“The Dodger Years” set for release in 2010?

Jon Papelbon will be closing out games for the Sox for the rest of your lifetime.
insert sad face here: ____________

Reason #1 for why I pray the Dodgers lose. Torre went from being a guy lucky to have a job to a “saint” who bestowed his blessings on a team.
After all those years, Girardi is a true revelation.

No clue what Torre’s supposed “living hell” consists of. Other than the fact that he is no longer managing the greatest franchise in all of sports. But then, that would simply mean he’s no longer in heaven and not that he is actually in hell :0)

After all those years, Girardi is a true revelation..
Really? You think Torre couldn’t have done all this with a little dose of CC and Burnett, and not had to have Giambi at first base? You think Torre couldn’t have run this collection of uber-players out there everyday, thrown in a mix of great pitching from the rotation and bullpen, and not done what Girrardi had done? Be serious.
For years, he got lambasted for being one of the all time losing managers before being lucky enough to land a job in New York, then winning everything in sight and being called a genious. The same holds true for Joe G, and Terry Francona, and every other manager who gets to run a team out there every night that should freaking win.
I think what Joe has done in LA is awesome. He’s taken them much further than I thought he would.

Living hell=every second without Derek Jeter
I LOL’d.
I have a lot of respect for Torre, but I think that baseball managers have far less of an impact on the game than football or basketball coaches do. Of course there are specific exceptions to this (cough GRADY LITTLE cough), but I think it’s true in general.

Name one reliever Torre developed in his 12 seasons. And no, the gift from God that is Mariano doesn’t count.
I can name three or four Girardi developed in two seasons. And there are more that are on the way.
Also, how did Torre get Jeter to improve his defense? How would he have gotten through to Cano? Would he have played Miguel Cairo or Terrance Long ahead of Swisher in RF?
You can’t be serious. Torre was a shell of manager by the time he left the Yankees. And with the Dodgers his inability to develop a bullpen meant they were 4 games worse than their Pythag predicted. By contrast, the Yankees were 8 games better than theirs.

You don’t think the Yankees also had almost all “uber” players when Torre was managing them? Really? The problem was he depended on Bernie for far too long. He played Sheffield at 1B. Girardi got more Giambi than Torre had in years.

That’s it guys, back the bus up and make sure he’s dead before driving off. He gave you 4 World Championships, but as Yankee fans always do, go ahead and shit on him now that he’s gone.
If it wasn’t Torre who managed some of the best Yankee teams any of you have ever seen, or at least gets the credit for it, then it can’t be Joe G who gets that same credit when he’s basically thrown a group of talent that my kid sister could win with.
Not to mention, the year is far from over and Socia could basically take Joe to the woodshed over the next week, so lets hold reservation for an actual competitive series outcome. Call me crazy.

Torre “gave” them 4 rings? Are you serious? I suppose he “gave” them a HOFer at SS, CF, and catcher too? Even as he never criticized Jeter, held onto Bernie too long, didn’t play Jorge soon enough?
I never said Torre doesn’t get some credit. He was a very important part of those 1996-2001 teams. But there’s no mistaking the fact that his managing in 2002-2007 was a big reason they didn’t win anything those years. See also:
The Jeff Weaver game
Bunting on Schilling
Batting A-Rod 8th
Starting Bubba Crosby
Starting Sheffield at 1B
Throwing Wang on short rest
The midges
That list is long. Those are all managerial decisions.

Holy crap, a Boston fan lambasting Yankee fans for ‘shitting on one of their own’.
Irony, thy name is Brad.
Joe Torre was at the helm for the latest incarnation of a Yankee dynasty. He will always be remembered, and revered, for that. However, that didn’t stop him from deserving to be fired. He should have been gone after 2003, certainly gone after 2004. But the Yankees decided to paid him respect (and dollars) because of what he had done in years prior. I love the horribly stupid storylines that the Yankees ‘disrespected’ Torre. How completely and utterly false.
Girardi has indeed been a revelation. He has proven to be a master at managing a bullpen (best bullpen manager in the game this year), honestly one of the most important jobs a baseball manager has. The Dodgers had one of the most talented bullpens in baseball this year, and Torre pissed away that advantage by pitching Cory Wade over and over again before he was taken away from him. He is simply not a good manager anymore.

Irony, thy name is Brad
/….point taken, but in either case, it applies here.
best bullpen manager in the game this year..
Is this a stat, or opinion?

Brad: it’s a stat.
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/10/bullpen_managem.php

Yankee fans should be grateful for all that Torre gave us. Whether it was his doing, or that of Cashman and ownership, regardless he brought home 4 titles. I was happy when he left simply because I thought it was time. (Something that didn’t go over well here) But you will never hear me say screw Joe or what he did wasn’t or isn’t appreciated. I have not forgotten and probably never will, all that he did for this team. Even with his inability to manage a bullpen. (Poor Jon Broxton, that kid is doomed at this rate!)

Yankee fans should be grateful for all that Torre gave us.
Nonsense. Torre wasn’t some benevolent father-figure bestowing us with his Gift of Wins. He was a baseball manager. He didn’t “give” us anything. He managed a team.
Torre lost my respect with the publication of that book. Before that, I’d have been happy to overlook his obvious flaws as a manager and just remember the four titles. But a manager who publishes something like that less than two years after leaving the team in a huff? Pathetic.
So yeah, he was an important part of a lot of Yankee successes. But since he was also the type of person who would criticize his own players in print almost immediately after leaving the team, I’m not about to pile him with praises. He was only one of many parts that went into that dynasty, so I’ll just heap the praises where they belong–on the players themselves.

brad: ” He gave you 4 World Championships, but as Yankee fans always do, go ahead and shit on him now that he’s gone.”
this is the kind of incendiary, offensive, patently untrue statement we don’t want to have on this site. i think it’s safe to say most yankee fans will always love torre for what he did. we can also think his time had run its course and be pleased with the job of joe g. if you want to have a debate about the role any manager plays in the game, that’s fine, but i think the anyone-could-win-with-that-lineup argument is beneath the dignity of this site.

It says SHOULD, it doesn’t say HAVE TO. Relax Rex, you do what you’d like. Nowhere in that post did I say it’s all his doing, I said quite the opposite. Go back and read my posts from when Girardi was let go, I am not a fan. I am only saying that he gave us many years of service of for that we should be grateful. Doesn’t mean he’s a saint, doesn’t mean he did it all on his own and it doesn’t mean the championships were because of him. All it means is that he was OUR manager for many years and we were successful under him, be grateful for that time. That’s all. So relax.

but i think the anyone-could-win-with-that-lineup argument is beneath the dignity of this site.
Okay, that’s fine if you think that, YF. If you firmly believe that Joe G would be as successful a manager without the benefit of a Yankee lineup, I respectfully disagree.
I’m sorry if I stepped on your dignity here with the idea that having a great team makes a manager look better than he is.
Maybe we should ask the Marlins about the “development” of players under Joe? Or maybe we ask Philly what they think of Terry Francona? My opinion is that players make the manager look good or bad in most cases, and while there are certain singular moments anyone could point towards to prove a point, the overall meme stays the same.
I could point out 25 horrible moves Terry Francona has made in the past few years, but has gotten away with because of talent on the field – I can also point out several that he didn’t get away from (like last week for example).
Is Joe G a better manager than the other 30 managers in the game, or has he been given the best tools with which to get where he is? I say it’s a mix of both, but I hardly think Torre is any less a manager than the current skipper because of exactly one regular season of success.
Should we go back and read what YF’s thought of him at the end of last year and compare the comments? Winning changes everything, and when you’re given what Joe G was given, the odds of winning are much, much better. As is the case with Francona, Socia, and several others. I have no idea whats wrong with the Mets.:)

Joe Girardi took a miserable, awful Marlins team with a payroll under $20 million and had them contend for a playoff spot, finishing 6 games under .500, deservedly winning Manager of the Year in his first year of managing.
And what Yankee fans besides the ones who listen to Francesca and who aren’t named Peter Abraham actually thought Girardi did a bad job last year? The only thing he only had a real problem with was his relationship with the media, which he himself admitted was prickly.
The only conclusions we can draw so far from Joe Girardi’s managing tenure is that he is a good manager.

I also look to the Pythagorean records versus actual results. 8 games ahead where they should have been is pretty significant. And he was ahead last year too. Don’t forget that the Yankees won 103 games after losing their #3 starter for the year and their starting RF. They also lost a full six weeks from their starting 3B and a month from their starting catcher.
But you can’t say all managers are equal, or that they don’t matter, and put Scioscia on a pedestal. Scioscia is very good (see again, Pythag vs. actual). But Girardi may be just as good. The only mistake that could haunt him? Molina with Burnett. But then that worked pretty darn well in the ALDS and he pulled Molina at the first opportunity.
John, you did start by saying “Yankee fans should be grateful for all that Torre gave us.” One, that assumes he “gave” us anything. I don’t agree and neither does Rex it seems. And two, you assume we’re not grateful. I’m very grateful for his role from 1996-2001. After that? Not so much.

I don’t think I would give credit to Pytha vs actual to the manager, but Joe G is a good enough manager. As a fan of Moneyball, that’s one of the key points – that the manager is just the middle management. That said, a good manager gets the team to perform at its level, and Joe G certainly does that.

I won’t get into the managerial argument (well, except to say IMO Torre manages the bullpen terribly)… I would like to say I’m tired of Gammo, and wish he’d retire!

Lar – I’d love some aggregate measure for managers. Failing that all we can do is second-guess individual decisions.
Pythag seems like a good place to start because it goes to the heart of what a manager supposedly does (like you said, “getting the most”). Using that metric, you’ll also see that those managers typically judged to be the best also do very well.

awful Marlins team with a payroll under $20 million and had them contend for a playoff spot, finishing 6 games under .500
This is exactly my point, bud. I get that he’s a good manager, but I hardly think that as an overall manager, he’s better than Torre, but again, that’s just my opinion. When judging him, you yourself took the payroll consideration into account – a manager can’t win without some talent on this team is all I’m saying. Yes, the Marlins were horrible, and yes, they’re also very cheap, which is why he finished with the record he did (respectable for that team, no less), but to think that Joe G is better than most managers (as you say) when he’s yet to really win a damn thing despite the team he’s afforded is jumping the gun.
I haven’t said anywhere on here that I don’t think Joe is a good manager, in fact, I think he is a good manager.
Maybe I’m just not ready to annoint him better than Joe Torre when he’s accomplised exaclty 0% of what Joe Torre has as Yankee manager.

1. I am not telling anyone they NEED to grateful.
2. I am also not ASSUMING anyone is not grateful, I am simply addressing the trashing that was going on early. If you do appreciate him, good for you. If you don’t, that’s fine as well.
3. “Gave Us” what that means is that he was with the Yankees org for quite some time and put in a lot of effort to make this team successful. Is he the only person responsible? NO. Is he the reason they won? Could they have won without him? Who knows. All I know is that this man helped the Yankees earn 4 titles and for that I am grateful to him. Maybe it was the payroll, maybe he had nothing to do with it, WHO KNOWS.
4. You are both new (or at least one of you is) so go back and check my past track record re: Torre. I am not a fan. I am not ignorant to his shortcomings. I was happy when he left. So you are barking up the wrong tree. With that said, even though I have never been a fan of his style, I am still GRATEFUL for his time here.
I am sure you will find something to nitpick out of that too, even though it’s crystal clear. Must be semantics day here at YFSF.

> Pythag seems like a good place to start because it goes to the heart of what a manager supposedly does (like you said, “getting the most”).
Disagree. Pythagorean record doesn’t go to the heart of anything. It is an attempt to quantify what a team theoretically should have done, not what a manager or a player or a team did.
That is a significant difference.

You’ve missed my point. Take the difference between Pythag and what the team did. Look at every team across baseball. Those teams that do well on this measure also have good managers. It’s a correlation, but if a team regularly outperforms its Pythag, I think we can give the credit to the manager. Two years running, Girardi has and this year by a significant margin.

> I think we can give the credit to the manager.
I do not think that the difference between a team’s real w/l record compared to its Pythagorean expectation is assignable to the manager or any factor above anything else. Pythag is an extrapolation in which I do not particularly find any interest as an evaluation of what a team did for any purpose other than that it is somewhat interesting when thinking about what the team might do, and only within a season, and it’s only mildly interesting.
Torre’s tenure as manager of the Yankees has been analyzed to more extent than any other skipper for any other organization at any time or place, so I’m going to bow out and say “thanks, Joe,” with the caveat that I believe political motivations regarding Torre’s stature within the Yankee organization had as much or more to do with his performance than any other factor. I also think Atheose is right that managers have less impact then the title implies. It’s maybe more like, “wrangler?” I also think Girardi is a very good wrangler so far.
For the case of Torre and Girardi, I’ll put the numbers up and people can draw their own conclusion.
Actual W/L compared to pythag 2009-1996
Girardi
2009 +8
2008 +2
2006 -2 (FLA)
Torre
2009 -4
2008 -3
2007 -3
2006 +2
2005 +5
2004 +12
2003 +5
2002 +4
2001 +6
2000 +2
1999 +2
1998 +6
1997 -4
1996 +4

Sorry, something got cut off in that last comment:
“political motivations regarding Torre’s stature within the Yankee organization had as much or more to do with his performance than any other factor”
should have read: “organization has as much or more to do with the restructuring of his contract offering that he rejected than with his performance.”

“He gave you 4 World Championships, but as Yankee fans always do, go ahead and shit on him now that he’s gone.”
Pretty sure Giambi got a standing ovation when he came back this year, no? Typical B-rad…
“this is the kind of incendiary, offensive, patently untrue statement we don’t want to have on this site.”
Thanks YF.
I loved Torre, but then that book pretty much ruined it. Not to say I hate the guy, he accomplished a great deal in the Bronx but it left a sour taste for me. I wonder if we make the WS and the Dodgers do too, what the reaction to him would be?

You know, telling people to relax is an unnecessarily provocative debating technique. It automatically puts the other person on the defensive by implying that they’re being unreasonably excitable. Just, you know, fyi.
Anyway, I was just picking out a sentence that succinctly summarized something I disagreed with in this thread. It wasn’t directed exclusively at you.
I don’t care for Torre. I just don’t respect him. He was an important part of recent Yankees successes, and nobody (well, not many people, at least) denies that. But his actions since 2007 have wiped away most of the goodwill I had for him.
On an unrelated note, the ’98 Yankees were only 6 games over their Pythag? That’s crazy. I’ll never tire of perusing that team’s stats.

> automatically puts the other person on the defensive
Only if they are an automat. Mmm. Automat. I want an egg salad sandwich. :)
I almost asterisked that 98 season.. it kind of makes pythag their Beach. Seattle was 7 off in their record-breaking 2001. What does that mean? I have no idea. The point is the recursion inherent in pythag makes it hard for me to use it as a critical tool retroactively.

am i tripping or is there a 6 year old flying a little spaceship over america right now? i need to sleep.

>r is there a 6 year old flying a little spaceship over america
yes, there is.

In grade school, I remember that they used to show a French movie short called ‘Le Bellon Rouge — “The Red Balloon” — where a child finds a balloon that follows him everywhere. There is little or no dialogue, just music. Some kids kill it with a slingshot. Then all the other balloons from all over Paris came to pick him up and float him away. I would guess that many have seen it, but I know when I was a kid I loved that movie. Made me cry when they shot the red balloon the first 20 times I saw it.

I loved that movie. We used to watch it on rainy days at my school.

AG, up until now I thought that movie was a childhood dream…I think I might cry, what a revelation!

Here’s the thing. I want an aggregate stat for managers that would at least give some number to their performance. Over time we could figure out if it’s the right number. A good question is how would we do that versus other potentially useful numbers.
This Pythagorean ratio (Pyra?) assumes a few things:
1) Managers have some small impact on the games during the whole season.
2) The Pythagorean record of a team is a good predictor of it’s overall record.
3) To the extent that a team’s record deviates from their predicted record, we award the difference to the manager.
4) Just as one season does not determine the player, one season does not determine a manager.
Feel free to disagree with any of those. Just give me a better alternative to chew over (or other stuff folks have come up with to measure managers).
I’d say that after a period of three to five years you can get sense of a manager. Longer runs (like Torre’s – great work!) could be analyzed like any player’s career.
The other thing about this ratio is as you look over a few years, it really does make sense. The better managers (LaRussa, Scioscia, Francona) do steadily pop out. The overrated guys have wild swings (Ozzie, Pinella). And some years are just about average.
What’s interesting just from the numbers the gerbil cites:
1) Girardi had a good rookie season and has only gotten better.
2) Torre was consistently an above average but not great manager. He had a career year (and MVP season) in 2004 but then choked in the post-season when he didn’t bunt on Schilling. (I always knew deep down that the Sox were better that year. But not until today did I realize they should have been 7 games better).
3) I’m really glad Torre isn’t the Yankee manager any more.
I’d love to see this stat for every manager for every season. Just another piece to the puzzle. Anyone know how to contact Sean Forman?

> rainy days
Yep.. instead of recess.

god, well it landed and he’s not in it.

It would also be interesting to compare Torre Pre-Yankees.
Where did you get the numbers, attackgerbil?

> This Pythagorean ratio (Pyra?) assumes a few things:
There is no assumption. It is math.
> 1) Managers have some small impact on the games during the whole season.
There is nothing that says this in the formula.
> 2) The Pythagorean record of a team is a good predictor of it’s overall record.
Except that it isn’t a good predictor. It is “a” predictor.
> 3) To the extent that a team’s record deviates from their predicted record, we award the difference to the manager.
What? This makes no sense at all.
> 4) Just as one season does not determine the player, one season does not determine a manager.
Very confused now.

> he’s not in it
I am feeling awful now.

> Where did you get the numbers, attackgerbil?
I extracted them from baseball-reference.com — just click on franchise encyclopedia for any team and the respective year you wish to research.

> There is no assumption. It is math.
There are no assumptions in match?
> Except that it isn’t a good predictor. It is “a” predictor.
Give me another predictor and we can compare which is better.
> What? This makes no sense at all.
Ratio > 3 is good. More is better.
Ratio < -3. More is worse. > Very confused now.
Take any stat (OPS+, ERA+, BA, SLG, SB). One season is insufficient. Three seasons is better. Five seasons or more starts to get interesting.

“There are no assumptions in math?”

> just click on franchise encyclopedia for any team and the respective year you wish to research
Thanks!

> There are no assumptions in math?
Not in the factors required by the formula we are discussing, except in how one wants to “assume” something other than the number that comes out of the end of the math.
> Give me another predictor and we can compare which is better.
Why? The concept is broken. Using Pythagorean expectation to analyze what already happened as a critique of a manager is flawed, and the predicament you describe is wrongly imposed. “What-if?” as a reconstruction of actual results is a travesty.
Repeat: this proposal is flawed.
>> Very confused now.
> Take any stat (OPS+, ERA+, BA, SLG, SB). One season is insufficient. Three seasons is better. Five seasons or more starts to get interesting.
We aren’t talking about any one of those things. My point is that Pythagoreean expectation compared to W/L is not a valid measure of managerial performance. What is your point?

What is the Yanks’ Riemannian record during the Torre years? I think if you look at those, you’ll find that Torre basically could have managed a bunch of cyclopian mackerel to the championships. Riemannian analysis does Torre no justice.

> wants to “assume” something other than the number
You do realize we do this all the time. We assume someone is a good hitter because the numbers suggest so. We assume Hardy will bounce back because he’s given that performance previously. We do this all the time, especially in sports.
What’s missing is some number, any number, to estimate the value of a manager – season-to-season and relative to his peers. If you don’t like my formulation, come up with a better one.
> expectation to analyze what already happened
That’s exactly what we do with every sports statistic. Then we try to predict future performance. This one is no different. And interestingly, the mangers I’ve looked at are pretty consistent from year to year and even when changing teams (check out Francona in Philly vs. Sox). Torre sucked his first few years, then found a consistent performance in Atlanta and into St. Louis and in NYC. Not surprisingly, his career is almost over and has been for three seasons now.
> Repeat: this proposal is flawed.
It’s not rational to offer an opinion (manager’s have little to no effect) without offering some evidence. That’s why critics seldom create. It’s opinion without facts.
> My point is that Pythagoreean expectation compared to W/L is not a valid measure of managerial performance.
To which you’ve only offered evidence, in support of my interpretation.

What a perversion of logic.

I’ve been Robbed of a good thread.

Grady Little? Career -1.5 PYRA.

Tony LaRussa? Career +1 PYRA.

Francona? Career +.8 PYRA.
What I’m loving about this stat is that it shows how little of a difference a manager likely has on average. A few games either way. Of course, sure it depends on the players the manager can use. But over a few years and teams that variability averages out.

Torre? +.807 PYRA

let me simplify it for y’all:
torre is a good manager
girardi is a good manager
tito is a good manager
also in common…they didn’t do “it” by themselves…they are part of a team…

Torre, Francona, and LaRussa have done it across multiple teams. Torre and LaRussa didn’t start out as good managers.

Torre is not a good manager. At least, he’s not a good bullpen manager (we know that for sure), and he’s not a very good tactical manager (we can easily see that, although I’m not sure there’s some statistic out there to prove it).
I guess he could be a good clubhouse manager, and a smoother-over of controversy, but that’s a pretty hard thing to judge.

And, I’m not saying he didn’t manage well in the late-90s, just that he isn’t a good manager currently, and hasn’t been good since 2003.

i understand what you’re saying andrew, but torre was good enough not to f it up at least 4 times…we can say it was because of the players, and that’s certainly partly true…i wonder if joe would have gotten as much out of tampa bay as maddon has, or if either of them could make a winner out of the royals…some of the “goodness” comes from style…it’s been said that torre’s style helped get the most out of the late ’90’s team that really didn’t have many elite players, yet they were mostly very good, some future stars, and role players who knew their role…he didn’t have to teach them how to play the game…x’s and o’s weren’t as much of an issue with those teams, because they got the job done, some would say in spite of him…plus he had zimmer bending his ear the whole game…say what you want about that guy, but joe trusted him…the anecdote continues that joe did a great job of managing the personalities and egos, and the owner, so the guys could just play ball…i think, and this comes out in the book, he began to struggle when george decided he needed to continue to vastly outspend everybody to keep the train rolling, but they underestimated the value of draft picks and a well stocked farm system, they underestimated the value of good chemistry to their earlier success, and did a poor job of assessing how certain players would fit in ny, particularly pitchers, and with judging the curve of certain aging players’ declining years…i understand the knocks on joe, particularly his tendency to be loyal to a fault, and mismanaging the pitching staff, but the failures of the last 8 seasons are not because he forgot how to manage, it was an organizational letdown starting at the top…don’t get me wrong, i jumped on the we need a new joe bandwagon, but not because i didn’t appreciate him, but rather because i recognized that it was time for a change…frankly, his sucking up to jeter, and his failure to help arod understand his role as a teammate were not cool…we as fans were very lucky to have the once in a lifetime perfect match of manager to team, and had a great run that included 4 championships…not bad…nice job joe, and thanks…

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