What Does It Take To Be A Major League Manager?

Sitting on my couch in the middle of a New England winter, trying to pick a topic to write about for my weekly blog, my attention turned to X (I’m not going to say formerly Twitter). Staring at me was a posting by Dan Hayes of The Athletic from TwinsFest with manager Rocco Baldelli in the photo.

There are only 30 managers in Major League Baseball, so the odds of getting a managerial position are far smaller than the odds of being a major league ball player. It got me thinking about the criteria that teams may use when selecting a manager.

The current group of major league managers are a very interesting group with varied backgrounds.

There are 10 of the 30 managers who never appeared in a single major league game. Six of them (Brian Snitker, Brandon Hyde, Pedro Grifol, Joe Espada, Matt Quatraro, and John Schneider)reached AAA (a total of 435 combined games), 3 of them never got past A (Pat Murphy, Derek Shelton, and Oliver Marmol), and as far as I can tell Mike Shildt never played an inning of professional baseball.

There would only be 7 of them that played on a regular basis over a lengthy career. They are (with the number of years they appeared in over 100 games): Craig Counsel (11 of 16), David Bell (9 of 12), Skip Schumaker (7 of 11), Aaron Boone (7 of 12), Mark Kotsay (13 of 17), Rob Thompson (8 of 11) and Dave Martinez (12 of 16).

Of the 20 that played in the majors, the managers with the highest lifetime batting average were Skip Schumaker and Rocco Baldelli at .278, Craig Counsel and Dave Roberts with the highest OBP of .342, Rocco had the highest slugging percentage of .443, and also the highest OPS of .766, Rob Thompson would have the highest OPB+ with 105 (Rocco was 101), and Rob Thompson would have the highest WAR with 33.8.

Success as a player certainly can’t be one of the major criteria with current baseball operations people.

In order to be a good manager, you must fully understand the game. The best way is through observation. If you are on a team and are not a regular, you are spending a lot of time watching and observing. You’re also in the dugout and listening to discussions between the manager and his coaching staff. Maybe you are also asking questions about strategy and what was the reason for making a decision. You also have the entire field in front of you and are more aware of what each player is doing, rather than just worrying about yourself when playing in the field.

What is also very interesting information about the 30 managers is that only two, Bud Black and Pat Murphy, were pitchers.

I’m not really sure why this is true, but maybe some of you could give me your thoughts on why this is so.

It is also interesting in reviewing the positional background on the 27 managers who didn’t not pitch (and Mike Shildt).

Primarily 1B – 0, 2B – 3, Shortstop – 1, 3B – 1.5, Middle Infield (2B & SS) – 4, OF – 4.5 and Catchers – 13. The catchers were: Snitker, Hyde, Grifol, Vogt, Hinch, Quartraro, Gibbons, Shelton, Melvin, Servais, Cash, Bochy and Schneider.

I can understand the number of catchers for a few reasons: 1) many of them call the game for the pitcher and work on formulating a pitching plan for each game, they will know more about each opponent than probably anyone else on the team, 2) they are playing the only position where they can see every player on the field and all of the action is in front of them, and 3) as catchers they tend to platoon with another catcher meaning they spend more time observing the game from the bench then those normally on the field.

Many great players have managed baseball teams, but very few of them ever succeeded. These great players were lacking in areas that lesser players possessed. Perhaps things came too easy for them, perhaps they didn’t have to work hard to succeed and perhaps they couldn’t understand why players did not possess the skills needed to be great.

When you look at the great all-time managers, those elected to the Hall of Fame, you are looking at men who were very similar to the current group of major league managers. Here are the Hall of Fame managers that managed from the 1950’s until the present: Casey Stengel, Al Lopez, Walter Alston, Earl Weaver, Tommy Lasorda, Sparky Anderson, Dick Williams, Whitey Herzog, Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre and Jim Leyland.

By far, the best player of that group was Joe Torre. All the others were similar to today’s group of managers. Walter Alston play one major league game, Earl Weaver and Jim Leyland never made it out of the minors, and Tommy Lasorda was that rare pitcher. There were 3 catchers in the group (Lopez, Torre, and Leyland).

In 2018 the Twins made a managerial change. Of all the available options and all the candidates that they interviewed, they picked Rocco Baldelli to lead their team. At the same time the Twins were interviewing, the Rangers, Reds, Blue Jays and the Orioles had vacancies. Rocco ended up interviewing with most, if not all, of those teams.

I thought it would be a good exercise to see if I could find the positives that the Twins saw in Rocco that would make him their choice of all the options available.

We should be able to agree that Rocco is a great communicator. The job of the manager is taking on more and more emphasis on communications. They need to communicate with: 1)the Front Office that is more involved in day-to-day than ever, 2) the players in the clubhouse so they know their roles and expectations, and 3) the coaching staff to make sure that they know their roles also.

He also brought a playing career where he was a star player, and a bench player, before and after his illness. That helps, especially with the bench players and knowing that they need to make frequent appearances to stay sharp.

When his playing days were over he was hired by the Rays as a “special advisor” working primarily in scouting and player development (that Rays pedigree is very much in demand). In 2014 Kevin Cash put him back in uniform as his 1st base coach. In 2017 they created the coaching position of “field coordinator” which involved analyzing the tendencies of opposing hitters, he also coached defensive skills, and helped the team implement defensive strategies during the game.

Finally they chose him for his intellect. Rocco had a 4.25 GPA in high school (on a 4.0 grading system where extra quality points are given for taking honors or advanced placement classes), as well as having scored 1,300 on his SAT exams. He considered enrolling at Princeton, Yale, UCLA, the University of North Carolina before accepting enrollment at Wake Forest. Being draft as the 6th pick in the first round of the 2000 draft and offered a $2.25 signing bonus would convince Rocco to forego college and go directly into professional baseball.

Please give me your comments on what talent and experience it takes to be a successful major league manager.