. Oh, it's actually, it's 3.1 million. All right. Okay. So it was slightly million. All right. Okay. It was slightly closer. All right. So now we're moving into this.

I have three more all from this group that we just talked about. Mike Redman, basically same guy as Melvin, but started his career like eight years later. 15. I'm going to just, without even thinking about it, I'm going to say like 21. Okay. Wow. Only nine. Only nine. I'm going to just without even thinking about it I'm going to say like 21 Okay Wow only 9 Only 9 alright So Redman should have rode a bus Yep

You had leverage over him he should have rode a bus Walt Weiss I mean at 9 million You're not necessarily at need to ride a bus level No but if you want to have a long career as a manager and and be rich for life and keep getting million dollar salaries as a manager then like the whole point is that maybe he invested wisely the whole point is that supposedly robin ventura there's no leverage over him and that he doesn't have to manage unless you make it easy for him. But Redmond kind of had to manage.

Or, like you say, invest very well. Yeah. Okay, who's next? Walt Weiss. 87 to 2,000. He made an all-star game, right? He did. And won a Rookie of the Year award.

Okay. All right, I'll say a solid 15. I'll say 11.4. Okay. All right. I'll say a solid 15. I'll say 11.4. Okay. 19.2. All right. I'm calling that rich for life. Yeah.

That passes the threshold. And lastly, Robin Ventura. 89 to 2004. 45. I'll say like 59. It is 67. So mega rich for life. Yeah.

All right. Anyway, I like that game. I know. So does that mean that you have to pay them more? Do you think that means you have to pay them more or you have to pay them less because they're not gonna rake you over the coals over 300 000 if they have 60 something million oh you definitely have to well you you would have to pay them more except i don't know that that's what the negotiation i i don't know that they're negotiating that much. I think that a huge part of the compensation of being a manager is getting to be a manager, having that on your resume so every time a guy gets fired, you're one of the eight names

that people think of. I mean, it's really an investment in your future more than anything. So I don't know that you haggle over the difference between $12 and 1.4 million dollars because once you get in, you're in, you know, you're good. And now, now all these guys, so let me ask you this, Ventura and all these guys that we named who are kind of at the moment deemed failures as manager and we mentioned the possibility that one reason, if they indeed failed for this reason, one reason wow, there is a cricket

in the house. Don't do it. It's a foot from me. Don't do it. Oh, come on. No, we can't have a snuff podcast. There you go. I threw Dostoevsky at it Did you hit it?

I did Oh my gosh, it's hot Oh no Oh, this is cruel Hang on, hang on, hang on I saw you do this in person this summer It was savage Animalistic.

You are the apex predator of the insect world. Are you still stomping? What's happening there? Is the cricket coming back? Sam? I did it. I thought I lost you. No, I had to leave the headphones.

It sounded like it took some stomping. I did. Yeah, that was a paperback. Well, I can't condone that behavior. So if we start with the premise that these guys did fail because of their resumes, or lack thereof, are we saying that it's because they didn't pass the filter and therefore they just don't have the right stuff? Or are we saying it's that they aren't experienced and by virtue of having been fired from their first job, they are now experienced and obviously excellent managers?

Yeah. Well, I don't know whether the... It's not like they've gotten into a ton of relating to player problems. Maybe Williams has this year. Williams has. But Matheny and Ausmus, I mean, you don't really hear that about them as far as we know. They're popular.

They get along fine. And so when they get criticized, it seems to be more about, you know, things that Twitter people get mad about, which may or may not matter that much. Maybe they matter a lot sometimes. In Williams' case, it seems like it has mattered at points this season. But I don't know. It doesn't seem like, other than Williams, Williams is the only one who makes you think that maybe he should have been vetted in some way. And yet he is the one of these guys we're talking about who was,

who was in a major league clubhouse as a coach for multiple years. So the other guys, I wouldn't say that's been a problem. So if you're going to... Look, A, that's only one part of it, an important part, but only one part of it. B, you have no information on how they've done relating to players. There haven't been loud scandals about them, but you have no idea, like none whatsoever.

You can't speak to whether they're good at managing the class. The fact that there haven't been loud scandals indicates that it hasn't been a disaster. The loud scandals are only a very small part, though, of player management, of keeping the clubhouse. Sure. Yeah, they could be below average and we'd never know. Or they could just be bad at managing. I mean, you know, like when Russell writes about managing the grind that Bud Black seemed to be so good at.

Or when people, when Chris Jaffe has noted that Bruce Bochy's players simply do better than projections indicate. Veterans particularly just do better when he's with them. I mean, that's the sort of small stuff that you can't see, but that actually probably has a great impact as far as the manager's done. So I'm just saying don't give them credit. Don't knock them, but don't give them credit either for any of that. We don't know.

But all we do know is the tactical issues. We know that there are tactical issues, and we know that they've managed teams that have underperformed, and we know that generally there's dissatisfaction with their managing. Yeah, and we also know that they've won pennants and made the playoffs. What if we're talking about Matheny?

I mean, Matheny feels like he doesn't quite fit this discussion. Yeah, well, maybe he's a counterpoint to the discussion. I like Redman, too. I thought Redman was a really good manager. He's a counterpoint to the discussion. I like Redman, too. I thought Redman was a really good manager. Uh-huh. I would kind of exclude him, too, based on what I know or feel or think about him. Yeah, I don't know.

I thought he was good. I'm agnostic on Redman. Yeah. Redman was one of my favorites. Hey, let me ask you about another story that you wrote about baseball. Yeah. That now looks wrong. GMs. GMs, yeah. Yeah. wrote about baseball yeah that now looks wrong gms yeah yeah uh as with most baseball trends where you go well maybe it's just a sample size or maybe it's just a cycle uh this was exactly

that there are now what five unemployed gms or five teams looking for GMs? Yeah. And after we had had a record three-year period of stability and you wrote that no GM would ever be fired again? I don't know if that's a direct quote, but yeah. Okay. Just, do you want to apologize? Do you want to apologize to Ruben Amaro Jr., Ben? I'm sure I was spineless enough to hedge appropriately. What do you want to apologize to Ruben Amaro Jr., Ben? I'm sure I was spineless enough to hedge appropriately. What do you want to say to Jerry DiPoto, Ben? No comment. Do you think...

I don't know. Obviously, there was some cyclical nature to it. I mean, there just had to be. There were a lot of guys whose contracts were going to be up, and not all of these guys have been fired. Some of them have resigned, which, you know, DiPoto resigned, right?

I don't know if he was quote-unquote resigned or what exactly how that went down, but the gap was three years of no one getting fired, And some of these guys, just contracts were up and they weren't renewed or something, which is a little bit different, I think. But there was a firing. Someone was fired. At least one person was fired. So the

streak is certainly over. So I don't know. It was obviously not going to last forever. One way or another, it was going to end. And at the moment when we write about things, that's probably the moment when they're about to end because that's when they are most extraordinary. Yeah, that's true. So I don't know. I still think the basic premise that front offices are more like each other than they had been before, and that there's less separation between them, and that maybe there's more incentive to have consistency. I still think the conditions favor consistency more so than they did in the past. So Productive Outs asked who the new GM whipping boy will be.

Yeah, that's a good question. So Productive Outs asked who the new GM whipping boy will be now that Ruben Amaro Jr. is gone. And the answers that they got were mostly AJ Preller or Dave Stewart. And one of those seems logical and the other one seems like the sort of guy who will quite possibly rehabilitate himself in the alexanthopolis kind of model uh perhaps um or perhaps not who knows but it seems like there's always there's all there's always like a 50 chance that whatever gm is the whipping boy at the time there's usually two and one of them goes on to be tremendously successful and enormously popular a few years later so like nobody talks about dayton moore anymore yeah nobody talks about bocce i mean sabian anymore i was gonna say yeah because the the fact that amaro was let go or not renewed or whatever it was

made me wonder what the public's success rate is at not liking a guy and then having that guy eventually be dismissed because it seemed like it was sort of high but then the more i thought about it there have been a lot of gms that the consensus has been wrong about or changed about everybody like jack z for a while and then they didn't like jack z and everyone hated Dayton Moore and now not so much. And so it definitely changes a lot. If you were to fire the GM that the internet hates at the moment, you probably wouldn't have a great correlation with who actually gets fired or succeeds in the end. Yeah. Well, I think it's probably 50-50. I think the internet's got about a coin flips chance of being right on a guy nonetheless those seem like probably stewart seems like stewart's on the stewards of

stewards trolling us right and so you can't even be you can't even really defend him because you don't get the feeling that he would appreciate the defense i mean he's into this There's a new sheriff in town Ben Yeah So is there anyone else Who would fit the description I've been waiting for a long time For the moment when there isn't One of these guys Because it seems like someone always arises

It's like the Sith rule of two Or something like there's always A master and an apprentice And then one guy gets fired or he rehabilitates himself and then someone steps into the role and even though front offices have been getting smarter and smarter and it seems like there are more and more gms who think like we do and speak like we do there's always someone there's always some holdout so maybe the favorite is the future angels dm oh yeah yeah if if it's somebody who is an arty guy yeah and but on the other hand approved yeah the angels

probably though the ain't i mean the angels to some degree might just regress in a good way just because they have Mike Trout. They're always going to have a lot of money. They feel like they've underperformed this year. And just if you replay this season, it sort of feels like they would have won more games. And so somebody might come in and actually have some success with the Angels, but maybe not.

Walt Jockety? Yeah. I don't know if he'll be around long enough. And he's not vocal enough. If he's around, there are already people who hate John Hart, and there are people who love John Hart too. But if John Hart hung around for four years and led the Braves to another last place finish or something like that,

but I don't really get the feeling that John Hart's in it for the long haul. Dan Duquette has gone through it before. I think it's going to have to be a new hire. I don't see any existing Potential You mean besides Dave Stewart Well yeah sure Oh uh

Who is the man The Marlins GM right now Well good question I don't know Michael Hill sort of Dan Jennings kind of I don't think they ever officially... They never officially appointed one.

Okay, all right. It is still... Huh, if you Google Marlins GM, it says Dan Jennings, but then it lists him as manager. It does not list him. Oh, Mike Berger. Really?

Yeah, assistant GM Mike Berger took over. Hmm, All right. So how has the... I don't think it can be a Marlins GM, though, because Marlins GM is just so overshadowed by Loria, and there's a perception that Loria is pulling the strings anyway, so I don't think the Marlins GM could be the focus of this kind of anger. He's, like, in the protective umbrella of loria has the dan jennings

managerial uh experiment yielded any insight that you know well it hasn't been a total disaster so there's that and they obviously they never win right they haven't played particularly well for him but but they didn't you know put his head on a stake or something. Yeah. He's still there. Someone should write about that. You. Sure.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Let me know when you do. All right. So that's it for this week. We ask you to send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild.

You can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And you can support our sponsor, the Play Index, by going to baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Have a nice weekend. We'll be back on Monday. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Hello. Did I press mute? You sure did Took you a while to realize it too Alright Took you a while to realize it You could have said I think you hit mute

I guess that's true We were both at fault