Back to LaRussa, maybe I'm not objective, but I blame him for loogies and roogies, and the scourge of overmanaging

And you'd be right. He is responsible, in large part, for those scourges. And I don't blame you for despising him for it. Hell, if Greenback were here, he'd point out that I'm a charter member of BTF's He-Man TLR Hater's Club (Harveys is our prez). But I have to put aside my disdain for the guy when I evaluate his ability to skipper a ballteam. He's been tremendously successful, at multiple stops, with varying degrees of quality on the personnel side (Look at the roster for his first run to the NLCS with the Cards).

And by all mean's read Dag's book (I don't think the TLR comment is in there. It was in an interview promoting the book).

When Chris Jaffe said that TLR was the best(allegedly, I've never read the book so I don't know if he in fact said that) since that was so intuitively WRONG to me, I really had no interest in looking further
really,

Is this some sort of anti-confirmation bias.

Chris does a great job of laying out his approach and showing his work. There are a thousand places you can disagree with him but it is the most thorough approach at looking at managers dispassionately that I am aware of.

I loved it because it gave me a great view into the deadball managers without relying on the same old stories we have all heard. Because of Chris' efforts I can really see HOW they managed.

Great stuff.

Hell, if Greenback were here, he'd point out that I'm a charter member of BTF's He-Man TLR Hater's Club (Harveys is our prez).

I do not hate Tony. I greatly ADMIRE Tony.

I just point out that the man has his warts. And chief among them is blatant hypocrisy. In particular his raising h*ll every time someone throws a pitch within a foot of Albert's navel but one of his guys nails your guy in the groin and that's just baseball.

Every manager has a shelf life.

s this some sort of anti-confirmation bias.

yes

I'm more worried about the fact that getting rid of LaRussa would almost certainly mean getting rid of Dave Duncan. Duncan essentially equals at least one, and sometimes multiple out-of-nowhere solid pitching seasons from reclamation projects and journeymen. That's tough to replace.

Agree that what happens to Duncan is huge here. That said, how effective would Duncan be without LaRussa? Would he be Johnny Sain improving pitchers wherever he went or would he be Leo Mazzone and have his magic depend on his surroundings and his working relationship with his longtime manager?

On what grounds is LaRussa better than Torre? Not to mention Weaver, Stengel, Anderson, Cox, Alston, etc.

I guess the short version of the answer is the Birnbaum Database, specifically the portions which measure a player's performance in one season with the two previous and two succeeding seasons. By that standard, LaRussa gets more from his players from any manager aside from McGraw & McCarthy. I have no secret formula for how he does it, but he's done it pretty conistently for . . well, he's now in his fifth decade of managing.

The record of Duncan & LaRussa with reclamation project starting pitchers (Floyd Bannister, Mike MOore, WOody Wiliams, Darryl Kile, Kent Bottenfield, Garrett Stephenson, Todd Stottlemyre, Chris Carpenter, Jason Marquis, Jeff Suppan, Bob Welch, Dave Stewart) is part of it.

Threw this is in: longevity. That's not his only or main accomplishment, but it adds up and though all the big name manager who mentioned above had long careers, none were LaRussa.

Weaver vs. LaRussa? Tony LaRussa's career has managed 93.1% more games than Weaver. And counting. If you want to argue that Weaver was better in his prime - perfectly reasonable - is the best manager of one generation really twice as good per game as the best manager of another generation? Do you realize LaRussa's only 139 wins behind McGraw on the all-time list? Chomp on that one for a second.

Stengel? Again, that time with the Yanks was among the best stretches any manager ever had (and argubly the best), and he was damn underrated when running woefully undermanned Dodger & Braves teams. But part of Stengel was the Mets experience when he was frankly too old to do the job properly. (Actually, I once read a former Yankee comment that he thought Stengel was slipping in his last year or two in New York. Clearly the front office felt so). Post-Yankee Stengel is to managers what post-Philly Steve Carlton was to pitchers.

Most managers really peter out at the end. That's not to surprising. It's hard to maintain that level of mental engagement and fixation with the game year after year, decade after decade. Plus the pressure and stress that come with it. Now add in the problems of entering one's sixties to this and it's tough.

What's remarkable is that (so far) LaRussa has kept his own. I really have no idea how much longer he can keep going. Few managers are worth much after 20 years on the job. A lot of those who do have success later had some breaks in their career (see McKeon, Jack) for relief. LaRussa has been in the dugout every game for over 31 years (his only gap was 18 days between his last CWS & first A's games).

I'm not sure if he's much of a bet to go forward. Age and stress have got to catch up with him some time (right?). Then again, I could easily have said the same thing about him five years ago. He's three and a half years younger than Bobby Cox.

When Chris Jaffe said that TLR was the best(allegedly, I've never read the book so I don't know if he in fact said that) since that was so intuitively WRONG to me, I really had no interest in looking further

Fair enough, but why is it so intiutively wrong? It ain't like I'm saying Don Zimmer is the best manager since 1950.

Back to LaRussa, maybe I'm not objective, but I blame him for loogies and roogies

Bobby Cox arguably has more to do with this than LaRussa. Now, LaRussa had the great golden breakthrough moment with the 1988-90 A's bullpen, but Cox has almost always been at the bottom end of fewest IP per relief outing for his relievers. TEN TIMES his bullpen has had the fewest IP/relief appearance in the league. That includes twice in his first ATL stop and two times in Toronto. In the 1990s, Cox set a MLB record for fewest IP/RA three different times. A fourth time his team had fewer IP/RA than any previous team in baseball history, but LaRussa was even lower still that year.

but I also see that he's had Pujols for 10 years, he had Edmonds for Edmond's near inner circle peak..he had Mac fro his Bondsian peak

You'll have to look damn hard to find any manager, regardless of how good he is, win with a team unless it has some talent.

Then again you'll also have to look damn hard to find a manager who churns 91 wins out of the 2009 Cards roster. Yes they had Pujols. And two months of Matt Holliday. But not much else on their offense (Ludwick's 104 OPS+ at a corner OF position is decent, but not much more than that). ANd most of teh starting rotation was made up of reclamation producets - Pineiro, Wellmeyer, Lohse - heck, Carpenter was a reclamation project when he came to St. Louis.

EDITED to add: Edmonds peak was inner circle? McGwire was Bondsian in terms of hitting HR, but not in terms of overall value.

Tony has clearly established a BRAND. That is something that a lot of managers, even good ones, do not accomplish. There is nothing really distinctive about a Joe Torre team for example.

Guys like Weaver, McKechnie and LaRussa have a clearly defined team mold. They have a plan, they execute on that plan and if you don't fit that plan they get rid of you. By any means necessary.

What makes LaRussa's brand successful is that it does not need specific conditions to succeed. And that is why I believe he has managed to endure despite the sometimes dramatic changes in the game around him.

LaRussa's best managerial effort was the 2008 Cardinals. That team was a TRAIN WRECK. You had ONE guy who had more that 500 plate appearances and the team was still relevant in September.

It ain't like I'm saying Don Zimmer is the best manager since 1950.

no, because if you said Don Zimmer is the best manager since 1950 you would obviously be mentally ill and in need of better meds.

Tony has clearly established a BRAND. That is something that a lot of managers, even good ones, do not accomplish. There is nothing really distinctive about a Joe Torre team for example.

Not disputing the point, or contradicting what you're saying in any way; just adding information (of a trivial variety):

One thing I recall about Torre's managerial career pre-Yankees was that, wherever he managed, he tried to make his home field more park-neutral (at least with regard to home runs). I'm just doing this from memory, so I welcome correction, but if I recall correctly:

While Torre was manager of the Mets, their home field Shea Stadium (a pitcher's park) had outfield walls placed in front of the stands down each line (thus shaving a couple of feet off the distance down each line, along with shortening the height of the home run marker);

While Torre was manager of the Braves (who played their home games in The Launching Pad), he had the fences moved back in the power alleys, adding about ten feet or so to the distances in left-center and right-center;

While Torre was manager of the Cardinals (who played in Busch Stadium, a pitcher's park) the "flower beds" were added in the outfield, thus shortening the dimensions in the power alleys and in straight away centerfield.

Again, I could be mis-remembering or confusing dates, so I welcome any correction from the historians here. But if I am remembering correctly, I think that's an interesting ideology for a manager to have, to attempt to make his home park as home run neutral as possible.

DB

LaRussa's best managerial effort was the 2008 Cardinals. That team was a TRAIN WRECK. You had ONE guy who had more that 500 plate appearances and the team was still relevant in September.

I assume you mean the '07 Cardinals, as the '08 team had four players with 500 PAs. The fact that that team was "relevant" in September was only because of the exceptional weakness of the division that year--they won 78 games, and were never more than a game over .500 all season long.