Over the couple of weeks, there has been great discussion as to whether th Yankees should bring back Joe Torre.   We all know about his great record of reaching the playoffs and winning the World Series.  Now the Yankees offered Joe a one year contract with a 30% cut in pay with a bonus plan to make more than he made  before.  Joe took the offer as an insult which I believe was the right thing to do.

It has become apparent that the Yankees did not want to bring him back a manager but they were not strong enough to tell him like a man. So they made him an offer that they knew he would refuse.  It was too transparent and they will take publication relations hit that they should.  I miss the days when the Boss would fire his manager and be a man enough to take the heat.  He never hid behind corporate speak like the Yankees did yesterday. 

We will all miss Joe Torre for the way he managed.  He will be missed greatly.  A sad day in Yankee land.

Joe departure raises an interesting question on what is the value of a baseball manager in winning games. We have heard that there  are managers who are great between the white lines.  Basically those managers are good at the in game manager part of the job.  There are other managers that are good at preparing their teams to play by training and mental preparation.  Each type of manager has his benefits and drawbacks.

I wanted to look at the benefits of the a great in game manager relative to a horrible one.  So how many games can a great manager win for his team?  The tools in his arsenal are determining the pitches to be thrown, setting up the lineup, deciding how the players will run the base path, bunting, hit and run etc. 

 

As a New York Mets fan, I was always frustrated by Whitey Herzog and his St Louis Cardinals.  For disclosure purposes, I am usually frustrated by the NY Mets since they always seem to lose and seem to be out managed by several other coaches.  But it was the Cardinals that really affected me because they never seemed to have a great team but they could always pull a game or so out. 

 

How did they do it? The Cardinal players felt that Whitey could win games for them.  Looking at various statistic models, no one has proven how many games a good manager can win and how many games a bad manager can lose.

I am of the opinion that the numbers are not that large between the best and worst managers.  From the data I have seen, the spread is less than 20 games a year.  It is more likely that a manager of Whitey Herzog's caliber could win an extra 5 to 8 games a year and a manager like George Bamberger could lose the same number of games (5 to 8). 

Most managers will fall in the middle.  As a result, some of today's good on the field managers like Tony La Russa and Bobby Valentine are probably worth 3 or 4 extra wins and the bad managers are worth 3 or 4 losses. 

It is interesting to compare to the incremental wins the best player in baseball can bring.  I have seen analyzes which state that ARod brought the Yankees approximately 7 wins this year.  So in the end, getting the best baseball player is more important than getting the best manager.

So Yankee fans, be more focused on getting ARod, Posada and Mariano resigned than worrying who the next manager will be.

My personnel opinion is the Yankees should go for a more fiery coach like Tony La Russa or Joe Girardi.  The Yankees need a change in approach to get them back to their prior level.  Joe did a great job but his luck ran out.