Joe 2.0 Vs. 1.0: “General Joe” Just As Good As “Clueless Joe”
So, I had a chance to take a sneak peek at Mitchel Lichtman’s “The Manager of the Year” feature in the 2009 Hardball Times Baseball Annual. (Thank you Acta Sports.)
In the feature, Lichtman talks about his “Manager of the Year toy” which takes into account (things like) pre-season projected wins, expected wins based on actual linear weights runs, Pythagorean wins, and wins generated from net stolen bases (and maybe some other stuff that I probably missed).
Anywho, when Lichtman runs the numbers, he comes up with a “2008 Manager of the Year Score” for last season’s big league skippers.
Mike Sciosca led the A.L. last year with a score of “6.1″ – and Cecil Cooper led the N.L. with a score of “5.2.” (For bad marks, see Jim Leyland’s -3.3 and Bud Black’s -8.1.) So, how did L.A.’s Joe Torre and New York’s Joe Girardi do?
Torre scored a -.8 and Girardi scored a -.1 (according to the “toy”).
Pretty darn close to each other, huh?
Those statistics sound like they describe the team as a whole, not the manager.
Does that mean the Dodgers made the playoffs in spite of Torre?
No, that means it’s just impossible to tell when to give credit to a manager and when to give it to a different coach/the actual players/other factors.