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| The "genius" |
The fact that La Russa needed a second wild card (the first was in 2006) to get into the post-season this year is just the way things happen in MLB now – just get in, and anything can happen. We’ve all seen that movie a few times, and soon we’ll have another wild card team added in each league. What’s the over/under on when we get the first World Series Champ from behind Door #5? Three years? Four? Two?
A Wild Card team has now won the World Series 5 times, out of 10 appearances, in 17 seasons, which is pretty impressive, in my opinion.
What wasn’t impressive was watching Nelson "Groin Pull" Cruz struggling and failing to snag David Freese’s fly ball to right field in the bottom of the 9th inning in game six. That’s a ball most MLB outfielders catch with little problem, in my opinion, but that’s almost like saying Ron Washington pulled a John McNamara, and should have slipped a healthier guy in right, just as McNamara should’ve subbed for Billy Buckner in ’86.
If Cruz had made that catch, maybe we’d be hearing a bit more about that garbled phone call to the bull pen and resulting screw up, but winning erases many mistakes, just as losing gains you nothing but cold beer and fried chicken jokes.
I don’t want to go into all the reasons why I haven’t liked Tony La Russa for close to 30 years, but I will give you all a few:
Basically, I resented the way La Russa presented himself as this genius who was all-knowing about things baseball, but could never adequately explain to us (apparent) dullards why hitting his pitcher in the 8 hole was so genius? Tony wouldn’t answer some reporter’s questions if they called him on strategy moves, implying that it was too complicated for most folks to understand. The public wasn’t smart enough to grasp his genius – that kind of thing.
At one point during the recent World Series, Tony went to some length to denigrate the "Moneyball" concept of trying to create a winning team. He never touched upon the crux of the concept that Billy Beane used in Oakland, which was finding inefficiencies in the market to form a ball club that could complete with little payroll. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that Tony couldn’t get out of Oakland fast enough when new ownership arrived, and he found out he’d have to manage a team with one of the lowest payrolls in MLB?
Yeah, Tony took the Cardinal job, which was offered in no small part because of his managing 3 AL pennant winners in Oakland. This is the team with the "bruise brothers," you know, with those heroes McGwire and Canseco, the one that could only win one World Series, despite being favored all 3 years. Have you ever wondered why La Russa didn’t bring in Canseco as a coach, after bring Big Mac back? It wasn’t because Jose told folks that Tony knew what he and Mac were doing with those syringes, was it? Does anyone really believe Tony didn’t know about the steroids? Hasn’t Tony more-or-less told us he knows everything, so how could he have not known that?
Tony also gets a large amount of credit for creating the "one inning only for a closer" philosophy, that he began with his use of Dennis Eckersley. Considering how phenomenal Eck was, and the fact that Oakland won 3 pennants, every other team in MLB shortly followed suit. I am not going to argue the merit of using one of your best pitchers in that way, but I will say that there is considerable evidence supporting a radically different way to use that kind of talent. One way that had been in vogue in MLB for many years in different incarnations was bringing your stud relief pitcher in when the game was on the line, pretty much any time after the 6th inning or so, and letting them finish the game. Guys like Lyle, McGraw, Fingers, Gossage, Sutter, and Mike Marshall had some great seasons being used like that. Few managers in recent years have done it that way, though Joe Torre used Rivera early and for multiple innings for many years. Granted, it’s an arguable point, but if it were my team, wasting my stud closer in the bottom of the 9th in a game I am winning by 3 runs seems a poor use of resources. When I am up by a run in the 7th, and the bases are loaded with one out, that’s when I want my best guy on the mound to save the game right then, when it needs saving.
The idea of batting a pitcher 7th or 8th, or wherever (instead of 9th) has been around forever. Its all just so much BS, as enormous Sabermetric studies of game records have shown that batting order has very little to do with winning or losing. Basically, what we have now makes sense for the most part -- you want your best hitters to bat the most times, but I’ll save that topic for another rant.
I will give Tony credit for one thing, and that was getting his old teammate Dave Duncan to be his pitching coach for all these years. I don’t know Duncan’s method of turning mediocre starting pitchers into good ones, but the evidence is undeniable that he’s very, very good at it. I wonder if Duncan will stay in the game? Is he a candidate to be a manager? If he isn’t a jerk like his buddy, I’d give him a shot, wouldn’t you?
There are other things I have heard and read about La Russa, some of them baseball related, and other stuff on his personal life. The latter stuff made him a pretty unlikable guy to me, but I don’t want to smear him on things I am not certain of, or that are not baseball related in any event. He didn’t handle the Hancock drunk driving death well, and Tony had his own bout with a DWI. He had a chance to say and do the right thing at that time, but went into a defensive (and angry) shell whenever his "code" was challenged, so he fought back. Having had a DWI myself I know that it’s huge reach to not think that Tony had a drinking problem, but winning may solve many problems, especially when Budweiser is paying your salary?
I know Tony got his law degree after a few years of study when (I believe) he was in his 40’s. That’s nice, but I could never figure out why he did it, unless he was trying to create further evidence on how "smart" he is? I guess he used it to his advantage with reporters at times, not that I can blame him for a lot of that, but other managers can parry the media and not be smarmy about it.
So, is Tony gone for good?
No freakin’ way! He’ll be on ESPN before you know it, making John Kruk look even dumber than he does now (sorry, that’s wrong, Kruk can’t be made to look any more dumb than he already looks), and reciting the baseball gospel, according to the Genius. I have this awful visage of seeing and hearing La Russa and Rick Sutcliffe on TV at the same time. With Joe Morgan being fired a year ago, I can only imagine Tony and Joe going at it…a couple of ex-second basemen that can tell us every freaking thing we’ll ever need to know about baseball.
So, of course there will be the Hall of Fame for Tony five years from now, assuming he doesn’t come back to the game in a couple of years.
Bill James wrote a great book a few years ago, in which he tried to determine the best managers of all time with a formula that was basically based on how much teams improved (year-to-year) under the helm of a certain manager. I can tell you that the theory/formula works, as most of the guys you’d expect to find near the top are there, though not all of them. It takes into account a guy being handed the 1962 Mets, versus the guy who got to manager the Yankees to five straight World Series Championships. (What? Oh yeah, same guy.) Kidding aside, it’s an excellent and insightful book. I can’t tell you where La Russa would rank in a Bill James baseball history ranking, but he won’t be voted in based on that kind of thing anyway.
La Russa managed 33 years and his teams won a lot of ball games, but for the most part, almost all those Oakland and Cardinal teams were supposed to win a lot of ballgames. I don’t really care if he makes the Hall (he will) or not, I am just very happy that he’s gone.
Still, I really wish Cruz had just caught that ball.
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