Regular season won’t get better w out some addl. players— Bochy or no Bochy. Post-season? An entirely different matter. And where MLB managers DO make a difference. Esp. those w deft hand w pitchers. Watching Baker let Verlander run the pitch count up to 100 (& more of the same the next game), is it surprising to regularly see sabremetrically dismiss the post-season as ‘a crapshoot’? Post season does seem to have all those human emotional ingredients that today’s trend is to regularly dismiss. As often now it seems as the sabremetric inclined bunch were before. Is that the missing point? If MLB’s goal is to make baseball more entertaining, should mods to game go in direction of its very creators — make it more human? vs. more mods to automate/machine learn? (i.e. challenges to ‘ball - strike (aka remove the umps)? really? when MLB wants to shorten the game?)
What Showalter accomplished with the Orioles is extremely impressive. The Orioles were a perennial 90+ loss team and they lost 90+ games in Showalter's first year. Then they had five consecutive non-losing seasons, had 93 and 96 win seasons, won a division title, won a division series and won 1 out of 2 wild card matchups.
The 96 win division title season was a masterpiece of managing. The regular lineup had just won batter with an OPS above 800. But a number of role players were exceptional. The starting rotation was respectable, but the bullpen was phenomenal.
Showalter's first and last seasons with the Orioles were dreadful. Both times he truly had a pathetic roster. But when given some talent, Showalter was able to produce results above expectation, especially so in 2012 when the Orioles won 93 games when the Pythagorean estimate for the season was 82.
There are so many things that go into whether a team is good that it is pretty hard to tell who is a good manager. Available talent, injuries, a team's budget, and some luck. As Joe says, it is not like football where the guy makes a game plan. He doesn't draw up any plays. In Baseball (and in Soccer) I think it is called a manager for a reason. They have to manage personalities and keep everyone rowing in the same direction. I think some managers are better overall with the teaching aspect, so better with up and coming teams, and others are better at keeping veterans engaged and focused. Some wear out their welcome after awhile, like a fried who is really fun - in small doses, but gets on your last nerve in a bigger one. For some, familiarity breeds contempt. For others, whether they get fired might be more dependent on their relationship with the owner and GM and what the owner's temperament and patience level is to begin with.
The fact the Bochy was never fired (brought up in this thread) is more likely that he was great at his relationships with the GM and owner rather than saying anything about his managing skills with the team itself.
I mean, I guess the manager (as well as the pitching coach) makes decisions on when to remove a pitcher and who to go to in the bullpen, but for any team not winning, 90% of the fans (some after the fact) believe their manager sucks at that. The best way to be considered halfway smart about it is to have a great bullpen to start off with.
They're called managers because back in the day when the name was created, that's what they did - manage all phases of the team, including what is now done by the GM, the traveling secretary, etc....
So here's a question: if the Royals had beaten the Giants in Game 7 of the 2014 WS, which they almost did, is Bochy still a Hall of Famer? I think many (most?) of us would say "no." There's no way that a sub-.500 manager with two rings makes it to Cooperstown. (Oddly enough, if that had happened and 2015 played out as it did, Bochy would have been tied with Ned Yost with two titles apiece. And no, I'm not saying Yost is as good as Bochy.) In light of that, it seems to me that Bochy's Hall of Fame case is pretty fragile. Cito Gaston has two rings and a better overall record. Of course, Bochy managed many more seasons and thus has many more wins (and losses), but are we really sure Bochy was the better manager? Or does he owe his HoF case to the fact that the Padres and Giants never fired him even after terrible seasons and the fact that Alex Gordon did try to score in Game 7 back in '14?
I am a Royals fan and have looked at the play 100 times. He would have been meat. His chances of scoring is basically the chance Brandon Crawford throws the ball away (and Bummgarner was backing up, so he still could have been caught) or the catcher just drops the ball completely. (and has trouble picking it up)
I know those chances are no zero, knowing now that he wouldn't get home if he stayed, but the chances of any of those things happening with the fielders not even having to rush is a lot less during the play than Salvy getting a hit in real time.
As Jirschele said the next spring "If I had sent him I would not be down here in Spring Training answering these what if questions. I would have been gone."
There seem to be different skill sets associated with making a bad team good, and making a good team great, and sustaining greatness.
I wonder if guys like Billy Martin, Buck Showalter and Davey Johnson are very intense, teach the fundamentals well, have excellent attention to detail, and do a good job impressing upon their teams how hard the sport is and how hard they have to work to be excellent at it.
And some managers are better at keeping an even keel, keeping everybody calm, etc. Joe Torre comes to mind. Bruce Bochy probably fits this category.
This is admittedly a bit esoteric but Bob Lemon was an easy going, even keel guy who managed to turn a couple of bad teams good- the early 70s Royals and 1977 White Sox, while making a good team great - 1978 Yankees.
Keep in mind that there are assistant coaches. For the Braves, Brian Snitker is the guy who keeps things calm, defends players in the press & is optimistic even when things aren't going well. When things go wrong, his answer to the press is usually "that's baseball.... and we have another game tomorrow". Ron Washington is the fundamentals guy. The guy with constant infield drills & honing skills. You can see where it can make a difference. It's hard to always draw a straight line, but the players credit him all the time with their defensive improvements. Rick Krantz is the pitching coach & most of the time is pretty invisible. But the bullpens are strong, they've gotten more mileage out of veteran starters than expected & they've had guys like Kyle Wright pull it together. Not to mention Spencer Strider coming out of nowhere. I think some good things must be happening in their AAA affiliate because the reclamation projects & young player development all runs through the minors. In short, you have to be a well oiled machine, starting with the minor leagues all the way up to the major league coaching staff. Otherwise, it's not going to work. So, just hiring a manager is never going to be the answer.
I agree it takes a team of coaches. But I think at the Major League level the biggest contributions the managers make are managing personalities and emotions.
What the great managers of this era (Tito, Sparky, Dusty, Buck ) have in common other than cool nicknames is they are good at managing people. Fans focus on strategic decisions, but it is the ability to get the most of the people that play the game as opposed to the players. Which guy needs daily affirmation, which guy needs a kick in the pants, how do you keep 30 or so guys pulling the rope in the same direction? I think it was Billy Martin of all people who said something to the effect of “ there are eight guys who love you and eight guys who hate you and nine who haven’t made up their minds, your job is to keep them away from the guys who hate you”
Bochy has the ability to manage people and if any of them can pitch, he will be successful.
The only manager I know who could turn around a team immediately, and it usually was only for the first full year (or maybe two) that he managed the team, was Billy Martin. And everyone knows what happened later in his managerial tenures with these teams. Maybe short term success is what the Rangers are hoping for with Bochy.
Read a story yesterday that told what I think is a more remarkable feat by Bochy than winning 3 World Series. Is that he managed over 25 years without getting fired- especially with a losing overall record. I’m surprised he wasn’t let go by the Padres at some time.
I think Warren Spahn’s humorous comment regarding Casey Stengel (noting his time with Boston Braves and later the Mets) contains much wisdom about being an MLB manager: “I played for Casey before and after he was a genius.” When you have Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford it's easy to be a genius. When you have Debs Garms, Johnny Lanning, and Marv Thornberry, not so easy.
I'm not real impressed by the "300 games over .500" argument. That probably has more to do with being hired to manage a team that is already good. I mean, does anybody think the Dodgers would have been mediocre these last 10 years with another manager?
Just a few blog posts back Joe shared Dusty’s managerial history. He usually had to turn a team around and was quite successful doing so. For him the context is different than your theory. Not sure how the others stack up.
Dusty is an interesting data point. He took over a Giants team that was below .500 for the previous couple of years. He immediately won 103 games and the division. But they also added Barry Bonds that year. Then they were below .500 for another 3 years, then they were pretty good for the last 5 or 6 years with Baker, losing the WS his last year there. No idea why they fired him (or he left).
He took over a Chicago Cubs team that had been up and down the previous 5 years - 3 bad, 2 good. The year prior to his arrival they were bad. His first two years they were pretty good (88 and 89 wins), then they slumped to 79 and 66 wins.
Then on to Cincinnati, where he took over a team that had been below .500 every year for multiple years. For the first 2 years he was there, they continued to be under .500, then were excellent for 3 or the next 4 years.
Then he took over a Nationals team that had been pretty good - 98, 86, 96, and 83 wins the previous 4 years, and he won 95 and 97 games with that team.
Finally, he took over a dynasty in Houston (albeit with PR problems) and has continued their excellent play.
His overall record is 303 games over .500. However, it's hard to give him any credit for the dynasty in Houston (he didn't screw it up, at least), where he's 76 games over .500. I would say the Washington team was slightly better when he was there, but he took over a good baseball team. He was 60 games over .500 there. So almost half his "wins over .500" are from teams that were good before he got there.
Of course, you can debate whether the long term rebuilds in SF and Cincinnati are due to the manager or the front office. Which is another reason it is so hard to say how good a manager is (or if he even makes a big difference).
Dusty is very interesting. I’m an Astros fan and have gone through the seven stages of grief watching Dusty manage games during the regular season, but then he suddenly is a genius when the games really count. I think his success with the Astros is due to his experience and how well he fits into the culture of the team. Not only did he come in after the scandal, he came in after the 2019 team pretty much blew the World Series because of their over reliance on using data to make decisions. His ability to balance the information with his instinct has been a key to their recent success. They still are a new school organization, but use the information as a tool for the experienced carpenter to use.
I don’t think all the old school managers pull off the balancing act as well. Buck didn’t read the room very well on that Joe Musgrove shiny ear thing, and Tony LaRussa didn’t seem to care about anything new school.
Joe Espada should be a great manager for the White Sox. I think he will be a much better fit in the clubhouse, and I bet he learned a lot from sitting next to Dusty for three years. At the end of the day, it seems more like getting the right fit with the organization than how old they are. And it helps a lot if you have a great roster and everyone stays healthy.
Well that's why Buck, Davey & Dusty are in that top echelon of managers ever to me. They all did a lot of winning with giant turnarounds pretty consistently. So while I think people undervalue someone like Dave Roberts, he's not on the level of those managers.
I'm very against cycling through managers, the teams that do that are consistent under performers who rarely make the postseason with consistency. The Steelers, look at the Yankees before & after Torre, Walter Alston Dodgers, Casey Stengel Yankees, the Patriots, etc. 80s & early 90s 49ers. Organizations that believe in stability in management thrive, the ones who look at every pretty girl who walk by don't with the exception of the Lakers.
I generally agree with you about cycling through managers. But you could also say that those successful teams stuck with their managers because they were successful (instead of were successful because they stuck with their managers).
The Dodgers have enough talent that they would certainly win regardless, but the level of regular season success (compare it on the same team to Mattingly) or vs the Astros pre Dusty when they even more talent, were cheating and had less success, and they were also definitely a lot healthier shows to me he has gotten a lot more out of regular season talent than plenty of managers put in enviable situations.
That said Davey, Buck, & Dusty are definitely an echelon above in my book
Maybe you could measure the players’ war cumulatively and compare that to the overall record? Although, when the manager puts the players in the right position to succeed, that should be reflected in the players’ war. I wonder if there’s a way to track different players‘ war before, during and after playing for certain managers? But neither of these feel satisfying to me, I suspect this is a very hard thing to quantify.
In any of these managerial firing/hiring situations, I’d love to hear the full truth answers from the decision makers to these two questions:
Why did you fire the previous manager?
Why do you believe the manager you just hired will succeed?
I’d like to think the answers would be specific things like handling a pitching staff or improving fundamentals or handling conflict or whatever. It seems more likely “someone had to take the blame for losing” and “he’s won other places” are what we’d get. Which says a lot about why they’ll be doing the same thing again in a couple years.
Hiring experienced is trait of large corporations. Much easier to defend failure when you can say I brought in Bochy then if you had failed with an unproven candidate. It gets the person doing the hiring at least a second crack at it, go with unproven candidate and you might be out the door with him. Unless Bochy can also pitch, if I was the Rangers GM I’d start thinking about the second crack at it
I don't know enough about the Rangers to really comment on whether this can succeed. I love Terry Francona here in Cleveland, so I am partial to older managers. I also love Dusty Baker, whom I am rooting for in Houston (even if I do not care for Houston).
So I hope Bochy finds success in Texas. He's either getting paid a TON of money, or he's find some of the old fire otherwise I cannot see him taking the job. Maybe this is the start of a run, like Francona's run in Cleveland. We shall see.
One thing I'd love to read is which managers have had the biggest impacts on their club.
Love the movie qoute. Hard-core movie goers love that
Regular season won’t get better w out some addl. players— Bochy or no Bochy. Post-season? An entirely different matter. And where MLB managers DO make a difference. Esp. those w deft hand w pitchers. Watching Baker let Verlander run the pitch count up to 100 (& more of the same the next game), is it surprising to regularly see sabremetrically dismiss the post-season as ‘a crapshoot’? Post season does seem to have all those human emotional ingredients that today’s trend is to regularly dismiss. As often now it seems as the sabremetric inclined bunch were before. Is that the missing point? If MLB’s goal is to make baseball more entertaining, should mods to game go in direction of its very creators — make it more human? vs. more mods to automate/machine learn? (i.e. challenges to ‘ball - strike (aka remove the umps)? really? when MLB wants to shorten the game?)
What Showalter accomplished with the Orioles is extremely impressive. The Orioles were a perennial 90+ loss team and they lost 90+ games in Showalter's first year. Then they had five consecutive non-losing seasons, had 93 and 96 win seasons, won a division title, won a division series and won 1 out of 2 wild card matchups.
The 96 win division title season was a masterpiece of managing. The regular lineup had just won batter with an OPS above 800. But a number of role players were exceptional. The starting rotation was respectable, but the bullpen was phenomenal.
Showalter's first and last seasons with the Orioles were dreadful. Both times he truly had a pathetic roster. But when given some talent, Showalter was able to produce results above expectation, especially so in 2012 when the Orioles won 93 games when the Pythagorean estimate for the season was 82.
There are so many things that go into whether a team is good that it is pretty hard to tell who is a good manager. Available talent, injuries, a team's budget, and some luck. As Joe says, it is not like football where the guy makes a game plan. He doesn't draw up any plays. In Baseball (and in Soccer) I think it is called a manager for a reason. They have to manage personalities and keep everyone rowing in the same direction. I think some managers are better overall with the teaching aspect, so better with up and coming teams, and others are better at keeping veterans engaged and focused. Some wear out their welcome after awhile, like a fried who is really fun - in small doses, but gets on your last nerve in a bigger one. For some, familiarity breeds contempt. For others, whether they get fired might be more dependent on their relationship with the owner and GM and what the owner's temperament and patience level is to begin with.
The fact the Bochy was never fired (brought up in this thread) is more likely that he was great at his relationships with the GM and owner rather than saying anything about his managing skills with the team itself.
I mean, I guess the manager (as well as the pitching coach) makes decisions on when to remove a pitcher and who to go to in the bullpen, but for any team not winning, 90% of the fans (some after the fact) believe their manager sucks at that. The best way to be considered halfway smart about it is to have a great bullpen to start off with.
They're called managers because back in the day when the name was created, that's what they did - manage all phases of the team, including what is now done by the GM, the traveling secretary, etc....
So here's a question: if the Royals had beaten the Giants in Game 7 of the 2014 WS, which they almost did, is Bochy still a Hall of Famer? I think many (most?) of us would say "no." There's no way that a sub-.500 manager with two rings makes it to Cooperstown. (Oddly enough, if that had happened and 2015 played out as it did, Bochy would have been tied with Ned Yost with two titles apiece. And no, I'm not saying Yost is as good as Bochy.) In light of that, it seems to me that Bochy's Hall of Fame case is pretty fragile. Cito Gaston has two rings and a better overall record. Of course, Bochy managed many more seasons and thus has many more wins (and losses), but are we really sure Bochy was the better manager? Or does he owe his HoF case to the fact that the Padres and Giants never fired him even after terrible seasons and the fact that Alex Gordon did try to score in Game 7 back in '14?
Alex Gordon did *not* try to score
I am a Royals fan and have looked at the play 100 times. He would have been meat. His chances of scoring is basically the chance Brandon Crawford throws the ball away (and Bummgarner was backing up, so he still could have been caught) or the catcher just drops the ball completely. (and has trouble picking it up)
I know those chances are no zero, knowing now that he wouldn't get home if he stayed, but the chances of any of those things happening with the fielders not even having to rush is a lot less during the play than Salvy getting a hit in real time.
As Jirschele said the next spring "If I had sent him I would not be down here in Spring Training answering these what if questions. I would have been gone."
There seem to be different skill sets associated with making a bad team good, and making a good team great, and sustaining greatness.
I wonder if guys like Billy Martin, Buck Showalter and Davey Johnson are very intense, teach the fundamentals well, have excellent attention to detail, and do a good job impressing upon their teams how hard the sport is and how hard they have to work to be excellent at it.
And some managers are better at keeping an even keel, keeping everybody calm, etc. Joe Torre comes to mind. Bruce Bochy probably fits this category.
I wonder if the two are mutually exclusive?
How intense was Davey Johnson with the Mets?
This is admittedly a bit esoteric but Bob Lemon was an easy going, even keel guy who managed to turn a couple of bad teams good- the early 70s Royals and 1977 White Sox, while making a good team great - 1978 Yankees.
Keep in mind that there are assistant coaches. For the Braves, Brian Snitker is the guy who keeps things calm, defends players in the press & is optimistic even when things aren't going well. When things go wrong, his answer to the press is usually "that's baseball.... and we have another game tomorrow". Ron Washington is the fundamentals guy. The guy with constant infield drills & honing skills. You can see where it can make a difference. It's hard to always draw a straight line, but the players credit him all the time with their defensive improvements. Rick Krantz is the pitching coach & most of the time is pretty invisible. But the bullpens are strong, they've gotten more mileage out of veteran starters than expected & they've had guys like Kyle Wright pull it together. Not to mention Spencer Strider coming out of nowhere. I think some good things must be happening in their AAA affiliate because the reclamation projects & young player development all runs through the minors. In short, you have to be a well oiled machine, starting with the minor leagues all the way up to the major league coaching staff. Otherwise, it's not going to work. So, just hiring a manager is never going to be the answer.
I agree it takes a team of coaches. But I think at the Major League level the biggest contributions the managers make are managing personalities and emotions.
quote Smiling Jack Ross in his opening argument from “A Few Good Men”: “He’ll have no evidence, mind you, none. But it’s gonna be entertaining.”
A nice bit of writing in that, on first pass it's just throw-away lawyer bluster, with repeated viewings its premonition.
What the great managers of this era (Tito, Sparky, Dusty, Buck ) have in common other than cool nicknames is they are good at managing people. Fans focus on strategic decisions, but it is the ability to get the most of the people that play the game as opposed to the players. Which guy needs daily affirmation, which guy needs a kick in the pants, how do you keep 30 or so guys pulling the rope in the same direction? I think it was Billy Martin of all people who said something to the effect of “ there are eight guys who love you and eight guys who hate you and nine who haven’t made up their minds, your job is to keep them away from the guys who hate you”
Bochy has the ability to manage people and if any of them can pitch, he will be successful.
An important distinction: Bruce Bochy is, from all reports, not an egomaniac, but an easy-going guy who also can maintain discipline.
Tony LaRussa? Egomaniac.
Davey Johnson? I've heard stories, and let's not forget the stories about the 1986 Mets.
Now, can Bochy make that big a difference? Think of Dusty Baker. Maybe.
The only manager I know who could turn around a team immediately, and it usually was only for the first full year (or maybe two) that he managed the team, was Billy Martin. And everyone knows what happened later in his managerial tenures with these teams. Maybe short term success is what the Rangers are hoping for with Bochy.
Read a story yesterday that told what I think is a more remarkable feat by Bochy than winning 3 World Series. Is that he managed over 25 years without getting fired- especially with a losing overall record. I’m surprised he wasn’t let go by the Padres at some time.
I think Warren Spahn’s humorous comment regarding Casey Stengel (noting his time with Boston Braves and later the Mets) contains much wisdom about being an MLB manager: “I played for Casey before and after he was a genius.” When you have Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford it's easy to be a genius. When you have Debs Garms, Johnny Lanning, and Marv Thornberry, not so easy.
I'm not real impressed by the "300 games over .500" argument. That probably has more to do with being hired to manage a team that is already good. I mean, does anybody think the Dodgers would have been mediocre these last 10 years with another manager?
Just a few blog posts back Joe shared Dusty’s managerial history. He usually had to turn a team around and was quite successful doing so. For him the context is different than your theory. Not sure how the others stack up.
Dusty is an interesting data point. He took over a Giants team that was below .500 for the previous couple of years. He immediately won 103 games and the division. But they also added Barry Bonds that year. Then they were below .500 for another 3 years, then they were pretty good for the last 5 or 6 years with Baker, losing the WS his last year there. No idea why they fired him (or he left).
He took over a Chicago Cubs team that had been up and down the previous 5 years - 3 bad, 2 good. The year prior to his arrival they were bad. His first two years they were pretty good (88 and 89 wins), then they slumped to 79 and 66 wins.
Then on to Cincinnati, where he took over a team that had been below .500 every year for multiple years. For the first 2 years he was there, they continued to be under .500, then were excellent for 3 or the next 4 years.
Then he took over a Nationals team that had been pretty good - 98, 86, 96, and 83 wins the previous 4 years, and he won 95 and 97 games with that team.
Finally, he took over a dynasty in Houston (albeit with PR problems) and has continued their excellent play.
His overall record is 303 games over .500. However, it's hard to give him any credit for the dynasty in Houston (he didn't screw it up, at least), where he's 76 games over .500. I would say the Washington team was slightly better when he was there, but he took over a good baseball team. He was 60 games over .500 there. So almost half his "wins over .500" are from teams that were good before he got there.
Of course, you can debate whether the long term rebuilds in SF and Cincinnati are due to the manager or the front office. Which is another reason it is so hard to say how good a manager is (or if he even makes a big difference).
Dusty is very interesting. I’m an Astros fan and have gone through the seven stages of grief watching Dusty manage games during the regular season, but then he suddenly is a genius when the games really count. I think his success with the Astros is due to his experience and how well he fits into the culture of the team. Not only did he come in after the scandal, he came in after the 2019 team pretty much blew the World Series because of their over reliance on using data to make decisions. His ability to balance the information with his instinct has been a key to their recent success. They still are a new school organization, but use the information as a tool for the experienced carpenter to use.
I don’t think all the old school managers pull off the balancing act as well. Buck didn’t read the room very well on that Joe Musgrove shiny ear thing, and Tony LaRussa didn’t seem to care about anything new school.
Joe Espada should be a great manager for the White Sox. I think he will be a much better fit in the clubhouse, and I bet he learned a lot from sitting next to Dusty for three years. At the end of the day, it seems more like getting the right fit with the organization than how old they are. And it helps a lot if you have a great roster and everyone stays healthy.
Well that's why Buck, Davey & Dusty are in that top echelon of managers ever to me. They all did a lot of winning with giant turnarounds pretty consistently. So while I think people undervalue someone like Dave Roberts, he's not on the level of those managers.
I'm very against cycling through managers, the teams that do that are consistent under performers who rarely make the postseason with consistency. The Steelers, look at the Yankees before & after Torre, Walter Alston Dodgers, Casey Stengel Yankees, the Patriots, etc. 80s & early 90s 49ers. Organizations that believe in stability in management thrive, the ones who look at every pretty girl who walk by don't with the exception of the Lakers.
I generally agree with you about cycling through managers. But you could also say that those successful teams stuck with their managers because they were successful (instead of were successful because they stuck with their managers).
The Dodgers have enough talent that they would certainly win regardless, but the level of regular season success (compare it on the same team to Mattingly) or vs the Astros pre Dusty when they even more talent, were cheating and had less success, and they were also definitely a lot healthier shows to me he has gotten a lot more out of regular season talent than plenty of managers put in enviable situations.
That said Davey, Buck, & Dusty are definitely an echelon above in my book
We need a WAR for managers. I have no idea how you’d calculate that. But Weaver’s record seems much more impressive to me than Torre’s.
Maybe you could measure the players’ war cumulatively and compare that to the overall record? Although, when the manager puts the players in the right position to succeed, that should be reflected in the players’ war. I wonder if there’s a way to track different players‘ war before, during and after playing for certain managers? But neither of these feel satisfying to me, I suspect this is a very hard thing to quantify.
In any of these managerial firing/hiring situations, I’d love to hear the full truth answers from the decision makers to these two questions:
Why did you fire the previous manager?
Why do you believe the manager you just hired will succeed?
I’d like to think the answers would be specific things like handling a pitching staff or improving fundamentals or handling conflict or whatever. It seems more likely “someone had to take the blame for losing” and “he’s won other places” are what we’d get. Which says a lot about why they’ll be doing the same thing again in a couple years.
Sometimes they even say as much – The GM thought our team needed a spark.
Hiring experienced is trait of large corporations. Much easier to defend failure when you can say I brought in Bochy then if you had failed with an unproven candidate. It gets the person doing the hiring at least a second crack at it, go with unproven candidate and you might be out the door with him. Unless Bochy can also pitch, if I was the Rangers GM I’d start thinking about the second crack at it
I don't know enough about the Rangers to really comment on whether this can succeed. I love Terry Francona here in Cleveland, so I am partial to older managers. I also love Dusty Baker, whom I am rooting for in Houston (even if I do not care for Houston).
So I hope Bochy finds success in Texas. He's either getting paid a TON of money, or he's find some of the old fire otherwise I cannot see him taking the job. Maybe this is the start of a run, like Francona's run in Cleveland. We shall see.
One thing I'd love to read is which managers have had the biggest impacts on their club.
The manager with the biggest impact is Billy Martin, both by record and with his fists.