Hall of Fame Pyramid - Managers and General Managers
Aug 24, 2019 18:09:39 GMT -5
Rich - Former GM and Texas Rangers like this
Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Aug 24, 2019 18:09:39 GMT -5
Welcome to the Manager / General Manager section! This is where all the men that ever led teams (or organized them) are celebrated. The nature of these roles has changed a great deal over time. Managers started off as players generally, though occasionally owners would take that role. As time went on managers became increasingly retired players, though player-managers would remain in occasional use all the way until the 1980s. At the beginning of the century what we now consider General Manager duties were generally performed by the manager. By the teens and 20s some teams began to make use of a ‘Business Manager’, an off-field administrator. Eventually the two positions (manager and GM) became separated, and increasingly over the century GMs were less and less likely to be former players.
One of the biggest shifts in terms of these roles happened when the MLB transitioned to the PBL. The PBL changed many things. First, managers no longer had any autonomy to make decisions independent of the instructions of the front office, effectively merging the roles. Second, the terms of the league prohibited GMs from being fired by owners; the only means of GM removal were voluntary and by the executive action of the Commissioner. Third, the improvement of scouting such that true potential was knowable for every player meant that the fog of war, so to speak, was lifted. Fourth, almost every PBL GM was unproven when hired. This means that, while many succeeded to greatness, many others were found wanting, at best perpetuating mediocrity and at worst granting their best players to the best GMs for a song before quitting. These things combined to 1) make the impact of PBL GMs larger than MLB GMs, 2) make the career of PBL GMs generally much longer than MLB GMs and 3) make the gap between the best and worst GMs in the PBL much larger than it is for the MLB.
The above makes the comparison between PBL GMs and MLB GMs very complicated; the resume of a silver-tier MLB GM might look paltry in a PBL context. In the end all we can do is look at how valuable each contributor was (as best we can) and put them in tiers accordingly. Just don’t be surprised if the top PBL GMs come out looking pretty sweet by comparison.
As far as both categories, we’re changing one major characteristic of evaluation. With players, we only care about their seasons above average. A player with a great peak who was terrible for five other years is treated the same as a player with a great peak who was mediocre for those five years; because we only care about how great they were. With the managers we’re choosing to care about their entire career evenly. Why? There are a lot of factors.
First, great player careers consistently range from 10-20 years, with no more than 5-15 years of quality. This is because playing baseball is a physical skill; by the time you’re 40 there are some serious limits to how good you can be. When your years are limited the peak ends up mattering more than the aggregate. This is not true for managers; a manager can manage at a high level for 30 years or more without issue and every year matters. Second, manager/GM skill, such as it can be evaluated, is much more volatile than player skill. If a player has an incredible year we can assume it’s a more reliable indication of his skill than if a manager seems to have a great year. By caring about all years equally we avoid putting too much emphasis on a small sample of seasons for managers. Third, every player in theory can succeed on every team and in every park. But Managers cannot; you don’t want to be ignoring managers succeeding with good fit teams and struggling with bad fit teams; both count. Fourth, a bad player is rarely reaaaaaally bad. A really terrible player might cost his team three wins compared to an average player in a season, but it’ll be hard to keep getting playing time in that circumstance, ie it’s very hard for a terrible player to do serious damage to his team over his career. It’s totally possible for a bad manager to do more than three wins of damage to his team in a year and keep doing it. So all of it matters.
And yes, technically we’re giving the manager credit for all the managing on his team (crediting Bobby Cox for Leo Mazzone) and giving a GM credit for all decisions on his team (including the work of all the scouts). I don’t really know another way to do it. We need a manager/gm section, and it’s never going to be perfect. All we can do is our best.
Anyhow, let’s kick things off with a manager, also an excellent player, Joe Cronin! Cronin was a shortstop that broke into the league at 19 for Pittsburgh and was playing quality ball for the Senators by age 23. When he was 26 and manager Walter Johnson was stepping down he was asked if he’d want to manage the team as well as play. In his first year as player/manager the Senators improved by six wins and won the American League (though lost the World Series). At age 28 (1935) he was traded to the Red Sox who had just snapped out of their 16 year losing streak. Starting in 1937 he led the Sox to seven straight winning seasons and, in 1946, a pennant and a 104-50 season.
Without a doubt he benefited from managing Ted Williams (whose play covered over half of Cronin’s tenure) but Cronin showed a lot of skill managing hitters generally. While he can’t really take credit for Williams or Jimmie Foxx he did help develop Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky. Cronin has a lot of other interesting contributions; he used his bullpen very aggressively for the era, bunted a lot despite having great hitters, won one-run games at a high rate (.547) and generally allowed fewer runs than you’d guess given the hits his pitchers allowed. If there’s a knock against him it’s that his teams almost always faded down the stretch; they averaged dropping by .051 points in the second half. For example, his 1946 Red Sox were 50-27 which is impressive, but they started the year 54-23. They did that almost every year.
Funny story about Cronin; in 1938 (age 31) the owner Tom Yawkey asked Cronin to scout a young shortstop phenom with the Louisville Colonels (a recently acquired Red Sox farm team). Cronin, who was the team’s starting shortstop at the time and not wanting competition, downplayed the prospect’s skills and suggested that he be traded. Cronin did indeed have three more good years playing in him, but the prospect went on to great success with the Dodgers. In fact, Cronin and the prospect (Pee Wee Reese) have exhibits almost next to each other in the Bronze tier . . .
Up next, Casey Stengel! You may well be surprised to see Stengel in the Honorable Mention section. Stengel’s record of ten pennants in twelve years will likely never be broken (perhaps as well as five straight Championships); it’s as good a twelve-year span that’s ever happened. Yeah, sure, he did it with George Weiss’ Yankees, but *nobody* has had a span that good. So what gives? Stengel had three parts of his career, managing for 25 years overall. First, he spent nine years managing the Dodgers in the mid 30s and then the Boston Bees / Braves after. These teams were all bad, but Stengel actually did a pretty good job supporting them. In 1949 he took over the Yankees (coming off of 94 and 97 win seasons) and proceeded to win five straight World Series; in his twelve years with the Yankees he only had one season below 96 wins (length of season adjusted). He took a year off and then became the manager of the expansion Mets, leading them to seasons of 40, 51, 53 and 50 wins.
What were Stengel’s characteristics as a manager? On the downside, over his career Stengel’s pitchers had the 2nd worst adjusted BB/9 of any reasonably tenured manager. Not an accident, his batters were also notorious for not taking walks (Mickey Mantle notwithstanding). In fact, over his 25 year career his teams averaged giving up 39 more walks than they took per season. The upside was that his teams were optimized around the double-play; his teams always turned a ton of them and hit into them rarely.
Beyond statistics, Stengel had a lot of other distinctive traits. For one, he platooned before it was common. In fact, Stengel’s success platooning with the Yankees was a big reason the habit started catching on. Another tidbit is that he was a big believer in leveraging his pitchers by reserving them for top opponents. His three aces (Eddie Lopat, Vic Racshi and Allie Reynolds) pitched a disproportionate number of their games against Cleveland, Boston and Detroit. Personality-wise, Stengel took no prisoners. He thought nothing of talking crap about his players to the media, or benching a player who wasn’t performing.
How did these traits serve him in his three tenures? They helped with Brooklyn / Boston; those teams did better than they ought have. And they were, and I cannot emphasize this enough, perfect for the Yankees. Platooning? The Yankees had talent at every position so Stengel always skilled platoon partners when he needed them. Leveraging pitchers? The Yankees had a set of skilled (though not dominant) aces that could be leveraged, but also a decent bottom of the rotation who could hold their own against the bad teams. Take no prisoners attitude? Holding the players to a high standard kept the Yankees for getting sloppy, and being able to take no grief from the superstars that populated the roster was invaluable; no matter how many all-stars were on the roster this was Casey Stengel’s team. And he never played a veteran past his usefulness; if his performance declined he was out, and because he was with the Yankees he always had a good replacement.
All of the things that were so great for the Yankees made him legit terrible with the Mets. I don’t mean that the team was bad (though God knows that they were); I mean that Stengel’s management actually badly hurt the team. Platooning aggressively didn’t matter much when it funnelled at bats to terrible hitters; leveraging pitchers was counter-productive when he had no good pitchers. But worst of all, his take no prisoners attitude alienated the crap out of his team. With the Yankees being hard on the team kept them sharp; with the Mets it ruined morale. Let’s face it, if you’re managing a 60-win team and focusing on the negative you’re going to be negative a lot. And if you bench a player every time he struggles you’ll bench your entire roster, because for a 60-win team struggling is the default. Was he struggling because he was in his 70s, or were the Mets simply a terrible fit? Who knows.
But I can say that his years with the Mets destroyed his rating. Had he never managed them he’d probably be at least Silver. Of course, had he never landed with the Yankees (a perfect situation for him in every way) he’d just be that one above-average manager who was terrible with the Mets. Hard to know where to split it, and it may be that Honorable Mention is too low. But a manager has to be good in any situation; Stengel was catastrophic for the Mets. Try and find a tenure like that for the top managers of all-time; you won’t have much luck.
Up next, our first GM, John Quinn! Quinn was part of a distinguished baseball family and actually succeeded his father as the GM of the Boston Braves in 1946. The Braves had been a poor to middling franchise for the century, winning one championship and pennant in the first 45 years. Quinn immediately signed Billy Southworth to manage the team (who you’ll meet in a few floors) and traded for/developed Eddie Stanky, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn (who you’ll meet later on as well). The 1948 Braves won 91 games and the NL, but lost the World Series 4-2 to Cleveland.
The team regressed a bit over the next four years (only one bad season) but by 1953 the team had moved west to Milwaukee and had taken massive strides forward. Befitting the former head of the farm system Quinn worked hard to find talent and by ‘53 he had developed an excellent squad and two Hall of Famers, Eddie Matthews and Henry Aaron. The Braves had six straight winning seasons under Quinn, including two pennants and one World Series.
In 1959 Quinn jumped to the Phillies, who were middle of the road but on the way down. He had several bad seasons with Philadelphia but by 1962 had built a winner. They had several good seasons and one 90+ winner, but ultimately the franchise faltered under the drama of Dick Allen and Curt Flood. The franchise slowly regressed and ultimately its collapse got Quinn fired at the end of 1972. But in ‘72 he traded for Steve Carlton and by the time he was fired he had acquired excellent players like Mike Schmidt for his farm system. When the Phillies became dominant in the mid 70s they did it in large part with players Quinn had acquired or developed during his tenure. Quinn only has one ring on his finger, but took over two middling teams in middling markets and turned them into contenders; clearly an excellent track record.
Up next, Cedric Tallis! Tallis has one of the most unusual resumes here. Tallis was the inaugural GM of the expansion Kansas City Royals in 1969. Tallis extracted from owner Ewing Kauffman the concession that young players could be targeted in the expansion draft instead of loading up on has-beens that might increase attendance. Tallis supplemented his efforts by building a brain trust of future GMs in his organization (the greatest of which being John Schuerholz). The Royals unsurprisingly put up two bad seasons before moving into mediocrity for the next four. Tallis wheeled and dealed, acquiring a number of solid players for little and drafting excellently (including George Brett). Kauffman was impatient, however, and in 1974 fired Tallis. The roster that Tallis built went on to have six subsequent winning seasons, four 90+ win seasons, one 100+, four playoff appearances and one pennant.
Tallis went on to be the GM of the Yankees for two seasons (‘78 and ‘79) where he won a ring, but the team had already been great and Steinbrenner was so active in those rosters that it’s hard to know how much credit to give Tallis. But we do know that Tallis ran an expansion team in a tiny market, and did such an excellent job that they became one of the best teams in the league only seven years after inception. This is an incredible achievement; certainly worthy of an Honorable Mention.
Up next (and the second time he's featured on this floor), Joe Torre! Torre managed a lot of years, and much later in his life than most. His trademark was a calm, confident demeanor and the demonstration of trust in his players. Torre managed for a lot of bad teams before he ended up with the Yankees. He ran the Mets for five years when they were awful and from ‘82-’84 he captained the Braves through several winning seasons. After the Braves he managed the Cardinals for five years after the disintegration of their roster (the Cards were quite good in the late 80s), and managed several 500 years. And in 1996 he took over the Yankees and would lead them to 12 straight playoffs, 11 of the 12 seasons at 92 wins or better, 6 pennants and 4 championships. It’s probably, just on the face of it, the greatest run of any late MLB manager.
Nay-sayers would argue that Torre inherited a very talented roster (Jeter, Posada, Williams and Rivera plus the best money could buy) and that’s unquestionably true. And we’re not arguing that they only won because of Torre. But Torre had put up better seasons with weaker teams than you’d guess with his rosters, and with the Yankees he made good on their potential. Let’s not forget that the Yankees actually fulfilled their talent under Torre, which is actually its own achievement. Despite managing under perhaps the most intrusive owner in MLB history, Torre rarely came down on his players or jerked their chains. Torre treated them with trust and respect and they performed fantastically for him.
Probably Torre’s biggest achievement was his team’s postseason success; from ‘98-’00 when they won three titles they went 33-8 in the playoffs, facing only one game that could have eliminated them. Part of it is luck (they only went 43-39 in Torre’s other years which is still pretty good) but a lot of it is that Torre was excellent with his bullpen. Of all the MLB managers in history, Torre ranks #2 in overperforming his pythag, which is to say, putting up and preventing runs when they counted most. His bullpen usage was a big part of that; especially with the Cardinals he used his bullpen aggressively and with the Yankees he leaned heavily on the best closer ever in Mariano Rivera. In the playoffs, instead of using Rivera only in the 9th with a lead, he would consistently a) bring in Rivera in the 8th or earlier, b) leave Rivera in for multiple innings and c) pitch Rivera in back-to-back games. Torre doesn’t get credit for having a guy like Rivera on his roster, but he does get credit for leveraging the greatest closer ever for maximum value.
Torre fizzled a bit toward the end of his tenure with the Yankees, which is characteristic of an older manager. If you look at the aging curves of all MLB managers, Torre kept his edge far longer than most managers at his age. It must be said that there were downsides to Torre’s nonconfrontational style. Torre was able to get away with this approach in part because of Derek Jeter. If a player dogged a play or made a careless mistake Torre wouldn’t come down on them, but Jeter sure would. Having an captain/enforcer like Jeter worked perfectly for Torre’s style. But keeping with this, there’s a great story about Brian Cashman meeting with Torre and saying 'Torre, Jeter’s glove is killing us at short. Can you talk to him to see if he’d be willing to move positions?' (paraphrased). A few days later Torre reported back that Jeter would not. Only after Jeter retired and was having dinner with Cashman was the topic broached and Jeter reacted in surprise, for Torre had never brought it up. Classic Joe; deflecting negativity away from his players, but also refusing to have a hard conversation that could have helped the team.
Easy segue to Brian Cashman! Seriously, where do you put this guy? Detractors will argue that he had the highest payroll in the MLB (by a big margin) pretty much every year, so how much skill can it really have taken to win? This is a fair point, and it’s the reason he’s only an Honorable Mention (though plenty of teams historically have had big payrolls and never did anything). You could make an argument for him as high as silver and get away with it, his resume is that good. In his eleven years he had four 100+ win years, won the division nine times, won five pennants, three titles and made the playoffs every year but one. Honestly, you know what keeps him at Honorable Mention? The fact that his first year was 1998 and he inherited that juggernaut of a roster. That said, keeping them together and building such a strong team around them was a great achievement. Despite Steinbrenner hounding him year in and year out to double-down on expensive free agents Cashman worked hard to develop talent from inside, with solid success. Cashman did an excellent job putting his franchise in a position to succeed.
Okay! That wraps up the admins and sends us back to the very end of the Honorable Mention floor, the PBL starting pitchers!
One of the biggest shifts in terms of these roles happened when the MLB transitioned to the PBL. The PBL changed many things. First, managers no longer had any autonomy to make decisions independent of the instructions of the front office, effectively merging the roles. Second, the terms of the league prohibited GMs from being fired by owners; the only means of GM removal were voluntary and by the executive action of the Commissioner. Third, the improvement of scouting such that true potential was knowable for every player meant that the fog of war, so to speak, was lifted. Fourth, almost every PBL GM was unproven when hired. This means that, while many succeeded to greatness, many others were found wanting, at best perpetuating mediocrity and at worst granting their best players to the best GMs for a song before quitting. These things combined to 1) make the impact of PBL GMs larger than MLB GMs, 2) make the career of PBL GMs generally much longer than MLB GMs and 3) make the gap between the best and worst GMs in the PBL much larger than it is for the MLB.
The above makes the comparison between PBL GMs and MLB GMs very complicated; the resume of a silver-tier MLB GM might look paltry in a PBL context. In the end all we can do is look at how valuable each contributor was (as best we can) and put them in tiers accordingly. Just don’t be surprised if the top PBL GMs come out looking pretty sweet by comparison.
As far as both categories, we’re changing one major characteristic of evaluation. With players, we only care about their seasons above average. A player with a great peak who was terrible for five other years is treated the same as a player with a great peak who was mediocre for those five years; because we only care about how great they were. With the managers we’re choosing to care about their entire career evenly. Why? There are a lot of factors.
First, great player careers consistently range from 10-20 years, with no more than 5-15 years of quality. This is because playing baseball is a physical skill; by the time you’re 40 there are some serious limits to how good you can be. When your years are limited the peak ends up mattering more than the aggregate. This is not true for managers; a manager can manage at a high level for 30 years or more without issue and every year matters. Second, manager/GM skill, such as it can be evaluated, is much more volatile than player skill. If a player has an incredible year we can assume it’s a more reliable indication of his skill than if a manager seems to have a great year. By caring about all years equally we avoid putting too much emphasis on a small sample of seasons for managers. Third, every player in theory can succeed on every team and in every park. But Managers cannot; you don’t want to be ignoring managers succeeding with good fit teams and struggling with bad fit teams; both count. Fourth, a bad player is rarely reaaaaaally bad. A really terrible player might cost his team three wins compared to an average player in a season, but it’ll be hard to keep getting playing time in that circumstance, ie it’s very hard for a terrible player to do serious damage to his team over his career. It’s totally possible for a bad manager to do more than three wins of damage to his team in a year and keep doing it. So all of it matters.
And yes, technically we’re giving the manager credit for all the managing on his team (crediting Bobby Cox for Leo Mazzone) and giving a GM credit for all decisions on his team (including the work of all the scouts). I don’t really know another way to do it. We need a manager/gm section, and it’s never going to be perfect. All we can do is our best.
Anyhow, let’s kick things off with a manager, also an excellent player, Joe Cronin! Cronin was a shortstop that broke into the league at 19 for Pittsburgh and was playing quality ball for the Senators by age 23. When he was 26 and manager Walter Johnson was stepping down he was asked if he’d want to manage the team as well as play. In his first year as player/manager the Senators improved by six wins and won the American League (though lost the World Series). At age 28 (1935) he was traded to the Red Sox who had just snapped out of their 16 year losing streak. Starting in 1937 he led the Sox to seven straight winning seasons and, in 1946, a pennant and a 104-50 season.
Without a doubt he benefited from managing Ted Williams (whose play covered over half of Cronin’s tenure) but Cronin showed a lot of skill managing hitters generally. While he can’t really take credit for Williams or Jimmie Foxx he did help develop Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky. Cronin has a lot of other interesting contributions; he used his bullpen very aggressively for the era, bunted a lot despite having great hitters, won one-run games at a high rate (.547) and generally allowed fewer runs than you’d guess given the hits his pitchers allowed. If there’s a knock against him it’s that his teams almost always faded down the stretch; they averaged dropping by .051 points in the second half. For example, his 1946 Red Sox were 50-27 which is impressive, but they started the year 54-23. They did that almost every year.
Funny story about Cronin; in 1938 (age 31) the owner Tom Yawkey asked Cronin to scout a young shortstop phenom with the Louisville Colonels (a recently acquired Red Sox farm team). Cronin, who was the team’s starting shortstop at the time and not wanting competition, downplayed the prospect’s skills and suggested that he be traded. Cronin did indeed have three more good years playing in him, but the prospect went on to great success with the Dodgers. In fact, Cronin and the prospect (Pee Wee Reese) have exhibits almost next to each other in the Bronze tier . . .
Up next, Casey Stengel! You may well be surprised to see Stengel in the Honorable Mention section. Stengel’s record of ten pennants in twelve years will likely never be broken (perhaps as well as five straight Championships); it’s as good a twelve-year span that’s ever happened. Yeah, sure, he did it with George Weiss’ Yankees, but *nobody* has had a span that good. So what gives? Stengel had three parts of his career, managing for 25 years overall. First, he spent nine years managing the Dodgers in the mid 30s and then the Boston Bees / Braves after. These teams were all bad, but Stengel actually did a pretty good job supporting them. In 1949 he took over the Yankees (coming off of 94 and 97 win seasons) and proceeded to win five straight World Series; in his twelve years with the Yankees he only had one season below 96 wins (length of season adjusted). He took a year off and then became the manager of the expansion Mets, leading them to seasons of 40, 51, 53 and 50 wins.
What were Stengel’s characteristics as a manager? On the downside, over his career Stengel’s pitchers had the 2nd worst adjusted BB/9 of any reasonably tenured manager. Not an accident, his batters were also notorious for not taking walks (Mickey Mantle notwithstanding). In fact, over his 25 year career his teams averaged giving up 39 more walks than they took per season. The upside was that his teams were optimized around the double-play; his teams always turned a ton of them and hit into them rarely.
Beyond statistics, Stengel had a lot of other distinctive traits. For one, he platooned before it was common. In fact, Stengel’s success platooning with the Yankees was a big reason the habit started catching on. Another tidbit is that he was a big believer in leveraging his pitchers by reserving them for top opponents. His three aces (Eddie Lopat, Vic Racshi and Allie Reynolds) pitched a disproportionate number of their games against Cleveland, Boston and Detroit. Personality-wise, Stengel took no prisoners. He thought nothing of talking crap about his players to the media, or benching a player who wasn’t performing.
How did these traits serve him in his three tenures? They helped with Brooklyn / Boston; those teams did better than they ought have. And they were, and I cannot emphasize this enough, perfect for the Yankees. Platooning? The Yankees had talent at every position so Stengel always skilled platoon partners when he needed them. Leveraging pitchers? The Yankees had a set of skilled (though not dominant) aces that could be leveraged, but also a decent bottom of the rotation who could hold their own against the bad teams. Take no prisoners attitude? Holding the players to a high standard kept the Yankees for getting sloppy, and being able to take no grief from the superstars that populated the roster was invaluable; no matter how many all-stars were on the roster this was Casey Stengel’s team. And he never played a veteran past his usefulness; if his performance declined he was out, and because he was with the Yankees he always had a good replacement.
All of the things that were so great for the Yankees made him legit terrible with the Mets. I don’t mean that the team was bad (though God knows that they were); I mean that Stengel’s management actually badly hurt the team. Platooning aggressively didn’t matter much when it funnelled at bats to terrible hitters; leveraging pitchers was counter-productive when he had no good pitchers. But worst of all, his take no prisoners attitude alienated the crap out of his team. With the Yankees being hard on the team kept them sharp; with the Mets it ruined morale. Let’s face it, if you’re managing a 60-win team and focusing on the negative you’re going to be negative a lot. And if you bench a player every time he struggles you’ll bench your entire roster, because for a 60-win team struggling is the default. Was he struggling because he was in his 70s, or were the Mets simply a terrible fit? Who knows.
But I can say that his years with the Mets destroyed his rating. Had he never managed them he’d probably be at least Silver. Of course, had he never landed with the Yankees (a perfect situation for him in every way) he’d just be that one above-average manager who was terrible with the Mets. Hard to know where to split it, and it may be that Honorable Mention is too low. But a manager has to be good in any situation; Stengel was catastrophic for the Mets. Try and find a tenure like that for the top managers of all-time; you won’t have much luck.
Up next, our first GM, John Quinn! Quinn was part of a distinguished baseball family and actually succeeded his father as the GM of the Boston Braves in 1946. The Braves had been a poor to middling franchise for the century, winning one championship and pennant in the first 45 years. Quinn immediately signed Billy Southworth to manage the team (who you’ll meet in a few floors) and traded for/developed Eddie Stanky, Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn (who you’ll meet later on as well). The 1948 Braves won 91 games and the NL, but lost the World Series 4-2 to Cleveland.
The team regressed a bit over the next four years (only one bad season) but by 1953 the team had moved west to Milwaukee and had taken massive strides forward. Befitting the former head of the farm system Quinn worked hard to find talent and by ‘53 he had developed an excellent squad and two Hall of Famers, Eddie Matthews and Henry Aaron. The Braves had six straight winning seasons under Quinn, including two pennants and one World Series.
In 1959 Quinn jumped to the Phillies, who were middle of the road but on the way down. He had several bad seasons with Philadelphia but by 1962 had built a winner. They had several good seasons and one 90+ winner, but ultimately the franchise faltered under the drama of Dick Allen and Curt Flood. The franchise slowly regressed and ultimately its collapse got Quinn fired at the end of 1972. But in ‘72 he traded for Steve Carlton and by the time he was fired he had acquired excellent players like Mike Schmidt for his farm system. When the Phillies became dominant in the mid 70s they did it in large part with players Quinn had acquired or developed during his tenure. Quinn only has one ring on his finger, but took over two middling teams in middling markets and turned them into contenders; clearly an excellent track record.
Up next, Cedric Tallis! Tallis has one of the most unusual resumes here. Tallis was the inaugural GM of the expansion Kansas City Royals in 1969. Tallis extracted from owner Ewing Kauffman the concession that young players could be targeted in the expansion draft instead of loading up on has-beens that might increase attendance. Tallis supplemented his efforts by building a brain trust of future GMs in his organization (the greatest of which being John Schuerholz). The Royals unsurprisingly put up two bad seasons before moving into mediocrity for the next four. Tallis wheeled and dealed, acquiring a number of solid players for little and drafting excellently (including George Brett). Kauffman was impatient, however, and in 1974 fired Tallis. The roster that Tallis built went on to have six subsequent winning seasons, four 90+ win seasons, one 100+, four playoff appearances and one pennant.
Tallis went on to be the GM of the Yankees for two seasons (‘78 and ‘79) where he won a ring, but the team had already been great and Steinbrenner was so active in those rosters that it’s hard to know how much credit to give Tallis. But we do know that Tallis ran an expansion team in a tiny market, and did such an excellent job that they became one of the best teams in the league only seven years after inception. This is an incredible achievement; certainly worthy of an Honorable Mention.
Up next (and the second time he's featured on this floor), Joe Torre! Torre managed a lot of years, and much later in his life than most. His trademark was a calm, confident demeanor and the demonstration of trust in his players. Torre managed for a lot of bad teams before he ended up with the Yankees. He ran the Mets for five years when they were awful and from ‘82-’84 he captained the Braves through several winning seasons. After the Braves he managed the Cardinals for five years after the disintegration of their roster (the Cards were quite good in the late 80s), and managed several 500 years. And in 1996 he took over the Yankees and would lead them to 12 straight playoffs, 11 of the 12 seasons at 92 wins or better, 6 pennants and 4 championships. It’s probably, just on the face of it, the greatest run of any late MLB manager.
Nay-sayers would argue that Torre inherited a very talented roster (Jeter, Posada, Williams and Rivera plus the best money could buy) and that’s unquestionably true. And we’re not arguing that they only won because of Torre. But Torre had put up better seasons with weaker teams than you’d guess with his rosters, and with the Yankees he made good on their potential. Let’s not forget that the Yankees actually fulfilled their talent under Torre, which is actually its own achievement. Despite managing under perhaps the most intrusive owner in MLB history, Torre rarely came down on his players or jerked their chains. Torre treated them with trust and respect and they performed fantastically for him.
Probably Torre’s biggest achievement was his team’s postseason success; from ‘98-’00 when they won three titles they went 33-8 in the playoffs, facing only one game that could have eliminated them. Part of it is luck (they only went 43-39 in Torre’s other years which is still pretty good) but a lot of it is that Torre was excellent with his bullpen. Of all the MLB managers in history, Torre ranks #2 in overperforming his pythag, which is to say, putting up and preventing runs when they counted most. His bullpen usage was a big part of that; especially with the Cardinals he used his bullpen aggressively and with the Yankees he leaned heavily on the best closer ever in Mariano Rivera. In the playoffs, instead of using Rivera only in the 9th with a lead, he would consistently a) bring in Rivera in the 8th or earlier, b) leave Rivera in for multiple innings and c) pitch Rivera in back-to-back games. Torre doesn’t get credit for having a guy like Rivera on his roster, but he does get credit for leveraging the greatest closer ever for maximum value.
Torre fizzled a bit toward the end of his tenure with the Yankees, which is characteristic of an older manager. If you look at the aging curves of all MLB managers, Torre kept his edge far longer than most managers at his age. It must be said that there were downsides to Torre’s nonconfrontational style. Torre was able to get away with this approach in part because of Derek Jeter. If a player dogged a play or made a careless mistake Torre wouldn’t come down on them, but Jeter sure would. Having an captain/enforcer like Jeter worked perfectly for Torre’s style. But keeping with this, there’s a great story about Brian Cashman meeting with Torre and saying 'Torre, Jeter’s glove is killing us at short. Can you talk to him to see if he’d be willing to move positions?' (paraphrased). A few days later Torre reported back that Jeter would not. Only after Jeter retired and was having dinner with Cashman was the topic broached and Jeter reacted in surprise, for Torre had never brought it up. Classic Joe; deflecting negativity away from his players, but also refusing to have a hard conversation that could have helped the team.
Easy segue to Brian Cashman! Seriously, where do you put this guy? Detractors will argue that he had the highest payroll in the MLB (by a big margin) pretty much every year, so how much skill can it really have taken to win? This is a fair point, and it’s the reason he’s only an Honorable Mention (though plenty of teams historically have had big payrolls and never did anything). You could make an argument for him as high as silver and get away with it, his resume is that good. In his eleven years he had four 100+ win years, won the division nine times, won five pennants, three titles and made the playoffs every year but one. Honestly, you know what keeps him at Honorable Mention? The fact that his first year was 1998 and he inherited that juggernaut of a roster. That said, keeping them together and building such a strong team around them was a great achievement. Despite Steinbrenner hounding him year in and year out to double-down on expensive free agents Cashman worked hard to develop talent from inside, with solid success. Cashman did an excellent job putting his franchise in a position to succeed.
Okay! That wraps up the admins and sends us back to the very end of the Honorable Mention floor, the PBL starting pitchers!