On the skipper and the slugger

NYRoyal at the inestimable Royals Review has a post up on Buddy Bell (along with an interesting comment thread following it). The goods:

Buddy does have his faults.  He has played vets too much to the expense of young, developing players.  He may be too wedded to R/L matchups with the bullpen.  But, in case you haven’t been following baseball too closely, that is what the vast majority of managers do.  That is standard, traditional baseball.  That is very Tony LaRussa.

Which leads me to my final point.  If you hate Bell so much (and I don’t think there is much good reason to hate him as a manager), then

1) Who would you like to be the manager?

and, more importantly

2) Why do you think he would be better?

Since I’ve started my blog at FanGraphs, I’ve been thinking more often in terms of WPA and the such. And let’s see what it says about Buddy Bell. I want to compare the WPA and REW of the pitchers, and what it means. [Feel free to click my explanation on WPA, BRAA and REW if you like. The basic idea is this—WPA is what happened, REW is what should have happened, in terms of wins.]

Since, in every game, the losing team has a total of -0.50 WPA and the winning team has a total of 0.50 WPA, we can call a “win” here 0.50 WPA. Obviously, a win in REW would be 1.00.

All pitchers: -1.17 WPA, -0.72 REW. | Should have taken away 0.72, actually took away 2.34 of a win.

Breaking it down further:

Starters: 0.00 WPA, 0.14 REW. | Should have added 0.14 of a win, actually added nothing.

Relievers: -1.17 WPA, -0.86 REW. | Should have taken away 0.86 of a win, actually took away 2.34 of a win.

What does all this mean?

This means that the pitchers cost the team many more wins than they should have. The relievers, in particular, cost their team much more than they should have. I’m sure that this can be chalked up to a number of things. But, in my opinion, much or most of it falls in the lap of Buddy Bell.

One of a manager’s most important tasks is the most out of his pitchers. It seems here that Buddy Bell does this extremely poorly. In comparison, Tony La Russa’s Cardinals pitching staff has added more than double what they should have. (1.96 WPA, meaning 3.92 actual wins added; were expected to add 1.61 wins). And we can’t use the ‘team’s talent’ excuse. Even if we’re talking about a third grade softball team, a good manager should be able to get the WPA/.5 at or above the REW. The Royals didn’t, the Cardinals did.

This is, of course, just one of the many reasons I feel that Buddy Bell isn’t the ideal Royals manager. I feel he might be a decent coach, in terms of on-field mechanics. But, in my opinion, he is awful at lineup and bullpen decisions. And the words “Justin Huber” take care of the offensive side of lineup decisions.

My suggestions for a new manager? Frank White? I don’t really know. I’ll leave that up for people smarter than I. But I do know that Bell just isn’t up to snuff as a MLB manager.

Craig Brown (a.k.a. one of the better bloggers out there, Royals or not) takes a look at where Mark Teahen’s hitting the ball. Please check it out pronto.

I haven’t read it yet, but I did want to pass this link on. When Mr. Sheehan gets his graph on, lock the doors—it’s amazing analysis coming at you. Personally, I’ll be reading it during the next free moment I have.