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11:52:00 AM EDT
Torre under the Microscope
Good piece (courtesy of faithful reader Big House Dog) from Monday’s New York Sun by Tim Marchman about Joe Torre. It’s probably the most critical account of his managing that I’ve read, outside of the obvious sabermetric circles, like Baseball Prospectus.
The key paragraph:
<>“It would be a lot more accurate to say that Torre is a manager of average strengths and weaknesses whose skill in dealing with organizational politics, handling egos, and dealing with the press make him particularly well-suited to his situation, and whose weaknesses in judging talent and defining roles for players who aren't superstars make him particularly ill-suited to it. On balance, any manager with Torre's record must be judged a success, and he'll earn his plaque in Cooperstown one day, but he deserves a lot more blame for the Yankees' various problems than he ever gets.”</>Marchman is especially critical of Torre’s use of his bench in the wake of the losses of his two corner outfielders, Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield. Marchman is appropriately baffled by Torre’s insistence on sticking Miguel Cairo in the lineup once a week at first base. By doing this, Torre is not only failing to give Andy Phillips, a young hitter who deserves an opportunity to show whether he can actually play at this level. He’s also inserting his worst offensive player into a position almost all of whose value derives from offense. And, by the way, in the 5-3 loss to the Red Sox last Thursday, Cairo failed to make an off-the-bag tag on a throw from Jeter that cost the Yankees the game and that any real first baseman would have made.
<>For years now, Baseball Prospectus has been arguing that the Yankees have failed to pay attention to the details, like putting together a serviceable bench. It hasn’t mattered, because their frontline talent is so overwhelming. But, the gap between the Yankees and the rest of the division has closed (as last year made obvious) and Marchman argues that Torre’s various tactical mistakes could cost the Yankees a handful of games this summer that they no longer have to spare. </>There’s plenty critical to say about Torre’s use of the bullpen, too, but I’ll save that discussion for another time, and those are criticisms that are applicable to almost every manager in baseball, so illogical has the sport’s use of closers become.
<>But, the question raised in my mind by Marchman’s column is this: why has Torre gotten such a free pass? </>To some degree the answer is obvious. The team has been incredibly successful since Torre took over in 1996. One month into this, his 11th season as Yankee manager, the team won their 1000th game under Torre. This means that they’ve averaged nearly 100 wins a year for ten years, a remarkable record. They’ve won nine division titles in ten years, including eight in a row. They’ve made the World Series six times, and won it four times. As Marchman says, there’s a plaque waiting in Cooperstown for Torre based on this record.
<>We can leave for another time the question of whether anybody could have done what Torre has given the talent on hand. I would note, though, that the dynasty of the late 90s, great teams all, were not loaded with free agent talent, and Torre mastered certain key ideas, like the critical value of every out in the postseason, that many managers don’t grasp. He’s done less well the past few seasons in that regard. </>But, when it comes to what I’ll call the Mainstream sports Media (MSM - with apologies to political bloggers), Torre's real in-game flaws rarely get any scrutiny. I suspect that’s because the MSM, the ones who make their living hobknobbing with the players, managers, coaches and other sports luminaries, have one overwhelming criterion for judging someone’s character. That criterion is: does the person in question cooperate with the media.
<>Torre does to a T. He’s an unfailingly nice guy, a straight-shooter, and, in fact, as Marchman notes, he’s handled the political aspects of his job with unmatched aplomb. I am not saying Torre isn’t actually a nice guy. He appears to be, and there are human aspects of his life story, like his brother’s battle with heart trouble in 1996, and the now well chronicled fact of his abusive father, that make Torre seem real and eminently likeable. </>But,for the MSM, cooperativeness trumps all else, and since Torre is such a mensch, he has almost entirely disarmed the critical faculties of the media that cover the team and the sport more generally. This fact, combined with Torre’s general fealty to “the book” (the MSM may say they like it when managers take chances, but innovative thinking is far more likely to be second-guessed than conventional wisdom) ensures that almost no attention is given to Torre’s real failings as an in-game strategist and personnel manager.
What Marchman wrote should be well understood by now. The fact that it isn’t is a striking testament to how little the MSM helps us to understand the games we’re watching.
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5/18/06 2:18 AM
But maybe there's an off-the-field logic to such a move in that sticking with under-performing vets makes players feel that the manager's got their back, and they don't have to look over their shoulder every time they have a 2 week slump. After all, it's not like Torre doesn't know that Cario is not a great player.