NJ: Managers

Notes and Judgments

A big deal is made over managerial switches. Many teams, to appease angry fans, fire managers halfway through the season. Especially in the National League, it seems, managers are important factors in determining when to pinch hit, when to pull a pitcher, when to argue with an umpire and are important shapers of the locker room environment. But how much influence does a manager actually have? In 2005, five teams changed managers during the middle of the season. Four of those teams saw their records improve, although only one of the new managers, Jerry Narron of Cincinnati, was able to pull off a .500 record. Since 2000, 21 manager changes have been made midway through the season. Using roughly the same crop of players, the managers were generally able to have more success than their predecessor. 16 of the 21 teams improved their records with the new manager, although some managers, like Carlos Tosca of Toronto Dave Miley of Cincinnati, and Tony Pena of Kansas City, were at both the front end and the back end of a managerial switch. Pena, for example, became the Royals manager midway through the 2002 season. The team played slightly better the rest of that year with him at the helm. But in 2005 the Royals fired him during the season and played significantly better without him the rest of the way. On average, teams were winning 39.5 percent of their games when the managerial switch occurred, and won just under 44% of their games with the new manager. That difference equates to about seven games in a 162-game season. On average the teams finished with final records three or four games better than they were on pace for with the old manager. That's not a huge difference, and can be partially attributed to personnel changes in other sectors of the team. But still, it is a difference, although the data suggests any change in face may give the team a small boost, regardless of the manager's actual talent. Two of those 21 new managers were able to play above-.500 ball over the remainder of the season with a team that had been playing under .500.