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1. RJ in TO Posted: September 29, 2010 at 08:02 PM (#3651442)Because he basically refused to go through the interview process for other positions. He was of the opinion that his record spoke for itself.
Does CTV have any factcheckers?
If that's the case, I guess I can't say he was wronged. It's too bad. He has done a good job in his second go-around with Toronto and he was obviously pretty successful in his first.
He wasn't necessarily wronged, but most other managers with two World Series rings don't have to go through the interview process either. I highly doubt that the Cubs made Piniella seriously complete when they hired him, or that the Cards made La Russa jump through hoops, or that Torre had to do anything other than give his expected start date to the Dodgers. Dusty Baker also hasn't seemed to have had to do much in the way of serious interviewing.
EDIT: I think Gaston was also concerned about being used in the same way that Don Baylor claimed to be used - to be called in because baseball had decided that minority candidates must be interviewed, even if the team had already decided on their next manager.
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. So why didn't he get more work?
That's not an entirely fair comparison. When Gaston finally left the Blue Jays he had had four consecutive losing seasons. While the others had some stretches similar to that they were never as long and were offset by other factors. All of them had longer track records of success than Gaston had had. LaRussa going from Oakland to St. Louis is probably the best comp with three straight sub .500 seasons but he had also had a longer run of success and the narrative of being a "genius" where Gaston was considered a push-button manager (perhaps unfairly, I'll leave that to Ryan and the others who saw him more than I did).
He seemed to get a lot of grief as a do-nothing manager - he was perceived as happy to just set his starting lineups, and then leave everything alone. He didn't do much pinch hitting, he didn't frantically juggle the bullpen, he didn't swap starters in and out based on hot streaks, he didn't try to manufacture runs through small ball, so it looked like he was just some generic guy sitting on the bench. He also wasn't one to play to the press, which probably hasn't helped.
Probably not, but we're still talking about a guy who won back-to-back rings.
Gaston was considered a push-button manager (perhaps unfairly, I'll leave that to Ryan and the others who saw him more than I did).
During the World Series years, it was probably a fair accusation, but any tinkering he could have done would have probably made things worse - it was not the sort of team that you want to hand to a chronic micro-manager. When you've got lineups like he had those years, finessing around the edges for extra runs here and there is much more likely to blow up in your face than it is to actually result in a benefit to the team. In other years, when he had weaker lineups and rotations, he was more likely to swap guys in and out, platoon, and so on.
Didn't his teams stand out for consistently stealing bases at a really nice percentage? (if I recall my Dag correctly). Generally speaking, Chris seemed to think he was better than he was given credit for.
The Mets chatterers would like to welcome everyone to Russlania. Enjoy your stay. :-D
They certainly did, and that's continued during his second run as manager. The Jays are 56/20 SB/CS this year, and were 73/23 last year (and 80/27 in 2008, split between Cito and Gibbons).
Very much so. Almost all of Gaston's promiment base stealers stole with a better success rates with Gaston than away from Gaston.
Possible reasons Gaston had to wait:
- too prideful to go through the interview process
- lingering racism
- reputation marred by a series of losing seasons
- hurt by his minimalist style of managing. (Bill James called Gaston "virtually inert" in his book on managers)
It's a combination of the above one way or the other. Figure out your own approved mixture of the contents, add a few others in if you want and give some of the above nothing if you choose.
(and 80/27 in 2008, split between Cito and Gibbons).
Wanna find an awesome factoid - figure out exactly how the Jays stole under Gibbons and how they stole under Gaston that year. From memory, they stole something like 31/33 under Gaston in '08.
Yeah, his career length & winning percentage make him a dead ringer for Buck Showalter. The two rings sets him apart, but Gaston still has a shorter career than Billy Southworth, who has a FAR better winning percentage and as many rings (and more pennants) than Gaston. He made it in, but had to wait 60 years until his career ended.
Another possible comp for Gaston: Jimmy Collins. Won two pennants & the only World Series he partook in. Mangerial minimialist. Team flopped on him toward the end. Collins never managed again after his one stint. The big difference was that Collins was a player-manager and at that time even highly successful player-managers, such as Fred Clarke and Frank Chance, managed very little after their main run came to an end.
Checking the B-R splits/game logs, they were 33 SB, 4 CS from June 20 onward, which was roughly (give-or-take a game) when Cito took over.
Never saw him manage.
Which makes the Showalter comparison a bit off. Showalter is the guy who builds the teams up but, for whatever reason, they never get over the top while he's there. Then the next guy comes in and takes them to victory with (mainly) Showalter's players.
So Gaston was viewed at the time as more Bob Brenly than a consistent winner like Alston, Weaver, etc. He could have overcome that early perception if they had continued to win but they were below 500 in 94 and putrid in 95 and couldn't win even after they brought in Clemens in 97. So I can't say the impression was unfair although it may more be a lesson in "a manager is only as good as his players" and "be wary of taking over aging teams."
An interesting parallel universe question is how would Joe Torre have been viewed if the Yanks had won only 1-2 WS then slid back into a 90-win never quite got there team.
Not from Ralph Houk, Danny Murtaugh and the aforementioned Tom Kelly.
Anecdotally as well, the Jays have had a rep under Gaston for reading pitchers/stealing signs. I wish he'd let himself be a bench coach.
Not from Ralph Houk, Danny Murtaugh and the aforementioned Tom Kelly.
?
The two rings thing was brought up to mention how hard it was for him to get a job after his first go-around. Kelly left the profession voluntarily, Houk never had any trouble getting employment and Murtaugh had the job as often as his heart could stand it (and his career only ended when he died in late '76).
Yes, but a lot of that seems to have been his fault.
How much did Dick Williams have to interview after winning back to back World Series? I don't know the answer. However, Williams went straight from one job to another with four more franchises after managing the A's.
Gaston took a stand that hurt him. But it was also a stand that exposed some of the latent racism that still existed in baseball at the time.
not to mention LaRussa and Terry Francona--LaRussa's a slam-dunk, of course, whatever you think of him. Depending how long Francona hangs around and whether he wins another one--then he and Cito will be as good a match as Cito and Kelly
I don't know how you'd determine if it was racism or just a belief that he wasn't a good enough manager to deserve "star treatment".
From this thread, Gaston sounds like a great manager and a cool guy. And didn't he platoon Mulliniks and Iorg to some success?
Mulliniks and Iorg were platooned by Bobby Cox and Jimy Williams. By the time Cito took over, Kelly Gruber was the regular at 3B.
However, he did use a Mulliniks/Tabler platoon for a while.
I think Gaston's best job is probably this season.
I agree with this. If you told me before the season that John McDonald would out-OPS Adam Lind, I'd have assumed that the team would be lucky to win 60 games. But, with the exceptions of the fifth starter spot and Lind/Hill, this entire team did far better than anyone expected. I'm not sure how much of that should be attributed to Cito, but I am glad that he got the chance to finish his career with this season, and not last season when there were the stories about the team not liking him.
While this year may have been a big surprise, I have to believe turning a 12-24 team into a division winner in '89 is probably his biggest accomplishment.
In any case, it's a nice set of bookends for his career as a manager.
Also, another highlight tonight was Joe Carter sitting with the broadcasters (Tabler and Buck Martinez) down the 1st base line.
Bautista hit a line drive foul ball right at them, and Carter caught it!
Well, it hit his glove, since he wasn't wearing it, just holding it.
And the video tributes were nice, I didn't expect them to get people like Hank Aaron and Dusty Baker to share their thoughts.
over TLR? really that is a stretch.
I suspect he wasn't considering guys who are absolute locks for Cooperstown, as TLR is, but rather managers who may be overlooked. But it is GG, so who knows?
Sorry. Thought it was to argue that he had a better HOF case than other short-career managers, seeing as how it was in response to the comment that "890 wins, .516 W% just isn't enough" and was followed by a comparison to Billy Southworth who "made it in, but had to wait 60 years until his career ended." So you can understand my confusion.
And then on the strength of that Sprague played another four seasons as a starter for Cito, and was never very good as the team declined. It seemed an object lesson that sometimes there's a time for patience, and sometimes patience wears out its welcome.
I remember seeing Sprague play a random game for the Red Sox in 2000 and thinking, if things had broken just a little differently for him, he'd never have played much above AAA.
Ah, the ultimate desperate Duke move. Tankersley never amounted to anything, so it didn't wind up doing permanent psychological damage, but that was one awful trade.
Actually, if things had broken a little differently for him, he'd probably have just finished his career as a charter member of the back-up catchers club a couple seasons ago. When the Jays brought him up to play 3B in 1991, they had just started working on converting him to a catcher in the minors. If Gruber hadn't screwed up his neck and back, Sprague would have been left in AAA for a season or two to properly learn how to play behind the plate.
This doesn't jive with my memory of Ed Sprague at all. I remember him as a solid, average or better third baseman.
Actually, that kind of sentiment is true for almost any player who I first became aware of when I was nine years old.
Or is it just that we're so wrapped up in winning arguments by citing our pet metrics that we're reluctant to acknowledge that numbers don't always tell the whole story?
or better yet, what happened to the guy who had this season in 1970. He sure as hell never showed up again.
Isn't this an argument FOR putting Gaston into the Hall? He took over an underachieving team, got them into the playoffs immediately (taking over a 12-24 team and going 77-49 the rest of the way as somebody noted above), and won back-to-back World Series within 4 years.
He posted an 86 OPS+ that season. I don't know where replacement level is for AL 3B in 1993, but I don't think we need to nominate a manager for sainthood for his vision based on that move. I think there's a strong possibility that the retreads and non-prospects could have given the Jays better third base play that year, were they properly used.
It looks like a pretty good, long run
10 years, 5 division titles, 3 2nd places, once 3rd, once 4th
Win totals of
99
96
96
95
91
89
89
87
86
86
If you spread out the Championships (say one in 1985 and one in 1992), rather than having them both at the end, I wonder if they are remembered differently. Most Jays fans I know who talk about the glory days, refer exclusively to 92-93. Usually because I talk to Jays fans around my age who were really too young to know anything but World Series titles back then. But really it was a decade long run of good teams.
Ah, the old "If these guys have a major league starting job, they must be pretty good players". I have a lot of that from when I was 9 too.
The reverse of this happens with relief pitchers, in my opinion. The expectation is that hitters won't be able to come through, but the expectation is that relievers should throw perfect innings of nothing but strikes. So when they disappoint, it's memorable.
Rick Schu, Atlee Hammaker and Dennis Rasmussen I remember singling out as terrible, terrible players based on absolutely nothing...probably just based on how they looked on their baseball card picture.
EDIT: Well it seems I was right on Schu. Hammaker had himself a pretty great season, but by the time I came around he had pretty firmly established some suck. I was being unfair to Rasmussen. He looks like a thoroughly reliable #4 starter.
Obviously if a player hits .220 or has a 6.19 ERA, even at 9 years old we're probably not going to form a good impression of him even listening to team announcers. But the people who play well enough to keep a starting job don't tend to fall into that category.
Of course it is. As with all managers, you can quibble with a player move here and there, but I don't see a stitch of evidence to suggest that Cito wasn't anything but a terrific manager. He turned the Jays around in '89, they were great from 89-93, tapered off, and in his second act they were far better than expectations and better than they were under the liars (T. Johnson) and various hacks/yes men Ash and blowhard Riccardi brought in. He was seemingly underestimated until the end; if the Jays knew how good he was, they might have held on to Halladay and Rolen, and would likely have truly contended this year.
And speaking of blowhards, I happened to catch Francesa when he was doing his Vegas over-under picks the day before the season started. The Jays were at something like 73 wins (don't quote me, that's ballpark), and were Francesa's #1 pick for most certain to be under, and he proceeded to bloviate for 10 minutes about how the Jays were a near lock to lose 100.(**) It wasn't quite at the level of his ignorant rants about the Yanks/Tigers 2006 ALDS -- nothing is, or can be -- but it wasn't far behind.
(**) Primarily because of their "lack of starting pitching," by which he meant "I've never heard of any of these guys, my team buys guys I've heard of to spare me the work to keep up, my team's good, ergo the Blue Jays must be bad."
EDIT: 71.5 was the Blue Jays over/under.
There was (and still is I think) a perception that first slump for a young player and they're out of here. And I don't think it's entirely unfair. Certainly I can't find anything positive to say about his handling of Delgado. And I'm not a fan of the way he handled Green.
I like to use Sprague as a point when people talking about players evaluating players. Roger Clemens flipped out when Sprague was released.
I was going to give him credit for dealing with the Campusano fiasco, but that piece of stupidity happened in 1988. The only lingering effect from that was the lingering problems between Williams and Bell
As for Andy's #49, let me respond to part of it:No, that's not the right question. The right question is, should we measure those things? By that, I mean that before we worry about how good a manager is about "maintaining a good clubhouse atmosphere," we need to know how much that matters. We know how much a pitcher's prevention of a run contributes to winning; we don't know how much, if at all, a good clubhouse atmosphere does.
That was the year I started following baseball, & that season's numbers convinced me that people like Gaston, Bob Bailey (who at least more or less replicated his stat line in '73) & Dick Dietz must be major stars.
A white manager with his resume gets another job. See Dick Williams. 4 times.
A white manager with his resume and reputation (inherited good team, didn't have to do much) gets another job. See Ralph Houk. 3 times.
A white manager with his resume probably doesn't get that reputation in the first place. See Sparky Anderson, who pretty much let the Big Red Machine go out and play as well.
Did Cito Gaston have flaws as a manager? Sure, every manager does. No one's perfect. However, he also had some significant strengths. He got great mileage out of veterans at the end of their career (similar to GM Billy Beane in Oakland). He got strong performances out of secondary players (Candy Maldonado with the best year of his career in '92). He must have been doing something right with that bullpen as it was one of the best of the time with Henke, Timlin, Ward and Wells (similar to Lou Piniella and Cincinnati's Nasty Boys). And the complaint that he couldn't work with young players ignores the work he did with John Olerud and Juan Guzman (22 and 24 for the first championship).
The Blue Jays didn't win back-to-back World Series in spite of Cito Gaston. They won them with Cito Gaston. Any other manager would have gotten another job after that. And it's a shame that Cito Gaston never got a chance with another team to show what he could do. Maybe he would have been another Houk. I think it's more likely he would have been another Williams or Piniella. But we'll never know for sure because he never got the chance.
Was racism the only factor? Probably not, life's complicated. Was it a significant factor? You'd have to be willfully near-sighted to suggest that it wasn't.
*I'm not saying that he should go into the Hall of Fame. I wouldn't vote for Danny Murtaugh or Tom Kelly either.
They had a pretty good 1983 as well, going 89-73 and finishing in fourth place.
Yeah, Ed Sprague sucked, but Cito had the sense to bench him in the World Series in the games in Philly. Plus, he'll always have his World Series PH home run off Reardon. I always remember his wife on the WS video babbling how Ed could retire tomorrow and never have another moment like this. Well, of course, he'd be retired! But I got her meaning.
Perception still exists, given the grumbling over his handling of JP Arencibia.
You'd also have to be willfully near-sighted to ignore the fact that Houk and Williams were basically knocking on the door of every team that had a managerial vacancy almost before those vacancies existed. Sometimes even when they themselves were still employed. Gaston OTOH, pretty much decided that he was only interested in managing again if some team chased him around begging him to let them hold a coronation. Although I do have to add that I respect his desire to avoid being anybody's (everybody's?) token minority interview.
How many black managers got jobs during the decade that Cito sat out? Dusty Baker, Don Baylor, Willie Randolph and Jerry Manuel OTTOMH.
This reminds me of a story that I once read about Roberto Clemente, but have never found again in almost 40 years. Clemente told the story of walking around San Diego in 1971 and being accosted by a couple of muggers. He talked them out of mugging him by showing them an All-Star-Game ring he was wearing (I guess there were such things?) and claiming to be Gaston. He said it was touch and go but they agreed that it would be a shame to mug Clarence Gaston. Which leaves the question of how these characters could have been big enough baseball fans to feel protective toward Gaston, but not to recognize Roberto Clemente. But perhaps alcohol was involved.
Like Jose Bautista, one reckons.
No, that's not the right question. The right question is, should we measure those things? By that, I mean that before we worry about how good a manager is about "maintaining a good clubhouse atmosphere," we need to know how much that matters. We know how much a pitcher's prevention of a run contributes to winning; we don't know how much, if at all, a good clubhouse atmosphere does.
Looks like you've just asked and answered your own question without even evincing an interest in any possible alternative to the answer you've already predetermined.
Of course if you're right, and if clubhouse chemistry is irrelevant; if an ability to attract premiuim free agents in competition with teams who've made similar offers is irrelevant; and if an ability to keep the owner from messing with the team is irrelevant, then sure, there's no need to explore the question any further. Just count the rings, or count the college diplomas, or look at their IQ tests, or whatever "measurable" standard you want to use, and be done with it. We know all we need to know.
But how do you know these factors are irrelevant any more than you know that they aren't? To take one obvious case where you can't dismiss the question out of hand, how much success might the Yankees' run of 1996-2007 be attributed to Torre's ability to keep Steinbrenner at bay; to his ability to bring in former problem players like Strawberry and Fielder and keep them more or less on the same page as the rest of the team; and being able to parlay his reputation, his team's success and the Yankee payroll into the ability to further attract key free agents, in particular the type of free agent that prior to his arrival would avoid the latter day Bronx Zoo of the Manager of the Month Club era?
You can dismiss all of this as irrelevant, but it's hard not to view that dismissal as little more than an attempt to avoid considering any factor that can't be measured mathematically. Which was precisely the point I was trying to raise with my question.
a) had had a disappointing 1991 season by his own standards, and
b) in 1992 had apparently forgotten everything he ever knew about how baseball is played
Does anybody else remember this about Gruber's '92 season? He looked lost and frantic out there all year long. When they replaced him with Sprague, it was such a relief to have a third baseman who actually seemed like he knew what he was doing on the field.
--
A couple of things about Cito Gaston. First, he had, or has, a remarkable gift for quenching controversies. Under Tim Johnson, the Jays had a dispute about whether Clemens or Hentgen would start some particular game, and he never heard the end of it. If it was Gaston, it would have been forgotten the next day. All of the potential controversies Gaston ran into - David Wells throwing the baseball away when Gaston came out to remove him from the game, last year's clubhouse revolt - just slid right off his back. I don't know how he does it.
And it's not like he has no tactical ability. One of my fondest memories of the '92 series is the game in which Gaston deked Bobby Cox into pinch-hitting for Deion Sanders, who had been hitting the Jays very well. Gaston had had a front-row seat for that tactic working on Cox in the '85 ALCS, of course...
It's no insult to Gaston to say that his greatest strength is his ability to take talented veterans and unify them into a winning team. It's not something that allows us to isolate his contributions, but, on the other hand, not every manager can do it.
Not that I'd put him in Cooperstown. It's a good resume but not quite long enough.
Then you answered it, although you apparently answered it the way you thought I would answer it if I had answered it, rather than providing an answer to it.
Andy, as I'm sure you know, Chris Jaffe in Evaluating Baseball's Managers presents many, many metrics that aim at quantifying components of managers' performance. Some are adapted from Phil Birnbaum's work and many others are of Chris's original devising. It's fascinating work, and it advances the conversation many miles beyond mere wins.
This does not quite get at your point about the value of qualitative or interpersonal stuff, but it's not like all current thought about managers stops with the win column.
Didn't the Olerud giveaway happen at Cito's insistence? That's a pretty strong negative to keep in mind, something that hurt the team for years.
And as #73 says, the ability to get an established team to the finish line is important.
I got the feeeling though that Gaston pretty much mailed it in after the Jays started to shed payroll.
As for #71, I initially had that a young player was one slump from being sent out. I can't think of a struggling young player that Gaston stayed with.
Andy, as I'm sure you know, Chris Jaffe in Evaluating Baseball's Managers presents many, many metrics that aim at quantifying components of managers' performance. Some are adapted from Phil Birnbaum's work and many others are of Chris's original devising. It's fascinating work, and it advances the conversation many miles beyond mere wins.
This does not quite get at your point about the value of qualitative or interpersonal stuff, but it's not like all current thought about managers stops with the win column.
I know Chris's book, I have Chris's book, I've read Chris's book, and I liked Chris's book. In fact I'd even say that Chris's book is a model of how to blend all sorts of interesting metrics like Birnbaum's with the sort of narrative style that (yes) considers such qualities as patience and steadiness. It's a work that should appeal both to sabermetricians and to those of us who usually prefer a good argument presented in a fluidly written paragraph form. My initial comment about wins wasn't directed at people like you who've read Chris's book.
And to David: Yes, I would argue for the non-measurable factors that certain managers (like Torre in the case I cited, but he's not the only one) bring to the table, and if I assumed that you blew those factors off, my apologies. I'm now glad to realize that you have an open mind on the subject.
Of course those intangible qualities at some point are likely to be reflected in wins above expectation, and therefore indirectly measurable, but the trick is to recognize those qualities in managers who either are just starting out, or in managers whose poor W-L record with mediocre teams can often disguise their managerial skills.
I guess they could have just DHed him, but Carlos Delgado is a pretty decent replacement - I'm not sure how much they really lost there.
They traded John Olerud and a big pile of cash for Robert Person, who stank like sun-ripened ass for the Jays. While losing Olerud wasn't a great loss, since they did have a good replacement available, it still hurts that they got back absolutely nothing of value for the team in return for a player who had 1300 games of 127 OPS+ play (with good to excellent defense).
Now Shawn Green and Shannon Stewart (see comment about young players) were available so you can argue that the issue is more the use of the best available talent.
Does an Olerud, Delgado, Green, Stewart (with some mix of Merced, Cruz, Nixon) team make the playoffs? No chance. He was a big vote for Carter over Olerud though and that's just not good talent evaluation.
And 1998 Canseco was OK. But they had Olerud. It's not an upgrade. 1999 Their DHs were terrible.
As Tom suggests, if you can lay the Olerud situation on Gaston, it's a pretty big negative.
EDIT- Actually, I see he did have a couple of decent years with the Phils. Of course, that probably doesn't help his standing with Jays fans too much.
Gotcha, that's cool. Just doing some checks and balances :)
Gaston certainly had some influence on it. During the post-batting title years, Gaston was trying to get Olerud to hit for more power, and become more of a pull hitter, which didn't match well with Olerud's line-drive spray swing. I remember articles from back then questioning why Cito was trying to get a batting champ to tinker with his swing.
However, it was ultimately Ash who went through with the trade, in return getting nothing of note.
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