On the field Managers?

by erosen on Sep 14, 2010 9:58 AM EDT

I don't recall who it was, but I was reading something from a manager who said it was easy to manage this particular team [that he managed] because his players had alot of managerial qualities themselves so really didn't require him to do much.

I was curious how teams generally fared that had varying numbers of future managers on their team in a given year. I grabbed all of the teams from 1900 to 1970 and grouped them by how many players on the team [regardless of playtime] went on to be a major league manager [regardless of how long that might have lasted]

The sample is nearly 1200 team-seasons.

Future Managers .. W-G .. w%
5-10 .. 20783-39090 .. .532
4 .. 17360-34047 .. .509
3 .. 17938-36345 .. .494
2 .. 20707-43234 .. .479
0-1 .. 14395-31163 .. .462

With 20/20 hindsight, looks like a big plus to have a bunch of future managers on the roster.

The bottom group averaged 0.8 future managers; going from that to two future managers averaged an extra 2.8 wins per 162 games. That is 2.3 extra wins per 162 games per extra future manager.

Going from two to three, +2.4 extra wins and from three to four, +2.6. From four to the top group [average of 5.7 future managers], was +3.6 wins, but +2.1 per extra future manager.

Granted it may not be easy to predict which 20-40 year olds have or will have the aptitude to be a MLB manager down the road, but it seems that if you can find those and [presumably] put them in roster spots that won't hurt you significantly [IE, if Alex Cora is one of these guys, you don't want him as your starting MIFer, but as your backup, maybe??].

Could this reflect a true value in the 'intangible' leadership quality?

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Buckets

Why didn’t you just give us the more raw data for each individual integer of managers on a team? The bucketing of 0-1 and 5-10 is something that we can do on our own.

Regardless, I think this is interesting, but perhaps not that significant.

by Joseph Meyer on Sep 14, 2010 11:33 PM EDT reply actions

Sampel sizes?

Like there was just one team-season at 10 ‘future managers’. Each bucket was as close to 20% of the total as I could do. It was really a quick and dirty count, so some of the particulars might be alittle suspect, but hopefully those work htemselves out in larger samples [ie, a guy on the roster for 2 games who became a manager down the road probably should carry a different impact than a guy who was there for 150 games; likewise a guy who managed one game because his manager was tossed and then the next guy was tossed, probably should get relatively little weight]

by erosen on Sep 15, 2010 9:18 AM EDT reply actions

Correlation vs. causation?

I wonder if there’s something else at work here. Perhaps winning teams are more likely to produce players who become known for managerial qualities. I would guess that players on winning teams more often develop a reputation for leadership or for a clubhouse presence than do players on losing teams. For example, no one writes about leaders in the Royals clubhouse because they’ve had so many losing seasons in recent years. But everyone writes about how the Twins “do things the right way” because they’ve been much more successful in the last decade. If you’re looking for a manager, you want someone who “does things the right way,” not someone from a losing team who doesn’t have a reputation one way or another as a leader.

Just a differing theory. You could be right about future managers adding to a team. I’m just skeptical that future managers are all that’s at work here.

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by what_would_gil_thorp_do on Sep 16, 2010 1:25 PM EDT reply actions

Chicken vs. egg

I suspect a player who was on a lot of winning teams is a lot more likely to get a job as a manager than one who wasn’t.

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by Brickhaus on Sep 17, 2010 3:38 PM EDT reply actions

Wow this is interesting

I think, however, the arrow of causation argument proposed above makes these numbers insignificant.

Perhaps you could correlate team winning percentage with future managers winning percentage among teams with a high quantity of future managers? That would test out your theory inside the subset of future managers, which would allow you to tease out which way the correlation arrow falls (although it would be answering a slightly different question).

by vivaelpujols on Sep 18, 2010 3:56 PM EDT reply actions