Deane: Managing to get to Cooperstown
From SABR member Bill Deane at WordPress on October 22, 2019:
Bruce Bochy retired as Giants’ manager last month. Most observers consider him an automatic Hall of Famer, based on his three world championships and reaching the 2000-win milestone. (They don’t mention that Bochy finished with a sub-.500 career won-lost record, leading the NL in losses three times.)
I think managers of the past half-century are ’way overrepresented in Cooperstown – Whitey Herzog, Dick Williams, and Tommy Lasorda were particularly weak choices. The Hall of Fame was conceived in 1936 as a way to honor the greats of the game and, from the first 60 years of major league baseball, only John McGraw and Connie Mack were deemed worthy for their managerial records. Even after skippers (along with umpires and executives) were given a special avenue for election in 1953, very few were added at first. By 1993, only ten men categorized as managers were in the Hall, and most of them had had significant roles as players, too. But twelve more managers have been added since then, and more will follow. It’s gotten to the point that, if you last a dozen years as a skipper, and win more games than you lose, you have better than a 50% chance of making it to Cooperstown.
Read the full article here: https://dizzydeane.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/managing-to-get-to-cooperstown/
Originally published: October 23, 2019. Last Updated: October 23, 2019.