Marley23:
In what sense? We know that the Yankees under Torre did well, but as you already stated, a manager works with what he’s given. Given a core of Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera, and additional players as need dictated with practically a signed blank check (A-Rod, Giambi, Clemens, Cone, etc) , who couldn’t win as much as he did?
Yes, that’s yet another eternal debate. Like I said, I think managers get too much credit and blame. I think Torre said that, too, at some point. We can’t do controlled, blinded studies here. We know this is a team that probably would have been good anyway; we can’t know how good they would have been with another manager. We do know that they chose Torre, that not a lot of people thought it was a good choice at the time, and that with Torre, the team was extremely successful for a long time and is still successful with Girardi. Do I think absolutely any manager would have done as well? No. I do think he wound up being a good fit. Whether someone else could have done better is a mystery.
An interesting question, because the Cardinals hired Mike Matheny to replace Tony LaRussa. Matheny has no experience as a manager or coach on any level (he worked as a special instructor for catchers, but not as a regular coach). While most Cardinal fans are pretty supportive, the biggest criticism is that the team didn’t hire an experienced manager – like Terry Francona!
The lineup and pitching decisions of a baseball manager are not all that great. But if they can change the outcome of 10 games in a 162 game season that is huge. The outcome of the other games are basically a result of the talent on the field.
So I’ll defer to Casey Stengel’s assessment (not necessarily verbatim):
“There are 24 guys on a baseball team. 1/3 of them love me, 1/3 of them hate me and 1/3 of them don’t care. My job as manager is to keep the 1/3 that hate me away from the 1/3 that don’t care.”
To my point, Valentine is a retread and has a reputation for shaking things up and being an asshole. He may know the game but he is known for alienating people and pissing off management, sort of like hockey coach Mike Keenan (who delivered much more success before his firings). Being who he is, can Valentine create a cohesive team? Ten years is a long time to be out of management. I guess we’ll find out.
If my franchise is a bottom feeder than I would absolutely consider him. For the BoSox, why? If I was the BoSox I’d look at LaRussa as an Urban Meyer. Maybe let Valentine flounder for a year and then go for a rested LaRussa.
BTW, I’m not a BoSox fan.
You really think that’s all a manager does? That there’s no such thing as coaching, helping younger players develop, keeping older players focused, cracking the whip on conditioning (a huge problem in Boston last year, btw), controlling the clubhouse atmosphere, giving guys chances who show they’re ready for it, benching guys who are underperforming, working with the front office on personnel decisions, acting as one of the public faces of the team, keeping pressure off players when they need it and putting it on them when they need *that *… ? Really?
To the OP, there’s a huge measure of comfort factor involved, too. Team owners/presidents/GM’s spend a great deal of time in close personal contact with their field managers. It’s easier and safer to pick somebody they already know than to take a chance with someone who might just as easily blow up in their faces as do better than another of the Old Boys.
Re Valentine, assholes do mellow with age. And they don’t last long as assholes in Japan. Let’s wait and see on that. And being an asshole isn’t always entirely a bad thing anyway.
It can’t be a good sign that I read the thread title as “retards”, is it?
Snark aside, I do wonder what the purpose here is. It’s not like he was extremely successful the first go-around. And there have to be plenty of young guys available. I guess we’ll see the relative success of the Red Sox versus the Brewers (Sveum) and Cardinals (Matheny).
I was coming in here to say that I read the title wrong too. Glad it’s not just me.
I have no strong opinion about this particular hire.
But speaking as a guy who’s given this “Why do they keep hiring retreads” speech himself numerous times, I can’t help noticing: In the NFL, a lot of “retreads” have won a lot of championships.
Lest we forget, Bill Belichick was a retread, who spent several unimpressive years in Cleveland. (That’s 3 Super Bowls.)
Jon Gruden was a retread (that’s 4)
Tony Dungy was a retread (5).
Tom Coughlin was a retread (6).
Dick Vermeil was a retread (7).
Mike Shanahan, too (9).
I’m NOT saying we should be thrilled about our favorite teams hiring a coach or manager who’s done nothing special in the past. I just ask everyone to remember that “retreads” have often done very well.
You can go even farther back and apply it to Casey Stengel who had a rather mediocre and undistinguished track record as a manager when he was hired by the Yankees in 1949.
It looks like you’re using the most expansive possible definition of retread: anyone who has ever held a head coaching job before. I don’t think that’s what the OP meant. Gruden had a good four years in Oakland before Tampa hired him, so there’s no way he qualified. The guy he replaced in Tampa, Tony Dungy, had also been pretty successful and so the Colts hired him away from Tampa. Dick Vermeil had a good run in Philly, too, at least for a while. The other examples are better, though. Belichick didn’t do that well in Cleveland and neither did Shanahan in Oakland, although I don’t think a lot of people held Shanahan responsible for that.
One theory is that a younger coach is likely to be relatively unsuccessful in his first job as the head man, since he’s having to learn how to do it on the fly in an environment of impatience. But if he has the talent, including the ability to learn from mistakes, he can then step up and become a success - but usually not at his first job. Belichick, already mentioned, one of the most astute students of his sport, has been candid about how he now knows how much he did wrong in Cleveland, but that the experience was vital in helping him win in New England. No doubt many other head coaches and managers who succeeded in later jobs after failing in earlier ones would say the same. In Belichick’s case, he actually did have the Browns winning until the news and trainwreck about the Baltimore move destroyed the team.
Of course, there are also many examples of top assistant coaches who get top jobs and prove only that they can’t grow into them, but then move back down with no shame attached.
I’m going to bump this thread from last December. I was inspired to do it because of this:
There is no reason that I should have a better perspective on the game of baseball than the owner and the general manager of a major league baseball team.
We don’t really know a lot about what a manager does. His primary effect is off the field. Lineup and pitching decisions are so similar from manager to manager that it amounts to almost no difference at all.
I think the appeal of hiring retreads is simply that it minimizes the exposure of the GM to criticism. GMs and managers behave primarily to keep their jobs, not to win games. An unorthodox approach may be a better bet than the orthodox approach but often the orthodox approach will meet with approval, and the GM given credit if it succeeds forgiven if it fails, while the unorthodox approach will be resisted, and the GM ignored if it succeeds and pilloried when it fails. Few people criticize an NFL head coach for punting on fourth and 5, even if it results in an opposing drive to a touchdown, but will tear him a new asshole if he goes for it, fails, and gives up a field goal.
If Valentine is unceremoniously dumped after the season or early in 2013, the media will largely blame him, but Ben Cherington, because Cherington made a safe, orthodox pick.
Whether their dismal season is Valentine’s fault I do not know, but I don’t think you can blame Bobby Valentine for the fact that Josh Beckett has spent the last two years training by lifting Popeye’s chicken up to his eat-hole, especially when if he DID try to do something about it Beckett went into a fit. You can’t blame Valentine for his best player being injured.
The most objective way I can think of to measure a manager’s success or failure against their team’s talent is to measure their team’s actual record against their Pythagorean projection. All three of these teams are underperforming by that standard, so we can’t say anything definitive whether it’s better to hire a newbie versus a retread using these three guys as yardsticks. Maybe these aren’t the best guys for their jobs though.
OK, got it, but if he is succeeding in pissing off a bunch of his players instead of inspiring them then you have to ask “what purpose does he serve.” The players know all about who is producing, who isn’t producing, who is injured, etc. Players know the picture from the inside. Yet, there are a significant number that are in revolt. They think the guy is an asshole that is not bringing out the best in them or the rest of the team.
Bobby Valentine got off to a terrible start and it didn’t get much better. Back to the OP, this seemed to me to be a horrible, misguided hire in the first place. It’s one thing when a losing team rallies around the manager. It’s a totally different thing when they can’t stand the shithead and want him out of there.
It’s apparent, BV is the cancer in the locker room, not the under-talented and injured team. Athletes know when they are being taught, motivated and inspired. They also know when they are being denigrated and blamed.
Shit like this doesn’t happen when the team that is struggling knows that the manager is working his ass off to make them look good and bring them along instead of blaming them for making him look bad. I’ve played enough team sports to know that.
I’m pretty confident that my OP was on target. BV, go back to the bar in your restaurants and drink up the profits. Leave the BoSox to someone who knows what they are doing. BoSox management, get a clue.
Managing great Casey Stengel was a triple retread when the Yankees hired him to manage the club beginning with the 1949 season.
Stengel’s prior 9-season managerial record with three clubs included one season over .500 and his teams were an aggregate 171 games below .500
Some New Yorkers may possibly have scratched their heads over that hiring decision, but it turned out to be a stroke of genius as Stengel proceeded to lead the club to five consecutive World Series wins. Then following a 101-53 2nd place finish he won four more consecutive pennants (2-2 in the Series), and finished up with a 3rd place finish and a last pennant in 1960 (losing the Series).
Less spectacularly Mayo Smith was never over .500, and was 28 games under .500 in 5 seasons with two clubs 1955-59. No one took a chance on Mayo for a while, but then the Tigers hired him in 1967, and he took the team to the 1968 WS championship.
Valentine wasn’t an orthodox pick. He’s always been seen as an oddball and a difficult personality, which is why nobody wanted him even after he took the Mets to the Series. Most of what’s happened this season has confirmed that image. And according to that article he was picked by Red Sox ownership, not Cherington. But I think your general point is on target: a lot of managers just look to avoid criticism from fans and ownership. If you handle a given situation the same way as every other manager, most people won’t second guess you even if it consistently fails. If you stick out your neck and fail, everybody thinks you’re an idiot. It’s a really stupid state of affairs.
I can’t say I follow baseball as closely as hockey, but wasn’t Bobby Cox a successful Retread? For Toronto and Atlanta, I’d say.
Baseball, and the way you could handle players was very different then. Stengle had the famous quote that went something like, “You have 24 guys on a team. 1/3 of them will like you, 1/3 of them will hate you and the other 1/3rd don’t care. The job of a manager is to keep the 1/3 that hate you away from the 1/3 that don’t care.”
As for Mayo Smith, I could have taken that team to the World Series. They were loaded and that total asshole, Denny McLain, couldn’t be beaten. Plus, he had Bill Freehan to make sure that he was throwing the right pitches. Maybe the magic of Mayo Smith that year was that he let McLain do whatever the fuck he wanted. He played favorites with the stars.
Mayo Smith couldn’t replicate that year and eventually got fired because he was such a spineless manager that let the stars control the team. He wasn’t the boss.
It’s a crappy job, but someone’s got to do it. These same players phoned it in late last year with a good manager at the helm.
Anyway, as mentioned before, Valentine was not an orthodox pick. I felt like management was looking to shake up the clubhouse, snap the players out of whatever funk they had gotten themselves into.
It reminds me of when Tom Coughlin took over the Giants. The team had terrible discipline under Jim Fassel, though he did have some success. Then the switch and the players started complaining, I thought “You guys need to STFU. You had the type of coach you wanted and fucked around instead of playing good ball. So, now you get the disciplinarian, suck it up.”
The Red Sox players need to STFU too. If they’re losing it’s because they’re losing the battle along that 60’6" line, not because Bobby V isn’t putting enough thought into whether or not he should switch batters 6 and 7 tonight.