Yesterday I got on my Davey stinks horse again and got to listen to people give him a lot of excuses. Look here's what I see
2018 : Handed a team fresh off 95 & 97 win seasons won 82 games
2019 : After a terrible start, guided team to 93 wins and a playoff run that ended in a title.
2020 : with basically same team minus one impt pitcher and hitter went 26-34, a 70-92 win pace
2021 : Sort of the same as 2020 bc that pitcher got hurt had the team at 47-55 (75 win pace), that led to a sell-off and a much worse team that he's helmed to an 8-21 record since the big deals (45 win pace)
I see underperform, overperform in playoffs, underperform, underperform p1, underperform p2.
Now YOU can take that and some how come away with in 2018 2020 and both parts of 2021 it was just the fault of bad rosters and bad luck and the REAL Davey was the 2019 Davey. OR you can be logical and say maybe 2019 was the outlier and EVERY OTHER MANAGING THING HE HAS EVER DONE is the truth.
I don't see why this is so hard.
I respect that he won the series and I've said that if you want to keep him around in the lean years bc why not? I guess that's ok. Especially if when you do replace him it's with a veteran manager who won't need some lean years to get his feet wet. I also fully acknowledge that it's hard to figure what a manager is worth and it's probably not more than a handful of games either way.
But still LOOK AT THE ABOVE! I can't be the crazy one here. Like the team now is bad. It might be the worst roster in the league but also the Orioles, the second worst team, are still probably going to win 50 plus and the Nats are playing worse than that. Sure it's a month but again they had Schawber and Scherzer and Turner and Hudson and Ross and Harrison and Gomes and were still heading to "maybe 3rd" territory.
When cold soulless analysis runs into fandom is where this job gets tough* and this is one point where it has happened. Davey should go. Maybe not now but now would be fine! (well after the season - this isn't a midseason necessity) The facts are pretty clear. Could I be proven wrong? Yes I get things wrong from time to time. But I'd be surprised.
*note - this is not a job, nor is it tough.
24 comments:
I know Davey has his backers, but I'm not one of them. I favored keeping him around after 2020 because that season just doesn't count in my mind. I don't really see any point in letting him go after this season, though, unless there is someone specific in mind to replace him. He's not the problem right now, and any new manager will be saddled with the same batches of issues that the team currently faces.
The record as you lay it out speaks for itself. He's not going to win Manager of the Year accolades in 2021.
His post-game press conferences are tiring. Most post game conferences are boring (by any managers), but his are particularly bad. Protect the players, milquetoast commentary (nothing salty), "we'll get 'em tomorrow". Its an entertainment industry that we pay for --- I want to be entertained.
DM's platonic pronouncements are poor, even for a sport which has made pithy aphorisms into an art form ("Bumpy roads lead to beautiful places").
He doesn't seem to be particularly good at knowing when pull a pitcher or which reliever to choose. There are times when he watches the ship go down.
On the positive side, he seems to be well-liked in the clubhouse. Seems important, but its hard to know about this.
For my taste, I want a manager with panache and character. My favorite DM moment was when he got ejected for protesting Trea Turner's out-of-baseline run in the WS. THAT was entertaining.
I agree that Davey is not a great manager. I think whatever he did in 2019 was more about keeping the team together through the extended bad start. I think he has no feel for bullpen management and leaves starting pitchers in too long. Not a great in-game manager either. Have him stick around for the rebuild then please get someone who knows what they're doing.
At this point, don’t you want to lose as many games as possible? Can’t make the playoffs, but you can improve your position on every round of the 2022 draft. Stick with Davey
The other argument for Davey is that he helped win the World Series. That was the whole point of moving on from Dusty. Playoffs weren’t good enough anymore. Lerners took a huge gamble in replacing Dusty with Davey and it paid off.
Lastly, with any of these analyses, is there any manager out there who would be willing to come to the Nats who you know is hands down better than Davey? If not, especially with the carousel of mangers that was pre-Davey, why switch? I don’t see a manager change fixing this team. The problems run deeper
Oh, boy, Harper. Now look at what you've started.
The thing I wonder about is Rizzo's current frame of mind. Beyond Martinez's abysmal record this year is this: The rest of the league has come back down to the point it's very possible a NL East team earns a wild card berth this year. Imagine that.
Given that, was the sell-off premature? Should Rizzo have fired Martinez and hired some firebrand manager to whip the team to the finish line? And if he did that and fell short, what other opportunities would be available to restock the farm in one fell swoop? (Then again, how good, really, are those prospects?)
And @Nattydread? I'd love to see a serpent-tongued manager. But I don't think baseball (especially the Nats' organization) today would allow a Casey Stengel, Billy Martin, Earl Weaver or Dick Williams to sit in front of cameras and microphones and say what he really thought.
I've never liked Davey, and there was clearly a reason he constantly made the short list for managing other teams but could never land the job. His name was tied to probably half a dozen teams before the Nats signed him.
Davey is a perfect bench coach. He's the player's coach who can act as an intermediary between the big old boss Manager and what's going on in the clubhouse. That's why everyone loves him. But as any person with a real job will tell you (yes I'm saying playing/coaching a sport isn't a real job, sue me), being likable isn't even a prerequisite for being a good manager. It's a plus, but you'd never see that in a job description on LinkedIn. Managers make tough choices, managers get the most out of their employees, managers identify weak spots with their teams and make adjustments to fill them. Davey has never shown an aptitude for any of those. He just keeps the clubhouse happy, which isn't the main part of the job
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But can Dr Emu save the marriage between Dave Martinez and Nats fans?
Dr. Emu has his work cut out for him with the Nats :-)
Forget DM -- can Dr Emu get Scherzer or Turner back?!?
G Cracka X makes a very strong point -- If you're going to fire Davey, you're going to have to find someone better than him first. And the only one of all the managers we've had that's better than him has been Dusty and maybe the shell of Davey Johnson.
If you must choose between the Dodgers Davy and the Nats Davy, who do you take? I take our Davy.
Sure, our Davy is a below average game manager, but he is probably average or better in the locker room which might make average. An average manager is what, one or two games better than a great and expensive one?
Who do you pay double to mana
Avg manager is two games worse.
Who are your top three replacements?
Comments about entertainment and presentation aside, I'd agree that the manager is not the Nats biggest problem now. Keep Davy --- I don't watch manager after game sessions anyway.
Moreover, I'd venture that without Davy there would be no World Series rings. The veteran team mostly knew how to do their jobs and, once things got back on track, did them. When things hit bottom, Davey undoubtedly held things together in the clubhouse and kept player focus.
In hind site, the "Let's go one and oh" mantra is great when the team actually have the chops to get it done. It becomes meaningless with bad teams that routinely lose eight of ten games.
I am going to disagree with you here Harper. I usually don't do that.
2018-I seem to remember you writing a post about how Davey never had a chance because of the pitching staff he was dealt (a problem solved in mid 2019) I can't seem to find it though...
2019- He gets a healthy team in @ mid-season and finishes strong. I LOVED the way he used his 5 man staff in post season.
2020- No Rendon and Kieboom isn't ready. No Strass and Feddie etc. Corbin morphs into badGio. Kendrick gone.
2021- Who thought Schwarber was a LEADOFF MAN??? I certainly didn't. The team looked like a winner by the end of June. Then Schwab got hurt. Castro was gone. Corbin was still badGio Robles is still wtf??? and the players are not what rode into 2019 post season.
I know he leaves pitchers in too long and it has driven me nuts since he kept Hellickson in 3rd time around and watched it blow up. He also is using the relievers ONLY ONE inning too much. 9 pitches and they are done???
I don't think he is a bad manager. He isn't a great one either...
@ G Cracka X 8:29
At this point, it's just about keeping pace with the Marlins in the L column. Seems basically impossible for the Nats to climb above 5th pick; i.e. if the current #4 team, the Rangers, kept pace and went 9-16, the Nats would have to finish 1-24 just to "catch up" and tie them. (Of course, you have to make sure you don't fall asleep at the switch and start winning enough games that the Twins/Royals/Rockies/Cubs catch you.)
Maybe a true (and surprising!) win-win trade for the Cards and Nats?
https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEHFjO010Z3kl0AjqLzjFuUoqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow--KVCzCeha0DMJe66QY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
I don't think he's a bad manager, but most of his upsides come in the people department. He seems like a guy that will defend his guys until they do something that good people can't condone. He's good to the fans too.
In the lean year(s?) to come, I'd rather have a good guy at the helm, hopefully pushing these kids to become better ballplayers and men. When the roster is replenished, that's when we can talk about wins and even who might be his replacement.
Nats looking for a senior R&D staffer:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/job-posting-washington-nationals-senior-analyst-baseball-research-development/
That's a fun job to dream on, but everything I hear about the industry means it would be 25% more hours and at most 50% of the pay of a generic for-profit data science job.
But it would be pretty cool place to work for a few years if you were right out of school or something.
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I'm a data scientist myself and interviewed for a Reds position when coming out of grad school, but then I learned that salary wouldn't even cover cost of living in Cincinnati, which is...not that expensive. It's amazing how little you can pay people to do a job just because it's in sports.
@CP
Yeah, it's wild.
Lots of jobs offer considerable status benefits to partially balance out reduced pay. But while sports are cool, we're not talking about public service here, or even a struggling industry where they can claim in good faith that the money just isn't there. These teams are massively profitable private businesses.
It would be like if Disney paid $70k a year to their data scientists and limited their pool to only folks who really really love their movies. (And also pretty much have family money and/or are young and childless.)
I just don't get it. Scouts and coaches, minor league players. Screwing them over is evil, but looking at it from a psychopath's point of view, I can see the logic. Where are they going to go?
But not paying prevailing wages to skilled white collar labor just doesn't make any strategic sense. Do they think that "loving baseball enough" is the most important qualification?
Folks with these skillsets can work anywhere.
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