The Atlanta Braves (thread 1)

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#10,809
#10,809
damnit! can't take advantage of a phillies loss!

although, they might have lost because of a bad call too. the game tying run should have been out for running out of the base path down 1st.
 
#10,814
#10,814
Has there ever been a first-place team with such a lousy collection of center fielders? Cabrera, Ankiel, McLouth......these days I'd be happy to see the fat version of Andruw Jones lumbering around out there.
 
#10,815
#10,815
Pretty good look at the Braves' salary situation for this offseason is here. Did any of you guys know that the Braves actually cut payroll this season, down to $83m? I had no idea.

Let’s Be Frank: Looking At 2011 The Few, The Proud, The Braves

(The useful part of this article is the look at the salaries, not this guy's conclusions about what the Braves ought to do. Apparently he thinks that McLouth ought to be he starting CF again next year.)
 
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#10,816
#10,816
Vercingetorix said:
The convenient thing about evaluating baseball managers is that you can pretty much just judge them by their personalities, because the manager is less important in baseball than the coach is in any other sport. The difference between a Hall of Fame level manager and some random dude from a Strat-O-Matic league is, if anything, no more than a couple of wins a year. At most. The most laughable amount of money in sports is probably Joe Torre's paycheck.

I complain about Cox's tactical ineptitude all the time, but I do have to say that he's the best at the one skill that might actually be a managerial difference maker, and that's handling the clubhouse. I'm not sure how many wins on the field that actually translates into, but surely it can't hurt.

Sayonara, Sweet Lou. You were interesting to watch, which is really about all you can ask for from a manger. Vaya con Dios.
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No reason to get in an argument about this but I think you are completely underestimating the importance of having a good manager and the calls and decisions they make in every game.
 
#10,817
#10,817
VOLinthaATL said:
No reason to get in an argument about this but I think you are completely underestimating the importance of having a good manager and the calls and decisions they make in every game.
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Can't exactly say that I'm shocked that you disagree.

I don't disagree that the tactical decisions they make are important -- God knows I howl about Bobby enough -- but it isn't chess. It still comes down to somebody hitting a round ball with a round bat; there's still a hugely random component to the game. Managers make incredibly stupid decisions that work out anyway; they make smart decisions but still get burned. It's close enough to a wash over the course of a season that the difference between a good tactical manager and a crummy one is only a handful of games.

Joe Torre was regarded as at best an average manager with the Mets, Braves, and Cardinals, but give him the Yankees and suddenly he's a genius worth millions of dollars a year. Now he's in LA and doesn't look like much of a genius anymore. Terry Francona was an idiot in Philadelphia. With very, very few exceptions, the manager doesn't make much difference at all.
 
#10,818
#10,818
One thing that doesn't have to be a wash (and yet it is, because everybody does it) is that I'm convinced every manager in baseball is leaving at least five wins a year on the table by their slavish devotion to racking up saves for their designated closers. A manager that came in and was fearlessly willing to use his best relief pitcher in the most high-leverage situations -- eighth inning of a tie game, seventh inning with the bases loaded, etc. -- would win more games than a manger who's willing to let his cannon-armed strikeout artist watch from the bullpen as his team blows a lead in the 8th inning. The way modern managers run their bullpens is insanity.
 
#10,819
#10,819
OK, so say a manager uses his stud "closer" in the 8th inning to preserve a tie. Then you have an average reliever trying to protect a slim lead or still hold onto the tie, in the 9th inning. Doesn't really make any difference unless the team has 2-3 solid relievers.
 
#10,823
#10,823
Vercingetorix said:
I don't disagree that the tactical decisions they make are important -- God knows I howl about Bobby enough -- but it isn't chess. It still comes down to somebody hitting a round ball with a round bat; there's still a hugely random component to the game. Managers make incredibly stupid decisions that work out anyway; they make smart decisions but still get burned. It's close enough to a wash over the course of a season that the difference between a good tactical manager and a crummy one is only a handful of games.
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Just because you can type it out and make it sound smart and correct doesn't mean that it is.
 
#10,824
#10,824
#1ArencibiaFan said:
OK, so say a manager uses his stud "closer" in the 8th inning to preserve a tie. Then you have an average reliever trying to protect a slim lead or still hold onto the tie, in the 9th inning. Doesn't really make any difference unless the team has 2-3 solid relievers.
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Tie game, eighth inning, first and third with nobody out. The game is on the line RIGHT NOW. But there isn't a manager in baseball who would go ahead and bring his #1 relief pitcher into that situation to keep the game winnable. Instead he'll run his second- or third-best guy out there and save his best reliever for some hypothetical save situation that may or may not happen. It's like drinking Early Times for five years with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on your shelf that you're saving for something special, except then you die and somebody else gets to drink it.

It's not just the closer that gets horribly mismanaged. Last year the Braves blew a six- or seven run lead in one awful inning; they gave up something like eight runs in the sixth inning. Cox changed pitchers several times, but he kept dutifully bringing out the fourth- and fifth- and sixth-best bullpen arms because it was "too early" to go to his closer or setup guys. He never tried to stop the bleeding with his best options. By the time they got into the game, the Braves were down by two or three runs and the game was over.
 
#10,825
#10,825
VOLinthaATL said:
Just because you can type it out and make it sound smart and correct doesn't mean that it is.
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Then let's see some evidence to the contrary. If managers' tactical decisions make a huge difference, then you'd expect to see some managers whose teams consistently had better won/loss records than their runs scored/allowed would suggest. (Superior tactical ability ought to be reflected in a better-than-expected record in close games, and therefore a better W/L record than you'd project based just on runs.) So if good managers make a difference, it ought to be easy to come up with a list of managers like that. Throw out a few names of guys whom you think are clearly difference-making tactical managers, and we'll look it up and see what their records look like.
 
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