Nats 320: 17 Minutes With Manny Acta

3 Years With Manny Acta...as Met Manager?

Question: When you were first hired, one of the things you talked about was for stolen bases to make sense you had to be over 70% in success rate. Last two years, we’ve been more in the low-60’s. What’s going wrong there?

“We just don’t have the guys with that blazing speed to have that success rate. We have to be honest. I told people over and over and over that talk about us not running enough, that if you bring me Jose Reyes and Hanley Ramirez and Wily Tavares, and Nyjer Morgan in Pittsburgh, I would run you out of the ballpark—because I know those guys will run and they will make it. I am very optimistic, but you have to be realistic too. We just don’t have them here. Most of the guys that can run a little bit on our club, they’ve had green lights since I have been here.That’s the way I manage, I give the guys the green light. But to me it just doesn’t make any sense to be running just so 30,000 people can say he is aggressive while guys are getting thrown out left and right. There are 27 outs (in each game) and they are precious. I know that you guys (bloggers) being involved in doing what you do, you do a lot of research and stuff. But the average guy at home still doesn’t go out of his way to understand that just running into outs is not good. You don’t run to run. You don’t bunt to bunt. You run and you bunt when it makes sense. And that’s the way I do things. I don’t think we have the guys on our ball club for me to not have three or four guys say they can steal 30 or 40 bases—to be honest with you. And so you have to manage accordingly to what you have. And if I had those guys I just mentioned to you—we would probably be going to run crazy. I don’t have them, so I really have to take care of those 27 outs....