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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, October 02, 2009
Where’s the Chuck Wagon beef…with Tony La Russa?
Playoff baseball is a matter of very big fish and very small barrels. How often can you mock Alex Rodriguez — noted for his work in the video for Madonna’s hit single, “Justify My Starfucking” — for approaching October the way that Sarah Palin approaches a dependent clause? Okay, maybe a few hundred more times, but you can’t keep it up forever. So maybe you point out that Billy Beane’s breakthrough theories about running a small-market team — the ones that loosed upon baseball a distressful exaltation of math nerds — managed to cobble together a whole 75 wins this year for Beane’s team, which hasn’t made the playoffs in five years. You can always land on the Red Sox and their celebrity fans, who were once insufferable losers and who are now simply not losers. Then there’s Derek Jeter, who can still, you know, bite me. And that goes double for anyone who celebrates the grandeur that is The Ballpark at Big Kickback there in the Bronx.
...But the truly remarkable thing about La Russa is his rather unspectacular record at winning anything that counts. Eugene McCarthy once said of Walter Mondale that the latter “had the soul of a vice-president.” Tony La Russa has the soul of a semifinalist.
Now the lawyer is back in the playoffs, so watch it happen again. At some critical juncture — or at several critical junctures — La Russa will feel compelled to exercise his superior intellect, probably as regards to a pitcher. The TBS broadcast crew undoubtedly will point out the subtle brilliance of this maneuvering, and then the whole game will blow up in his face. If he brings in a reliever, the next pitch will be picked up by NORAD. If he leaves in his starter, the guy will petrify right there on the mound. And, by Game Three, say, La Russa will have absolutely nobody left to come in to pitch the eighth or ninth inning in a tight game. He will outsmart himself again. The wonder will be why anyone thinks outsmarting Tony La Russa is all that hard.
Repoz
Posted: October 02, 2009 at 02:18 PM | 56 comment(s)
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1. Best Regards, Larry M. Posted: October 02, 2009 at 02:49 PM (#3338339)Math nerd.
Well, no. It equals 3, which isn't the right answer either.
Really? What is the right answer, because I get three years since they made the playoffs?
Not to mention helping our national economy by turning countless washed up pitchers into multi-millionaires.
Unfortunately, the Tigers - a collection of talent so smart they know within four pitches whether the runner on second is stealing their signals - saw right through his plan. TLR was planning to retire, but has to keep managing now just to pay off his bookies.
True story.
What's this guy's deal? This reads like someone transcribed an episode of Rome is Burning, or Joe Morgan talking about how Tony La Russa shouldn't have written that book Men At Work.
Anyway, I'll take the two pennants and the World Series championship, which he managed to accidentally win in the course of trying to show everybody how awesome his cobbled-together bullpen and injury-plagued lineup were.
Yeah, TLR can be toolish, but why write about it? It just seems dickish to write a screed about someone else's dickishness. It's just so boring.
because it was arguably a good move? It's funny on the STLToday boards, there is a guy that almost every time he comments to a TLR article, begs for TLR to bat Pujols where he should, fourth. And actually thinks this is a good plan.
which is funny, yes TLR plays mind games and could be annoying as heck to other teams, but in his entire time here in St Louis I've never heard him take credit for anything. I know he is arrogant, you can tell by how he doesn't go out of his way to talk himself up, a true sign of a guy that is full of himself.
wow, this article had zero substance. No information, no intelligence behind it, and nothing factual in the slightest. I mean sure TLR has won 2 world series, has taken a team to the post season 12 times, won the first round 9 times, won second round 3 of those times(one world series) and third round(out of two chances) once. 13-11(quick math) record in postseason series play...not great but better than average.
What's the problem here? Oakland made the playoffs five years ago. They haven't since.
Twins fan? Or Raiders fan?
really? when does he remotely say anything resembling that in that rant?
1st paragraph----nope, talks arod, blasts Beane, Palin, Jeter and the city of New York
2nd paragrpah---nope, mentions tlr, suing twitter, and making the playoffs
3rd paragraph---nope, TLR has a law degree
4th paragraph---nope, something about a ballet school shirt
5th paragraph---close, the paragraph quoted in the lead-in.
6th paragraph---close, mentions him winning a couple of world series and losing a couple.
7th paragraph---nope, blasts against canseco, roids or whatever
8th paragraph---nope, a small comment about tlr using his relievers and having it blow up in his face.
seriously this writer is an idiot of extreme proportions, to think he brought anything of substance to his rant is lunacy, he doesn't say a damn thing in the entire article, he attempts to be funny but fails miserably(I imagine you need a working brain to make jokes work, something this guy clearly doesn't have) and doesn't say a thing in the entire 'blog'.
you don't expect this Pierce guy to do simple math, he has enough problem just getting his rant on track. I mean the wonder is wondering why anyone thinks this Pierce guy has a brain.
Me, too. Which is why I tried to unsuccessfully respond to it woth a joke. I suspect Quibbler was having some fun, though.
honestly, I think they looked at bb-ref page oak a's and counted 4 years without being in the post season, assumed that this year isn't on there and said "five years". That is about the only thing I can think of.
From paragraph 5: "But the truly remarkable thing about La Russa is his rather unspectacular record at winning anything that counts."
Pierce can be annoying but he is not an idiot.
It's still only three years counting this year!
This is like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the guy wakes up, and he's the same, but everything else is different!
this being the first thing I remember reading by this guy, I find it hard to belief he has a brain cell. This is pure idiocy and I don't even care about the math, the guy made zero point, he makes Jim Rome appear to be levelheaded and not an idiot(and yes Jim Rome is at best a functioning retard---but that is probably too generous to him) in comparison to other idiots, Pierce may not be an idiot, but nothing in this entire article refutes the conclusion that this guy is a certified moron.
Pierce is a brilliant writer, one of the most respected in the magazine business. He may have flubbed this piece, but he's still extremely good 90 percent of the time.
Pierce is a brilliant writer, one of the most respected in the magazine business. He may have flubbed this piece, but he's still extremely good 90 percent of the time.
ok, I don't doubt it since multiple people seem to be saying that, but this piece was truly epic in it's patheticness. I mean I'm a TLR fan and I think I could have done a better and maybe even funnier tear down of TLR(and I'm not that funny)
EDIT- Would you like a cheeseburger with your Coke?
Him or Jack Handey.
Whoops. Snark foul, sorry. For some reason I assumed you were doing the math wrong, as in "no Post season in 2006 and beyond, thus 2009-2006. Don't know why I assumed that.
a dubious distinction at best.
as for the comment that wants to label larussa unspectacular because he's only won two WS after ... so ... many ... opportunities, well, i put those words in ellipses to make a point. there aren't too many other managers that have had those opportunities, so who are you comparing him to? an arbitrary chance construct that ignores the fact that he's been in the position to win a world series a lot more times than most other managers. most other managers ever. to make my point another way: gene mauch was considered a great manager, and we all know his record in the postseason. larussa has managed a comparable amount of time and had much more success.
the groupthink around here has always been that a short series is a crapshoot. so how does larussa get hammered, or damned with faint praise as it were, for something that is almost out of his control? how does he get called unspectacular when he's managed so many teams through the marathon of a season and into the playoffs?
now, if you want to pull up someone like, say, casey stengel, well fine. larussa doesn't compare as well as stengel, i suppose. but stengel is deeply underrated because he was clownish, or he had a strong team in a weak league so all they had to do was put together a good series every year, a lot of things went right for him, yada yada. stengel is inner circle as managers go, so ya it isn't surprising if larussa isn't perceived as good a manager.
larussa is going to pass mcgraw in wins if he sticks around for 3 yrs. this is not an unspectacular record.
larussa gets pissed on because some people just don't like him. they don't like his haircut, or they don't like his gamesmanship (sometimes i don't), or they don't like him for being at the forefront of the modern use of relief pitchers. tough. he's proved that he can manage, and manage well, because he has been doing it for a long time. sample size, guys. when a manager has a substantial one, it speaks volumes.
It's horribly written, unfunny, full of ad hominem attacks and offers not one shred of evidence in support of its thesis. Pierce accuses LaRussa of being a self-proclaimed genius but this article makes it rather clear to me that nobody is more full of themselves than Pierce.
Except perhaps me.
I don't see a lot of value-added by LaRussa in the postseason which is all that Pierce was saying.
Nope. He pretty much blasts him about 20 different ways (most of which, I have no idea what relevance they have to evaluation of a baseball manager).
Not to mention providing almost no facts, botching what facts he does provide and peppering pointless personal attacks throughout.
Charlie Pierce is utter trash.
I haven't checked this, and I was at a bar when I read the trivia question, but in the 2000s, the Cardinals have won 33 post season games, what team is second in the national league....and the answer was D-backs with 14, to me that indicates that TLR/Cardinals have done something to win games in the post season.
Mets should have 14, 3/4/1 in 2000. 3/3 in 2006.
It was better than his Slate piece last year complaining that no one should root for the Arizona Cardinals at all in the Super Bowl because they played such a poor game against the Patriots.
really? what brilliance. I can understand not rooting for them because their owner is on par with Loria for pure evilness (to fans, Bidwell is actually supposedly a decent human being, something Loria can't claim) but who cares about the Patriots? outside of Boston that is, I mean it's not like they are this mythical Red Sox nation or something, they are just another team.
I agree that winning a pennant or World Series is pretty much a crapshoot and I have no idea how to quantify how much a manager does once in the post-season to help or hurt his team. That said, LaRussa has won about as many as one would expect for the number of times he's gone. If anyone wants to make a case that he is a better post-season manager than his record indicates, I'd be happy to read it.
If you want to argue that Pierce's premise is baloney, I agree. The number of LCS and WS a manager appears in will always be a pretty small sample.
If you want to argue that to only look at the number of pennants or WS rings when passing judgement on a baseball manager is stupid, I agree.
If you want to argue that the number of times a manager brings a team to the post-season is more important than the number that you actually win (as long as you win your share ;-) I agree. Even if it pains me to admit that, by that measure, LaRussa is a better-than-average manager.
There could be trouble.
i don't want to belabor this, but tony larussa is a great manager. he is going in the hall of fame, not because he told funny stories to reporters or managed in one town so long he achieved sainthood. he hasn't done either of those things. st. louis may be warming up to him now, i don't know, but i know for sure he was denigrated in stl for a long time because he ain't whitey ford.
the dude managed teamst that won tons of games and put his team in position to win championships. that's what good managers do.
Whitey Herzog was no Whitey Ford, either, and they liked him okay.
;)
See, I might be receptive to hearing this argument, but given the stridency of the rhetoric in the Esquire piece, I don't think at all that this is "the key claim that Peirce was making"
If Joe Torre doesn't manage again after 2000, he's a great post-season manager.
In 2009, Joe Torre's a not-impressive postseason manager.
Something's really ##### with the definition of "good postseason manager." Aside from the fact that the worst postseason managers all wind up being good managers to have gotten there enough (cf. Cox, Bobby).
40 minutes ago, he passed McGraw in games.
Well, the first requirement for being a good post-season manager is . . . making it to the post-season.
Sort of like the recipe for rabbit stew. First, catch a rabbit . . .
Indeed. In Pierce's recent book IDIOT AMERICA (which I largely enjoyed, BTW), he quotes at length Ralph Ketcham, one of my old Syracuse University professors and perhaps the James Madison authority, about the need for an educated and aware American populace.
Pierce identifies him as "Ralph Ketchum."
Which episode was that?
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