I've been happily chewing on the 2008 The Hardball Times Baseball Annual and came across a chapter entitled "Do Managers Matter?" by David Gassko (pg. 159), who I consider to be a good analyst and his work at The Hardball Times website have been top-notch.
In his study, he looked at how players did for a manager compared to what would be projected based on the past two years performance. This is to investigate whether a certain manager results in players hitting better with him than without him. He added up all of the "plus" and "minus" performances and came up with a rate stat: wins added per 162 games.
In the book, he published the career {added this, made mistake previously thinking it was just for 2007; my bad} wins added for managers in 2007 and Bochy had the 4th best out of the 21 managers who were managers in 2007 for the full season. He was at nearly 1 win.
Managers, according to the study, from best to worse, only account for at best a 4 win swing from best to worse, so managers matter and can be worth a lot to a team.
P.S. Interestingly enough, Dusty Baker makes the Top 10 list all-time; he was 7th. But I wonder how much of that is driven by Barry Bonds, who is now under a huge steroid cloud.
Just Curious Martin, but who are the best and worst rated managers and how much of a difference were they responsible for in their team's play last saeson?
ReplyDeleteGood question Matt. The best is Bobby Cox, with a little over 2 wins added, who also happens to be the best manager all-time by the same wins added per season (makes me wonder if it's a typo then...).
ReplyDeleteAnd FYI, Lou Piniella and Jim Tracy were 2nd and 3rd at a little more than 1 win added (Piniella was about 3/8th more of a win added than Bochy, Tracey about a eighth).
Lowest was, funny enough, Terry Francona with nearly 2 wins subtracted. And even funnier enough, Joe Torre was the second worse with a little more than one win subtracted.
So between high and low, only about 4 wins separate them. That appears to hold for the all-time numbers as well.
FYI, I've e-mailed the author to see about the odd coincidence of three managers having the same career and 2007 wins added figure, I'll post here when I find out more.
Also, he kindly answered my question on how much Dusty Baker's Top 10 all-time figure would be if he took Bonds's suspected stats out of the mix. That drops Baker out of the Top 10, but he still is credited with an additional win added per 162 games.
OK, my mistake, but the figures in the table for 2007 was CAREER figures for the managers, not just for 2007. So that is Bochy's career numbers; I have no idea what he did in 2007, nor for the other managers. The figures are all for their careers.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I'll fix the article to reflect this as well, sorry for my mistake...
ReplyDelete