The McCloskey Awards
Posted: November 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 37 Comments »
Well, I decided to break up the awards today … since this apparently is what you are supposed to do with baseball awards. I mean, seriously, could we in the Baseball Writers Association stretch out these awards any more? OldHossRadbourne on Twitter yesterday announced that he was just told he won the Cy Young in 1884. Well, he did deserve it. He won 59 games that year.
Honest John McCloskey had quite a baseball career. He barnstormed with numerous baseball teams in Old Hoss Radbourn’s wild 1880s, and it is said that he played literally every position, including pitcher and catcher. He founded the Texas league (for this, he’s in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame) and he managed countless teams around the Southwest and managed Army teams during World War I. He was, by the accounts I could find, a successful manager on the minor league level and a Solomon-like sage who, for instance, when faced with the drunken talents of pitcher Bugs Raymond proclaimed wisely that Bugs had to stop drinking … on days he pitched. Bugs did not always follow this wise proclamation — and he lost 25 games in 1908 — but, hey, Honest John gave it his best shot.
Honest John McCloskey also went 190-417 in his five seasons as a manager in Major Leagues. That’s a .313 winning percentage … the worst for any manager with at least 500 games. He lost 98, 101 and 105 his three seasons (1906-08) managing the Cardinals, which is somewhat telling because the Cardinals have not lost 100 games in a season since.*
*This really is kind of incredible: The Cardinals have not lost 95 games in a seasons since 1913, and have not even lost 90 in a seasons since 1978 1990 (reader correction — missed that 1990 season somehow). They don’t always win in St. Louis, but they never really lose — not much baseball suffering in St. Louis. The Kansas City Royals have had more 100-loss seasons this decade than the Cardinals have since 1900.
So, it seems perfect to name our Struggling Manager of the Year Award after John McCloskey … because John McCloskey was clearly a good baseball man. He was, in fact, a baseball pioneer. Heck, they called him “Honest John.” But through a combination of bad luck, bad players, bad choices and drunken pitching performances and so on, Honest John’s teams were dreadful. A manager cannot lose on his own. To win the McCloskey truly takes a team effort.
The AL John McCloskey Award: Trey Hillman, Kansas City.
I feel bad being so obvious with the first McCloskey Award — I really wanted to give it to Dave Trembley because I have spent way too much time pondering the various quirks and whims of Trey Hillman. But, in the end, I could not justify giving it to anyone else. When you have the American League Cy Young Award winner, a fairly dominant closer, a young hitter who bangs 50 doubles and 20 homers, and a second baseman who stuns everyone by posting a 114 OPS+, you probably should not lose 97 games. I’m not saying that’s enough to contend — it’s not, the Royals are a bad baseball team. But you probably should not lose 97 games.
The Royals did the little things terribly. They also did big things terribly. In the end, you can blame or excuse baseball managers for anything you like … this gets at the heart of what it means to be a manager. They don’t play. They don’t draw up plays. There are no chalkboards. There’s no time management, really. There are no meaningful timeouts to be called — baseball, after all, is a game with CONSTANT timeouts. There is no halftime speech. So in baseball, no matter WHAT happens you can say “Nothing is the manager’s fault.” Or you can say, “Everything is the manager’s fault.” And nobody knows for sure.
What we do know for sure about the Royals is this: They were awful as a base running team. They were awful defensively. They manufactured the fewest runs in the American League (according to Bill James’ sensible definition of manufactured runs — where two of the bases are not attributable to hits or walks) and they gave up THE MOST manufactured runs in the American League. They gave Mike Jacobs 101 at-bats against left-handed pitching, which is like setting fire to them. They wildly mistreated the most expensive pitcher in Royals history, Gil Meche, and predictably he wound up on the DL. Their bullpen was tragic — 5.02 ERA despite Joakim Soria — and the Royals actually went into the year thinking the bullpen was a team strength. No, it just wasn’t a great year.
How much of that is the manager’s fault … everyone decides that on their own. The Royals decided that Trey Hillman did the absolute best he could with what he was given and brought him and most of his staff back. Maybe they are right.
The NL John McCloskey Award: Manny Acta, Washington.
He didn’t survive the season — and he’s so well thought of in baseball circles that he has already been hired by the Cleveland Indians to be manager. But for more than a half season, Manny Acta had the Nationals playing more or less like the expansion Mets. I mean, they were 26-61 — they were playing .299 baseball.
Now, we’re back to the premise: How much of a difference can a manager make anyway? Well, you know what? I’m looking over this roster and though this will sound ludicrous, I just don’t think the Nationals are THAT bad. There is some actual talent on that Washington team. Ryan Zimmerman is a major stud, Adam Dunn can swat for my team anytime (though, I admit, yes, I’d like him as a DH), Nick Johnson* — who got 400-plus at-bats with the Nationals — was an on-base-machine monster, Josh Willingham had a good year, and there are some young pitchers there I like including Jordan Zimmerman. John Lannan’s not bad either. I’m probably insane, but I’m getting a kind of Tampa Bay vibe from the Nationals, especially if Stephen Strasburg comes in and lights things up. We’ll see how it looks in the spring.
*You know how there are certain things in life you feel like you should have known but somehow didn’t. I don’t think I knew that Nick Johnson is the nephew of Larry Bowa. How could I have missed that?
But to the point: Yes, the Nationals were a bad baseball team, but they should have been just that … a bad baseball team, not a team on pace to be legendarily bad. Jim Riggleman came in, and the team played a lot better, and that’s not exactly a glowing endorsement. Like I say, I’ve heard nothing but great things about the kind of guy and the kind of baseball man Manny Acta is … and there’s no doubt that things were dysfunctional in Washington. Still. That was a bad year.
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Actually, the Cards lost 92 in 1990, but they had three managers last year, including some Torre guy, who we know is no good.
Circle me Joe Wapner!
Nick Johnson ended the year with Florida, although he did play fairly well in DC.
Take it from a Phils fan, the Nationals can hit, the problem is they have zero pitchers. I swear if they had five league average starters and some ok journeymen relievers they would have been close to 500. every phils-nats was 9-6 or something like that bc they could hit and they couldnt pitch.
Acta treated the players like adults, and you know that never works.
I’ve always thought that Nick Johnson has been woefully underrated as a player (look at that OBP!!), and if he had gotten his cuts in NY instead of being pushed to the side in favor of Jason Giambi, he could have been a perrenial All Star.
It’s a shame he’s been injured in his career as much as he’s been.
Also as a Phillies fan, i went to a game in DC this year…..
I caught the second game of a doubleheader on a day in which Washington lost both games — it ended prematurely due to rain. The following day, honest to god, they lost a game in which the person covering first base (the 2nd baseman actually rotating on a bunt) moved out of the way of an accurately thrown ball. Funniest radio call i’ve ever heard.
What was funnier about that play, if I’m thinking of the same one, was Anderson Hernandez’s explanation – he said he lost the ball in the crowd…as if there is ever a crowd at a ballgame here in DC.
What does it say about the talent pool that a guy can get fired midseason because his team is playing .299 ball, and he gets hired by another team for the following season? It’s a tough job, and there aren’t a lot of good candidates out there.
On a similar note Todd Haley is head coach of the KC Chiefs.
“could we in the Baseball Writers Association stretch out these awards any more?”
It makes no sense to me at all that all the BBWAA awards are not grouped together and handed out in one primetime awards ceremony presented on MLB Network.
Poll note – I just finally voted in the polls that have been up for weeks, and it’s really disturbing that 48 brilliant readers voted for Ayn Rand as best American writer. Not only is her writing putrid, but if she’s an “American writer”, then so is Nabakov, and I don’t see him anywhere on the list!
I find it far more disturbing that Cormac McCarthy was left off that list.
The Nats hired Davey Johnson yesterday as a “senior adviser” – so maybe he’ll be back in the dugout before too long.
Oh, and let’s hear it for Louisa May Alcott, with -1% of the vote! Round of applause!
@Josh: totally agree. I don’t think I’d vote for him but McCarthy deserves to be on that list. C’mon Joe, we need at least one somewhat contemporary author on there.
“Oh, and let’s hear it for Louisa May Alcott, with -1% of the vote! Round of applause!”
There’s some funny math going on with these things. Like how does Elton John have 0% with 17 votes, but Aretha Franklin has 2% with 15?
No love(hate?) for Jerry Manuel? I know, I know: the injuries. Still, even when everyone was healthy they were missing bases, throwing the ball away on dumb plays, not sliding, and dropping game-ending pop fly’s allowing the other team to score 2 game-winning runs. Manuel thinks the only reason guys get on base is so they can be bunted over to 2nd.
And, perhaps most damning – in September, with the Mets way out of it, he was giving at-bats to the likes of Brian Schneider and Fernando Tatis while young prospects like Nick Evans and Josh Thole were sitting on the bench. September was the time the Mets should have played the young guys as much as possible, to see what they have for next year. But hey, at least they finally won their last game of the season!
Ayn Rand wouldn’t know good writing if it peed on her foot.
What, no love for Moose Stubing, who at 0-8 managed the most games with a .00o career winning percentage? A man who could only dream of Honest John McCloskey’s .313 mark? If there was ever a man with a name that begged to have an award named after him, it was Moose Stubing. Honest.
On the trophy is an engraved quote: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop drinking!”
My very first MLB baseball game was in St. Louis in July 1978 (I was 16) and I can still remember the newspapers talking about how bad a season the Cards were having. It was like it had never happened before, they were all shocked. As to the crappiness in DC, all the fans here were hoping that Manny would get canned much earlier than he did. It was pretty obvious, Trey Hillman obvious, that he was out of his depth.
ah jus LUUUUVVVVVs you joe,
but,
ah do bleeve you made a miscalculation in your selection of NL mis-manager of the year. I understand that manny acta had the worst W/L record.
however, just as the pitcher with the best W/L wasn’t exactly the best AL pitcher, the manager with the worst W/L wasn’t the worst NL manager.
that dis-honor belongs to cecil cooper, the ex-astros mis-manager, who almost immediately earned such disrespect from his entire club, that when shawn chacon, uh, was so unhappy with coop that shawn lost his temper and his job, the most public astros’ only comments were that shawn was a good teammate.
and it went downhill from there (whereas the nats couldn’t possibly have slid any farther down than where they started when poor ol manny took over.)
the astros won what games they won in SPITE of cooper.
and you will notice that this offseason, there were more than a few teams who wanted manny acta to be manager and NO teams who even talked to cooper – and these guys were both first time managers, too.
It seems like anyone with any literary proclivities should boycott the vote if Ayn Rand is still on there and Saul Bellow is not. They are both emigres to America, so on some level they should both be disqualified from the vote. But if you are to have one at least have the other. Bellow emigrated to Chicago from Canada when he was 9. Cmon, emigrated from Canada. That’s about as close to American as one can get. And honestly he is head and shoulders above everyone on this list except maybe Fitzgerald, Melville, and Ellison (if only he had written more than one novel).
So, if you are indeed a brilliant reader I say boycott this vote until Bellow gets put on there.
I forgot to mention another reason Jerry Manuel should have won the “award” – preseason expectations. The Manager of the Year Award almost always goes to someone whose team over-performs their preseason expectations (why Joe Girardi won the award for managing a 78 win Marlins team but will never win it for managing a 103 win Yankee team), so shouldn’t you factor that into the McCloskey Award? NOBODY expected the Nationals to finish any better than 5th this year – maybe they should have been better than they were, but that’s not saying much. On the other hand, the Mets were picked in some quarters to win the World Series (including your employer Sports Illustrated) and finished with 72 wins. That’s some epic under-performance.
I’m sorry Joe, but you did as bad a job with this “award” as the BBWAA normally does
Uh, folks, you are forgetting someone, and after suffering through 162 games of it, I’m not going to let it just fade away: there should be a little dis-love for the formerly formidable Lou Piniella, too.
The Cubs had even higher pre-season expectations than the Mets, and Lou didn’t have to suffer through NEARLY the amount of major injuries than Manuel had to deal with.
They say that the opposite of love is not hate, but disinterest. Lou put up one of the most uninvolved, disinterested, bored-looking seasons in managerial history in 2009, yet he gets no love in the McCloskey’s?!
The only time he showed the slightest bit of engagement was when he was pouring gasoline on the oil-fire that is Milton Bradley.
Strasburg hurt his knee today. Just say’n.
Yeah, the Nats were awful this year, but Acta deserves another chance with another organization for us to really judge what he can do. Zimmerman, Lannan, and Dunn are players, but a team built around those 3 will always lose a ton. Washington was arguably the worst team up the middle this year in the NL, and it showed in the record, so give Acta a break.
Not sure why brilliant writer Joe feels bad about awarding the inaugural McCloskey award to Trey Hillman. I mean seriously, talk about your obvious choice!
Much like how we hometown fans can take pride in the Cy Young award going to Zack, and deservedly so, so must we embrace the fact that in the roster of Major League managers, there are not many contenders who can put up not just the stats of Trey, but combine that with both arrogance and condescension. Trust. The. Process!
Jim Leyland could be a winner here. First, he had a terrible bottom of the order – Gerald Laird and Adam Everett. Their OPS+ for the year were 64 and 59 respectively. That’s fine in and of itself. The problem is the 2nd best power hitter on the Tigers (Curtis Granderson, 30 HR) was batting behind them since he was the leadoff hitter. Granderson had a .327 OBP with 30HR and 141 strikeouts. Why was he leading off again? He was your 2nd best power hitter and had poor on base skills. He should have been batting behind Magglio and Miguel Cabrera (the two highest OBP guys on the team). But he continually batted 1st all year long despite the fact that the Tigers weren’t really a power-hitting team. Magglio, meanwhile, had no power at all (9 HRs), but he was run out there in the 3rd spot in the order for much of the season. He should have been batting in front of Cabrera and Granderson because his .376 OBP was 2nd best on the team. Also, Brandon Inge hit 21 HR in the 1st half, but then was putrid in the 2nd half (.186/.260/.281) in 292 PA. This didn’t stop Leyland from running him out there every game. The only thing Leyland did was move him down to 7th in the batting order. That meant the 2nd half OPS+ values for the 7-8-9 hitters in the Tigers order were 45, 48 and 43, respectively. It wouldn’t be as huge a problem if these guys weren’t also the table-setters for Granderson. Did I mention that Granderson had a .327 OBP and 30 HR and was batting leadoff? Combined with the poor performances of the Tigers mid-season pickups (Aubrey Huff and Jarron Washburn) is it any surprise they lost the division?
Nationals season ticket holder here. Manny Acta was terrible. He was severely hamstrung by the EPIC FAIL of Jim Bowden’s reign of error, but even that can’t explain the awfulness of the Nats in the first half. The Nats aren’t that bad, and are going to be an exciting team to watch, probably in 2011, once they clear out the rest of the Bowden terribleness.
Joe, your Manny Acta selection is embarrassing. Acta is definitely in the top half of baseball managers, and as a Mets fan I was praying that Omar would fire Manuel and jump on Acta. You really need to take a closer look at Acta himself rather than just using the Nats’ record as a crutch. This was a bad team that everyone knew was going to be bad.
For what it’s worth, my finalists for this award would be:
[1] Jerry Manuel, NYN
[2] Jerry Manuel, NYN
[3] Cecil Cooper, HOU
Yeah, Jerry did that little with that much.
Onthemark is on the mark about Hillman combining arrogance and condescension. It is amazing to listen to him cockily explain his various strange moves. He always has some dumb explanation, yet appears confident that he is exactly right. He also does not hardly move his lips when the talks. Looks very weird when he has his huge mustache.
Why would Moore interview him and decide that’s the guy to be my manager?
Normally, I think managers make little difference. Hillman might be an exception, but even if he isn’t, hehas lost the town and needs to be replaced. I always thought a smart GM would recognize when the Royals were about to be good (or at least better), and make George Brett manager. It would be a great story and I think it is inevitable that he someday manages the Royals.
There is no way that Jerry Manuel should be considered. The Mets were hurt by injuries all season long, so how is that his fault by poorly managing the team?
Yes, Jim Leyland made some bad choices, but the Tigers were in first place for almost the entire season.
I completely agree with Joe’s decisions. It’s hard to have been a worse manager than Hillman.
Another Nats ST holder here. Manny was bad. I like him a lot, and I think he will be good with a more veteran team, but his motto of “preach and teach” fell on deaf ears and he needed to do something drastic rather than expect them to listen. The first year, he benched people for not hustling. By the end, no one could do any wrong. That was a problem.
Trust me, Bowden did him no favors by putting 5-6 left fielders/DHs in a NL lineup, fielding a defense up the middle that was atrocious at its best, and having 5-8 #5 starters in the rotation/bullpen. But Riggleman at least got their attention and they played better.
I like what Rizzo has started, and I agree, they might be OK in a couple of years.
Good grief–no consideration for Bruce Bochy? Sure, the team finished over .500, but look at the pitching staff he was given. I won’t even begin to tally his strange behaviors–check any Giants forum.
#29:> The problem is the 2nd best power hitter on the Tigers (Curtis Granderson, 30 HR) was batting behind them since he was the leadoff hitter. Granderson had a .327 OBP with 30HR and 141 strikeouts. Why was he leading off again?
I agree! I mean … wait, I thought you were talking about Grady Sizemore.
The better question is why Leyland let Granderson bat against a left-handed pitcher.
I would give the NL award to Jerry Manuel, who took a team that was supposed to be at least respectable and made them god-awful to watch. I think Nyjer Morgan turned the Nats around more than Riggleman.