Measuring Managers: Mixed Messages

Depending on Criteria, A Skipper May Rate Both Near Top, Bottom

When the Atlanta Braves dropped their first nine one-run decisions of the season, something that hadn't been done in baseball in eight years, the anti-Bobby Cox faction of the Braves' fandom, which is always bubbling just under the surface because of what is perceived as Cox's shortcomings, began to gain strength on sports-talk radio and Internet message boards.

One-run games supposedly tell a lot about a manager's acumen, and Cox always has had his critics (though almost none inside the game, or among players who have played under him). But what those critics probably didn't know was that Cox was 411-372 over his first 17 full seasons with the Braves in one-run games.

"No, it was just a function of the way our team was playing -- just not getting any big hits," Braves General Manager Frank Wren said on Friday, the day after the Braves finally won a one-run game to improve to 1-9. "It wasn't what Bobby was or wasn't doing. Wins and losses in one-run games, to me, are somewhat random."

As for Cox's managerial ability, Wren said, "Bobby is as good as it gets."

That is certainly debatable, but can it be measured? Unlike in football, basketball or hockey, in which, to varying degrees, a coach's offensive or defensive acumen is easily visible, or even measurable, a manager's influence on his team is next to impossible to assess empirically.

Partly, that is a function of baseball's strategic uniformity. There are very few innovations in baseball strategy, and very little that separates one manager's methods from another's: Every team deploys its eight fielders in the same general areas, every team uses a five-man starting rotation, every team uses its best hitters in the first four spots in the lineup and every team deploys its closer in roughly the same manner.

Not that baseball's sabremetrics vanguard isn't trying to apply mathematics to evaluate managers the same way it does players. In one innovative recent study published in the book "Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2008," author David Gassko compared how well players performed under different managers in different seasons to see which ones got the most out of their players.

Two facts from Gassko's study jump out: 1) even the best and worst managers in baseball contribute no more than one or two wins or losses to their team's record.

And 2) the best manager in history is Bobby Cox.

Well, a third fact also jumps out: Joe Torre, who like Cox is considered a surefire Hall of Famer, rates in Gassko's study as the sixth-worst manager in history. That might be news to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who swooped in after Torre was let go by the New York Yankees and gave him a three-year, $13 million contract, making him the centerpiece of their offseason.

Torre often is criticized for his in-game strategy and his handling of pitchers -- and indeed, Gassko described the performance of pitchers under Torre as "awful" -- though his backers say his greatest asset is his calming influence in the clubhouse.

"Obviously, we have some type of influence," said Washington Nationals Manager Manny Acta, who rates Cox as the best in the game. "That's the reason why some guys have won so many games and make the amount of money they make. . . . But it's not so much about the X's and O's. It's about being able to get the most out of guys and having the right atmosphere for everybody so they can run through a wall for you, and having the courage to sometimes do things without even thinking about what [reporters are] going to ask after the game."

Good luck trying to measure that.

Staff writer Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.