Royally Managing Expectations

     The discussion has raged on for years as to the importance of the baseball manager. Opinions vary wildly, but there is one thing that really can’t be argued. Of the four major professional sports, there is no doubt that the baseball manager is the least impactful, and the hardest to evaluate. The nature of the sport is very much the biggest part of it. Football, basketball, and hockey are fueled much more by teamwork and elaborate strategies, baseball is far more a series of individual battles within a team context.

     So the Royals not very surprising announcement of Mike Matheny as their new manager occurs in that overarching atmosphere, but is also happened the day after the seventh game of the World Series, an isolated example where the strategies of the game as implemented by a manager were in sharp focus, and rightly so.

     The Astros skipper A.J. Hinch is widely regarded as among the best, it not the best, manager in the game. But his removal of Zack Greinke, who was throwing a shutout through 6 1/3 innings before allowing a homer and walk, and having thrown just eighty pitches, put him under fire. The flame was turned up since he never brought Gerritt Cole into the game. These can easily be viewed as mistakes, I certainly did, and not just in hindsight. But these situations are relatively rare, and usually do not define a manager

     Hinch is seen as ordinarily a keen strategist, and in tune with the modern analytics of the game. His other qualities in creating a positive clubhouse environment, and being the daily face of the club in dealing with the media are also strengths, the latter especially shown when he seemed to be the only responsible Astros adult in reacting to the pennant celebration debacle created by a team vice president.

     Hinch is also on his second managerial job, after being fired mid-season in just his second year as the Arizona Diamondbacks leader. No one thought of him in glowing terms at that time. He is the latest in a long string of managers who thrived when given a second chance, which, yes, includes outgoing Royals manager Ned Yost.

     Which brings us to Mike Matheny. His hiring creates a litany of narratives locally, ramped up decidedly by the fact that he managed four hours down I-70. Matheny carved out a thirteen-year career as a light hitting, slick fielding catcher who won four Gold Gloves. Five of those years were spent in St. Louis, three of them with playoff teams. His career ended due to concussion symptoms.

     The toughness he showed in often hanging in games after collisions and foul balls off of him were a major part of him being an extremely respected player, and there was no real surprise that managing might be in his future. Catchers are by far the most common former players who become skippers.

     By pure metrics, his six-and-a-half-year stint with the Cardinals was a success. St. Louis made the playoffs his first four years, something no manager had ever done, and they made the World Series once, falling to the Red Sox in 2013 in six games. But that success came after a World Series title the year before he succeeded the retiring Tony Larussa, so detractors saw it akin to a college football coach winning with someone else’s players. He had winning, but less successful seasons, at the end, before being fired midway through the 2018 season.

     His reputation was as an old-school manager who preferred veteran players. When things started to go slightly south, there were multiple reports that painted a picture of a manager who did not embrace the analytical side of the game, had a tight leash on younger players, and allowed a clubhouse atmosphere of hazing. There are enough refutations of those reports to make you feel better if you want to embrace this hiring, but multiple players who went on to other teams painted a less than ideal picture of the regime.

     Many reporters felt that Matheny was insecure in his first managerial job, and favored players who were praiseworthy of him, or shared his ideas that many of today’s players are soft. Those who provided a more balanced view of Matheny generally refer to him as a good baseball man, and a solid individual. But, the Cardinals did improve when they made the move to Mike Schildt, who is seen as far more progressive, and of course making the playoffs for the first time in a few years doesn’t hurt that viewpoint.

     Matheny shares a very similar outlook on the world to general manager Dayton Moore. They are in lockstep on issues like faith, family, baseball, parenting and the like. Matheny had been with the organization for exactly a calendar year when he was named manager so they had been able to vet him for that period, but he seems so much like a philosophical clone of Moore that you could make the case that the time was merely an affirmation, not an examination.

     Moore has made one managerial hire that was a disaster in Trey Hillman, and one that started off looking pretty dodgy, but ended up in complete exultation for the franchise. Trying to judge these things is well near impossible. What we know at the outset is that many fans need to have their minds changed on this hire, and a goodly group of them are likely terrified that they will have to listen to a fusillade of “I told you so” from Cardinal fans.

     At his introductory press conference, Matheny presented a “changed man” persona, ticking off the efforts he had made to improve in multiple areas. He must have used the phrase “personal relationships” fifteen times, and discussed media and analytics training. He still is not yet fifty years old, he is certainly young enough to learn some new tricks and clean up rough edges from the job he got when was 41.

     He could not change very much and succeed, and he could change a lot and fail. The vagaries of baseball managing make that or other versions of the same a reality. A hybrid of Tony Larussa and Terry Frnacona could fail if the Royals don’t get better players. They don’t seem particularly close to me, and certainly the first test for Matheny will be to show patience when he is guiding a losing team for the first time in his career, and stick with young players while doing it.

     One thing we know for sure is that he looks the part. Tall and strapping, he cuts a central casting figure of a manager. That of course matters not a whit. The previously mentioned Francona looks like a character actor’s version, and he would be my choice for the top manager in the game.

     Mike Matheny comes in as a seemingly unpopular hire and damaged goods and he has won fifty six percent of his games in his managerial career. He replaces a man in Ned Yost who will likely have a statue at the stadium and his number retired, and he won forty seven percent.

     That paragraph right there might just sum up what trying to wrap your arms around a managerial hire is like.