Baseball has given out official Manager of the Year awards only since 1983. That first year, the winners were Tommy Lasorda and Tony La Russa. By that point, eons of evolution had shifted the definitions of what a baseball manager even did.
If they had given out the award 60 or 70 years before, it would have been a lot easier to choose. Managers in the early part of the 20th century were mini-dictators. Among their expected functions was overseeing the procurement of talent, its development and the way it was deployed on the field. Baseball writer, historian and statistician Bill James likened the role of the field general back then to that of a modern-day college football coach. World Series billboards for, say, 1921, instead of touting "Giants vs. Yankees" might have had a headline billing of "McGraw vs. Huggins." You want to pick a manager of the year? Look at the standings.
Things have become ever so much more complex since then. Despite the avalanche of data at our disposal, we've gotten no further in measuring the single-season performance of a manager than where we were in 1975. It's a gap we are never going to bridge, because to truly judge the work of a 2019 manager, we would need to spend every day with him, through his conversations with his front-office collaborators and his consultations with his coaches and -- perhaps by spying -- also know how he is discussed among the players in the clubhouse. In an age when we measure everything, we cannot measure the manager.
Or at least we can't through the prism of a single season. One assumption we can make in this hypercompetitive industry is that if a manager is not functioning in a way that benefits his organization, he is not going to be perched on that team's top dugout step for any longer than necessary. Thus, with a big enough sample, we gradually learn who the best are at this esoteric craft. The proof: They keep getting invited back.
Who are the best active managers? Let's consider a ranking based on a version of Fibonacci Win Points, another James invention that he has used a few times over the years to examine starting pitchers. Inspired by that, I began to keep a spreadsheet that used the same formula to rank the career performance of managers.
Here's the current top 10 among active skippers:
The first column is the manager's top ranking. Next on the list would be Don Mattingly, who started managing in 2011. After that, every other manager started in 2014 or later. It's a new generation, and a number of the names you see above -- beginning with the retiring Bruce Bochy -- aren't going to be around in a few years.
The role of the manager has perhaps never been harder to pin down. That makes picking the managers of the year the most subjective of all the postseason awards -- and the one that is decided by the least amount of hard data. Let's consider the past few winners:
2018: Brian Snitker (Atlanta) and Bob Melvin (Oakland) -- Both were managers of surprise postseason clubs.
2017: Torey Lovullo (Arizona) and Paul Molitor (Minnesota) -- Both were managers of surprise postseason clubs.
2016: Dave Roberts (Los Angeles) and Terry Francona (Cleveland) -- Roberts helped an injury-riddled team overcome a big deficit and get to the playoffs; Francona's club also overcame injuries to win a tight race in the American League Central.
2015: Joe Maddon (Chicago) and Jeff Banister (Texas) -- Both were managers of surprise postseason clubs.
2014: Matt Williams (Washington) and Buck Showalter (Baltimore) -- Williams led a team that had underachieved in 2013 to a resounding win in the National League East; Showalter's Orioles won 98 games despite a rash of injuries.
Well, first you'll notice that four of the 10 most recent managers of the year currently are not managing in the big leagues. (That's Molitor, Banister, Williams and Showalter, if you're scoring at home.)
You'll also notice that there are two primary paths to the award. Being a "surprise" team is a pretty bad benchmark because preseason expectations might simply have been wrong. The injury thing is legit, but the way rosters are administered these days, it is exceedingly difficult to separate what credit goes to the manager for plugging holes and what credit goes to the front office for providing the necessary filler.
These days, managers are avatars for a whole lot of underlying processes. They are more than ever akin to NFL head coaches, only with less control. A key function is to coordinate their coaching staffs, which have evolved to the point that hitting coaches are similar to offensive coordinators in football and pitching coaches are the defensive equivalent. Managers also are the crucial conduit between the front office, along with its cubicles full of number crunchers, and the coaching staff and the players.
Yet any suggestion that today's managers are mere functionaries is summarily dismissed if you talk to their bosses. Managing disparate personalities in the clubhouse is as challenging as it's ever been. Translating the language of today's Ivy League-bred executives into actionable instructions is no easy task. And playing matador to the media is incredibly important, because if the managers don't do it, life in the locker room becomes much less harmonious for the players.
So managers are still important, even if they aren't dictating roster decisions and even if the in-game-strategy part of the job is more paint-by-numbers than it's ever been. Managers, we are told, still have the final say on things like lineup construction and pitching changes, because without those responsibilities, they don't have the authority to demand accountability from their charges. But it's all so ephemeral and immeasurable.
Nevertheless, we still give Manager of the Year awards. So do we simply look at which manager has overcome the most injuries? Do we go with those who have most defied what the Las Vegas oddsmakers foresaw back in March? Can we do better?
I've been down this path before, trying to create objective metrics for rating managers. Every effort has failed. Because although you might be measuring something, what you are measuring isn't necessarily managing. Instead, what we can do is consider the problem from a few different approaches and look for names that keep cropping up.
1. Injuries
According to Spotrac.com, the teams with the most injured list days on the season are as follows: 1. Yankees; 2. Padres; 3. Phillies; 4. Pirates; 5. Angels. The site also expresses this as "$ Spent on DL Players," which has this top five: 1. Yankees; 2. Mets; 3. Phillies; 4. Red Sox; 5. Mariners.
None of this is a surprise. The Yankees' successful battle against an injury epidemic is one of the great stories of the season, and you can bet that will earn Aaron Boone plenty of attention when the MOY ballots are cast. In the NL, the Phillies' Gabe Kapler probably doesn't get enough credit for keeping his club in the race despite an abundance of major injuries. In fact, he often is listed as a manager on the dreaded hot seat. Frankly, I don't understand it.
2. Dealing with the media
Obviously, there is no objective metric for this, and I'm not suggesting it should be included in this evaluation. To systematize this aspect of the manager's job, what we'd want to do is poll as many day-to-day media members around the league as possible. Maybe have them cast votes with ratings from 1 to 5. However, I do think this is a central function of managers in 2019, and if I were a GM, I would not hire a manager who couldn't flourish at this aspect of the job.
Here's my personal top five but, again, it's just me. There are managers I truly enjoy and, despite this, when mentioning as much to a fellow sportswriter, get a response that goes something like, "Ah, he's full of [blank]." Anyway: 1. Joe Maddon; 2. A.J. Hinch; 3. Bruce Bochy; 4. Gabe Kapler; 5. Bud Black.
3. Outperforming Pythagoras
Long ago, my early attempts at building a managing metric centered on looking for managers who consistently led teams to more wins than their run differentials suggested they should get. These attempts proved to be faulty, because my hope was to be able to include a "manager" adjustment in my next-season projections and it just never worked.
Still, here is this season's top five in outdoing run differential, which some analysts simply label as "luck": 1. Braves; 2. Yankees; 3. Brewers; 4. Giants; 5. White Sox.
Well, there are the Yankees showing up pretty high on the list again. The Braves have the run differential of a 91-win team but are on pace to win 100, which might actually be a better measure of their current ability. Still, it's a differential that looks good for Snitker. And with the Brewers, well, they might not show up at the top of those injury listings yet, but if Craig Counsell guides them into the playoffs again, even after the loss of Christian Yelich, his résumé is going to start looking very enticing.
4. Outperforming expectation
This is a measure of wins against what was projected coming into the season. Again, this presupposes there was some validity to those preseason forecasts. I've gone with my projections because I worked really hard on them. It doesn't really matter because they didn't differ that much from other projections.
Top five here: 1. Twins; 2. Athletics; 3. Rays; 4. Braves; 5. Yankees.
Here's the Yankees again. Even though New York was a popular pick to earn a postseason spot, or even win the AL East over the defending champion Red Sox, its win projection still tended to fall in the mid-90s. The Yankees are on pace for 105, so this is yet another measure that favors Boone.
No team has outperformed expectation more than the Twins. First-year manger Rocco Baldelli has been an ideal fit in all of the current-day functions of a skipper outlined above. He gets the front-office message across, oversees one of the game's most dynamic coaching staffs, has an upbeat clubhouse, has had to deal with a lot of key injuries (though many of those have come late in the season) and also is very good with the media.
The Braves' presence here is a bit of a surprise, but projections tended to see them suffering a bit of a regression after their big leap in 2018. The next couple of NL teams by this measure are the Dodgers and Diamondbacks.
How ultimately would I fill out my ballots? Considering everything, it's hard to go against Boone, even though I have no doubt that Baldelli has been a big part of the Twins getting to where they are and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the job Kevin Cash has done with Tampa Bay.
My AL ballot would go: 1. Boone, 2. Baldelli, 3. Cash, 4. Melvin, 5. Hinch.
There isn't an obvious pick in the NL, or at least not one that seems to be as clear-cut. In terms of trajectory, Washington's Dave Martinez might win some acclaim for going from the hot seat to the playoffs, as his Nationals overcame a bad start in resounding fashion. However, the Nats were supposed to be good; their rebound merely got them back to where they were supposed to be. They had a lot of key early injuries and struggled, then turned things around when they got healthy. A similar return to form, though less attributable to injuries, can also in part explain the season the Cardinals have had under Mike Shildt.
Snitker has done a nice job once again, particularly given the lack of good bullpen options he had earlier this season. Fending off the regression monster is no easy task, and he has the Braves looking like a budding dynasty. In my mind, however, no one has done a better job of piecing things together than Counsell. Even if the Brewers don't earn their way into October, their record right now (10 games over .500) is pretty amazing.
My NL ballot: 1. Counsell, 2. Lovullo, 3. Snitker, 4. Martinez, 5. Bochy.
Extra innings
1. Chris Martin took time out of his fabulously successful career with Coldplay to record an immaculate inning against the Phillies on Wednesday. It was the seventh time this season that has been accomplished. In fact, it has happened exactly once each month:
March 30: Milwaukee's Josh Hader (ninth inning, vs. St. Louis)
April 14: Toronto's Thomas Pannone (fifth inning, vs. Tampa Bay)
May 8: Boston's Chris Sale (seventh inning, vs. Baltimore)
June 5: Sale again (eighth inning, vs. Kansas City)
July 3: Washington's Stephen Strasburg (fourth inning, vs. Miami)
Aug. 18: Cincinnati's Kevin Gausman (ninth inning, vs. St. Louis)
Sept. 11: Atlanta's Martin (seventh inning, vs. Philadelphia)
I've written a little bit about the increased prevalence of immaculate innings before, but MLB.com's Ed Eagle published a full list of them, which prompted me to put together a few more immaculate factoids:
• Setting aside the John Clarkson immaculate inning listed from the 19th century, there have been 99 occurrences during the modern era. More than half of them (51) have come since 2000, and 36 of those have been since 2010.
• There has been at least one in every season since 2006. There were zero between Sept. 27, 1928 (Lefty Grove) and Sept. 7, 1953 (Bill Hoeft).
• Sale and Gausman joined the list of pitchers with at least two immaculate innings. The others: Sandy Koufax, Grove, Max Scherzer, Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. Koufax is the only one with three.
• The Dodgers (eight) have more immaculate innings than any other franchise. The Expos/Nationals have seven, and the Astros, Red Sox and Yankees each have six. Two franchises have never had one -- the Senators/Twins and the Senators/Rangers.
• The Phillies (eight) have been victimized the most. It has never happened to the Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, Senators/Twins or Yankees.
• And, yes, the Twins are on both of those lists. Neither the Twins nor their Washington Senators predecessors have been involved in an immaculate inning. It has happened to the Rangers once, when the Royals' Jeff Montgomery got them in 1990. But it didn't happen before the second version of the Senators left for Texas in 1972. So no team associated with the nation's capital was involved with an immaculate inning until Jordan Zimmermann of the Nats did it against the Marlins in 2011. Since then, Scherzer has done it twice with Washington, in addition to Strasburg's this July.
• Not surprisingly, there have been more immaculate innings later in games than early. Fifty of the 99 have come in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings. Leading the way is the ninth inning with 23. The first inning (six) has seen the fewest. The last pitcher to do it in the first inning was Oakland's Rich Harden, on June 8, 2008, against the Angels.
• Fifteen players have been victimized during two immaculate innings, but none more than that: Brandon Phillips, Carlton Fisk, Cesar Hernandez, Daniel Robertson, Dexter Fowler, Ellis Burks, Eric Anthony, Greg Luzinski, Gregory Polanco, Jeff Reed, Jonathan Schoop, Juan Encarnacion, Khalil Greene, Larry Herndon, Travis Shaw.
2. There have been a lot of strange aspects to the White Sox's season, one that South Side fans hope is the last before the team returns to contention relevancy. Perhaps this year's transitional roster, and the disparity of talent on it, accounts for some of this.
Chicago ranks 13th in the AL in both runs scored and home runs and is tied for 12th in OPS+. Only three AL teams have more strikeouts; all of them have more walks. Yet Chicago has a good shot of having the league leaders in both batting average (Tim Anderson) and RBIs (Jose Abreu).
About the home runs: This is where the uneven White Sox roster that I've railed about all season is most eye-jabbing. In 2019 baseball, if you strike out too much and don't draw walks, you'd better hit a lot of home runs. Chicago doesn't -- as a team.
But on a position-by-position basis, it's not all bad news: The White Sox rank in the top half of the majors in long balls at catcher, first base, shortstop and left field. At third base, mostly the domain of Yoan Moncada, they rank 19th, which could improve if Moncada gets hot to finish the season.
The problem is that where the White Sox are weak, they are helpless. They've gotten 11 homers from their DH this season, three fewer than any other AL team. In center field, it's even worse: The White Sox have gotten just 13 dingers from that spot, ranking 27th. But at least they have gotten decent glove work from athletic players such as Leury Garcia and Adam Engel.
It gets worse. Much worse. At second base, Chicago has gotten just five homers all season. Every other team has gotten at least seven. This is mostly the responsibility of Yolmer Sanchez, who at least has decent bat-to-ball skills and is a defender some view as a fringe Gold Glove contender. He has a chance to stick as a utility player, even when Chicago moves into winning mode.
But there is no spinning Chicago's results in right field. You'll recall that last fall, the White Sox did not tender an offer to Avisail Garcia, freeing him to sign with the Rays. There, Garcia is having a solid season, hitting .274/.327/.456 with 19 homers.
Those are Ruthian numbers compared to what Chicago has seen from its right fielders this season: .212/.269/.271 with three home runs. Three! From right fielders! How is that even possible? The Mets (six) and Diamondbacks (five) have had more homers than that from their pitchers.
Anyway, some teams have become increasingly adept at churning their roster and finding undervalued talent from the fringes of their 40-man rosters and the upper reaches of the majors. Just to cite the Giants as one example, their surprising run at a wild-card slot wouldn't have happened without contributions from out-of-nowhere players such as Mike Yastrzemski, Donovan Solano and Alex Dickerson.
There is no excuse to stagger through an entire season with three home runs from a corner outfield spot. As the White Sox move to become contenders again, they won't get there solely because of their young players ascending to the ranks of big league producers. Every team has to find solutions for the bottom of their rosters, players who can contribute during stretches when front-line players are injured or fatigued or simply aren't producing. Elite, star-laden teams such as the Astros and Dodgers are adept at this. The Yankees are, as well, and if they weren't, their injuries would have torpedoed a season that still might land them in the World Series.
As for Anderson, he clearly is a success story, as he carried a .333 average into Thursday, a healthy seven-point lead in the AL batting race over the Yankees' DJ LeMahieu. If Anderson wins the title, he will be one of the most unusual batting champions of all time. Why? Because he has drawn just 12 walks.
The fewest walks drawn by a batting champion is 16 by Zack Wheat, who hit .335 and won the 1918 NL batting crown for the Dodgers. Anderson stands a great chance of breaking Wheat's record, and the best part of it is that it's entirely within his control. Very quietly, it has been kind of wacky season on the South Side of Chicago.
3. I joined some colleagues in a roundtable chitchat about some of baseball's struggling franchises. After you've read to the bottom, you'll notice I allude to an idea of how to reform the draft order procedure.
Basically, I would like to see a system in which rebuilding teams are rewarded for trying. Here's an idea I had, which I've floated to exactly nobody, so I'm sure it's full of flaws and unintended consequences: Teams would be able to declare themselves out of the playoff race, between a fixed set of dates during the season. Once they do that, they enter a pool with the other teams that have done the same. The draft order is then determined by winning percentage after the end date for the window for which teams can declare themselves done. If teams don't declare, they can't get in that pool. If a team declares but ends up in the postseason by some miracle, it would wind up drafting with the contending teams, which would all pick after the teams in the premium pick pool. But said team would draft after all the teams that didn't declare and, thus, were trying for the playoffs.
So take this year's standings on Aug. 1, the day after the trade deadline:
Clearly contending (Group 1): Astros, Yankees, Twins, Indians, Rays, Athletics, Red Sox, Dodgers, Braves, Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, Nationals, Brewers.
Clearly not contending (Group 2): White Sox, Mariners, Blue Jays, Royals, Orioles, Tigers, Reds, Padres, Rockies, Pirates, Marlins.
In between (Group 3): Angels, Rangers, Giants, Diamondbacks, Mets.
So, you'd have an obvious premium draft pool of Group 2 teams, perhaps joined by the Angels and Rangers. But there is a risk for those teams to declare themselves out of the race -- because for it to matter in terms of being in the premium pool, you have to try to win as many games down the stretch as possible. But if you do that and end up snagging a second wild-card slot, then you're picking at the bottom of the next draft. Let's say they did declare. Then here is the draft order based on what has happened since Aug. 1:
1. Rangers (19-20, .487)
2. Padres (18-20, .474)
3. White Sox (18-22, .450)
4. Pirates (17-21, .447)
5. Reds (17-23, .425)
6. Blue Jays (14-22, .389)
7. Royals (14-22, .389)
8. Mariners (13-22, .371)
9. Rockies (12-25, .324)
10. Angels (11-26, .297)
12. Orioles (11-27, 289)
13. Tigers (11-27, .289)
14. Marlins (10-29, .256)
Suddenly, some of our more lame late-season matchups become more interesting. And while you might look at these standings and say it's not fair to the O's, Tigers and Marlins -- the Rangers and Padres are advantaged by having better, if underachieving, rosters -- that's the whole point. This system disincentivizes teams to tear down to nothing and sell veterans for pennies on the dollar at the deadline. Maybe you'd want to make the derby just for the top five picks or something, with the order defaulting to worst-to-best overall after that, but the details can be worked out.