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November 4, 2004

Lies, Damned Lies

Fresh Blood

by Nate Silver

Politicians are a lot like baseball managers. Dick Gephardt resurfaces every eight years or so for another unsuccessful run at the Democratic nomination for president, just as Gene Lamont resurfaces every eight years or so for another unsuccessful run at turning around a moribund franchise. Al Gore goes from upstart candidate to Vice President to almost-president to lecture-circuit veteran, a path that somewhat parallels the career of Kevin Kennedy. Pat Buchanan bubbles up every other primary season or so, makes a lot of noise, then disappears back into the ether of cable television; in 2008, we can expect another presidential bid for Buchanan under some or another party's banner, and another managerial stint for Hal McRae. As disappointed as I was with the result on Tuesday, I could do without ever hearing John Edwards' drawl again; the chances of that are only slightly better than Kerry pulling out the election when an undiscovered cache of punchcards is discovered next week in Cuyahoga County, and only slightly worse than never seeing Larry Bowa scratching his balls again.

I think the reason that politicians get recycled in this fashion is that with the exception of a once-a-decade savant like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, most of them aren't worth a damn. The same is true for baseball managers. With few tried-and-true methods in place to evaluate managers, it's only natural that those with longer resumés tend to get resurrected when there's a vacancy, an undistinguished track record being preferable to none at all. (I detected a similar pattern, by the way, when I worked for KPMG. We'd bend over backward to hire a candidate who had experience at another Big Four firm, ignoring the notion that the candidate looking for a new employer was pretty good evidence of his old employer's opinion of him. "Ooh, Terry Bevington is available!" There's a damned good reason why).

You'd think, though, that in this era of analytical enlightenment, we'd avoid this old pattern of hiring the devil we know rather than the one that we don't. Thus far this autumn we've gone 3-for-5, with the Phillies recycling Charlie Manuel and the Mariners giving Mike Hargrove another try, but the Mets, Diamondbacks and Blue Jays opting for new managerial blood.

Indeed, there is some evidence that teams are being more open-minded about hiring skippers with no previous big-league experience. Let's zip back a few years. Between the last day of the regular season in 1998 and the last day of the regular season in 1999, six teams changed managers (a low number as these things go). All six "new" managers (John Boles, Florida; Jim Fregosi, Toronto; Davey Johnson, Los Angeles; Jim Lefebvre, Milwaukee; Jim Leyland, Colorado; and Joe Maddon, Anaheim) had previous big-league experience.

Contrast that to 2001-2002, when 11 managerial positions changed hands. Eight of the 11 new managers (Clint Hurdle, Colorado; Wendell Kim, Chicago; Grady Little, Boston; Tony Pena, Kansas City; Luis Pujols, Detroit; Jerry Royster, Milwaukee; Joel Skinner, Cleveland; and Carlos Tosca, Toronto) had no previous experience. Granted, that list is about as inspiring as one of Heisman-winning quarterbacks is to Mel Kiper, Jr.--only Hurdle and Pena are still managing their clubs, and their jobs could conceivably be in jeopardy--but recent years have also brought the additions of genuinely good new managers like Jim Tracy and Mike Scioscia.

If we look at managerial turnover over the course of the past ten years or so, we can detect at least something of an increased willingness to take a chance on "unproven" candidates: