If you live under a rock, you probably haven’t read Craig’s work at Shysterball and NBC Sports. At Baseball Think Factory, I called him the AC Slater of the blogosphere. He’s super cool, popular, and gets stalked (note: I have no idea if Mario Lopez has ever been stalked, but I’d imagine he has). He can probably dance, too.
You might not know it from his overall coverage of Major League Baseball, but Craig is a die-hard Atlanta Braves fan. Yeah, I know — he loses major cool points for that. However, the way the Phillies have been playing, they may want to listen to what a keen observer thinks about the series.
3. There are currently very few statistical methods that even come close to measuring the effectiveness of a manager. Being a Braves fan and having watched Bobby Cox-managed teams for a while, do you think he is really as good as everyone claims?
Actually, Chris Jaffe of The Hardball Times has a book coming out this fall that goes a long way towards quantifying managerial effectiveness and he spends many pages on Cox in particular. I won’t even pretend to explain it (mostly because I don’t understand a lot of it) but Cox fares very well among the all-time greats in getting the most out of what he has. That aside, I think Cox is a very good manager, mostly because he tends to (a) create a drama-free environment that allows his players to relax; and (b) otherwise gets the hell out of the way. It’s amazing how many managers can’t accomplish even one of those things. All in all, if you look at the failures of any given Braves team over the past 20 years, you have to point at five other things before you can identify anything that was of Bobby Cox’s doing, and to me, that’s the definition of being a successful manager.
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Agree as well on the "what should Atlanta do about the offense" answer. Stand pat and fill the holes in the offseason. Don't forget your in the middle of the rebuild, not at the end of it.
And I am greatly looking forward to this book.
Me, too. I'll probably find myself arguing with it, but I'm interested to see the subject tackled.
Provided that he agrees that Cito is the greatest manager in the history of organized sports, I don't imagine that I'll have anything to argue about.
Ask your mom.
He does have a celebrity in a little corner of this world.
He can't be that cool when at least one NBC commenter thinks he's a "BALD IDIOT."
Me, too. I'll probably find myself arguing with it, but I'm interested to see the subject tackled.
It's available for pre-order! And you can check out advance praise for it.
Provided that he agrees that Cito is the greatest manager in the history of organized sports, I don't imagine that I'll have anything to argue about.
Well, I compare him to Jimmy Collins. That's close enough, right? I also note what happened to Toronto's stolen base success rate when the team rehired him in mid-2008, and then have a chart featuring the stolen base success rate players from the 1980s/90s had with him and away from him. There's some other stuff as well (some discussion of tactical minimalism, race, and his unusual career path).
Close enough for me. And, with respect to the pre-order, I've already placed it.
Either under 20 or over 40 I suppose.
Only because Rick Reilly tried to tag his wife.
In that case, pr0n shouldn't be far behind in your word associates.
He was also highly-ranked in E!'s "Sexiest Beach Bods" or something like that. Dude's got it goin' on. coughnicknoltecough
Having a good starting rotation capable of getting through the 7th, followed by a bullpen featuring Timlin, Ward, and Henke is a big part of the reason for this. Basically, if they got through the 6th inning, you were very likely to see them in that order.
Extra, actually. Same diff.
Not that I watch or anything.
Nah, like I said, I'm over 40. We just call it porn.
Nah, he just married well.
Where is that thread on Craig's wife?
On Cox -- he's also been pretty fearless about getting young (sometimes very young) players into the lineup. Arguably he also uses them up then spits them out, but that's his job pretty much. The great Braves' run was also marked by putting together usually excellent, almost always very cheap bullpens.
Some posters always like to make fun of me when I point out that the Braves basically ran the "neo-saber, BPro" model of team construction to perfection -- lots of youth, cheap bullpens, cheap closers (Smoltz excepted), cobbled-together "cheap" 1B/LF/RF, invest only in superstars.
How hard is that to do, when the umpires are regularly tossing your carcass off the field of play? ;-)
When he gets his plaque, I hope they remember to include that record among his achievements.
If it was that simple a lot more guys would have figured it out. But it isn't and they haven't.
Recently Bobby looks to have possibly passed his prime. But from 1980ish to 2005 the guy was one of the best if not THE BEST.
Only Bill Gates and very few others have that type of staying power in kicking the market's *ss.
Yeah, while one can find fault in this or that decision made along the way, it's pretty much impossible to find fault in the overall strategic outline the Schuerholz/Cox Braves (and should Mazzone be included?) plotted. Rather like the Orioles from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, it was just about as well-conceived an organizational model as we've ever seen.
So could the downfall of the Braves Empire be placed at the feet of drafting Frenchy????
But that isn't certain and I think the tendency to hunt up flaws in the game's greats isn't much fun. No one seems to bat an eye that the greatest hitter ever made an out half the time, so I don't know why anyone expects a manager or GM to never make a mistake.
Quite possibly, of course, but the larger fact is that it's impossible to rule out the possibility that the Braves' relatively disappointing post-season performance (they were 63-59, .519, in post-season from 1991-2005, with a regular season record of .608; the Yankees from 1995-2007 went 78-50, .609, in post-season against a .601 regular season record) was "caused" by nothing more or less than chance.
I didn't mean to diminish his contribution. I think setting the tone and sticking to plan and all of that is close to impossible for most people who are given even a little bit of power. That Cox has never seemed to waver, never gotten dragged into all of the craziness that even many of your better managers have gotten into is a testament to his character and leadership. He (while GM) and Schuerholz assembled some excellent players. Cox put them into a position to succeed, and if they didn't succeed, they were gone, but almost always in a more or less diplomatic fashion (I remember there being some words with a couple of departed relievers, but that's about it).
There's a politics to any hierarchy, and that process conditions most men to think in political terms all of the time. Maybe Cox missed that by coming up the ranks in the 70s instead of the 90s, but the fact is that he has never managed like someone was looking over his shoulder all the time, and that's worked wonders for him for decades.
As for "a lot more guys": I think what Cox does is ultimately a matter of temperament and wisdom, and it's damn nigh impossible to change one's temperament or acquire wisdom in short order. In my mind, saying that a lot more guys can just approach the clubhouse the way Cox does is like saying that a lot more pitchers should approach pitching like Maddux did.
We'll see who's laughing when I pick Strasburg next March. To go along with Tommy Hanson.
The Matewan Massacre take the long view of things.
Spot on. It's one thing to know how great "people managers" succeed, and it's another thing to try and duplicate it. It may be simple in concept, but it's exceptionally complicated and difficult in practice, especially over an extended period.
Well, Cox has also had his starters pitch on 3-days rest about 20 times in the postseason, and by and large they've been terrible and the team lost around two-thirds of their games.
Cox is still one of the best managers of all-time, though.
He usually (though not always) gets thrown out for taking the "bullett" while trying to keep one of his players in the game.
Just one of many of the ways in which Cox earns the respect and loyalty of his players.
Thanks. (pauses for a sec) But I don't think I talked about bullpens with Torre at all. At least not in the Torre section. I think his bullpen usage came up slightly in the Bobby Cox section, of all places.
Ok, but the Torre portion devoted a lot to his time with the Mets and Braves. Two parts of his career that are never, ever mentioned in the media anymore and occurred way before I was able to have any memory of them. I do remember there being some Cox/Torre interplay somewhere in the book.
Yeah. That's in the Cox section, where both set records at various times for fewest innings per relief appearance on their squads. LaRussa also set that record multiple times.
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