Former MLB Players as Managers: What The Past Tells Us
With teams like the Phillies and Mets looking for their next manager, are former MLB players the best candidates? Let’s see what history can tell us!
As with every October, baseball is in the midst of both the playoffs and the MLB managerial vacancy frenzy. Many of the popular candidates are former MLB players looking to remain in the game and ultimately guide a club to a World Series title.
How good were they in their playing days, and can we infer anything about their managerial success from their statistics?
Consider October arguably the most entertaining month of baseball will argue. The MLB playoffs are routinely intriguing, filled with dramatic walk-offs, high-stakes strikeouts, and teams reaching heights they’ve previously struggled to get to before. With so much excitement, it’s relatively easy to forget about baseball’s other thread that spins during the fall, the managerial frenzy.
As playoff baseball takes center stage, the 22 teams that fail to reach the Divisional Series are left to ponder why they failed to reach the postseason. This leads some to make drastic decisions, the most entertaining of which being firing their respective manager. After a team’s ship crashes prior to reaching October, front offices decide to instill a new captain to guide their crew. This leads to a hotly-contested search across baseball, as teams work to hire their top candidate before another franchise does.
As it stands, a total of seven teams are searching for their next manager, following Joe Maddon joining the Los Angeles Angels. This offseason consists of some former managers, such as Joe Girardi and Buck Showalter, as well as candidates new to manning a clubhouse, like Carlos Beltran and Jason Kendall. However, an intriguing similarity amongst many of these candidates is that the majority of them are former Major Leaguers themselves.
That being said, not each candidate had a successful career as a player. In fact, the disparity that exists amongst their achievements is evidently huge when looking at former MLB players as managers. This invites us to question if there’s any relationship between a player’s success on the field and within the dugout, or whether there’s a specific type of player that “fits the mold” of a manager once their playing days are over.
Former MLB Players as Managers: What The Past Tells Us
Perusing through the long history of Major League Baseball, one can easily identify significant trends. For example, compare 2019 league-wide statistics to those from 30 years ago, and you’ll immediately see how prevalent the home run is in today’s game. A similarily striking point can be seen when looking at the history of former MLB players who have earned managerial jobs.
The range of success that managers had in their playing days is quite drastic, as the game has seen some of the sport’s best head a clubhouse as well as those who struggled mightily. For example, Ty Cobb, widely regarded as one of the best hitters of all-time, served as a player/manager of the Detroit Tigers from 1921 to 1926. Bruce Bochy, who has just retired from managing after leading the San Francisco Giants to three World Series in his 13-year tenure, had a career batting average of .239 in nine seasons. So, with such a varying level of on-field success, how did former players who have managed perform, on average?
Looking at data from Baseball-Reference, I decided to dive into these questions. I imposed a few restrictions on my research, the first of which was to only focus on those who have played in the “live-ball era”, or from 1920 on, due to severe changes in the style of play from that period onward. Secondly, I restricted my sample to only those who have accumulated at least 200 at-bats or 50 innings pitched.
This helped eliminate some extremes that would’ve influenced calculations – former Texas Rangers manager Jeff Banister has a career 1.000 AVG, thanks to singling in his lone career at-bat. Lastly, I wanted to focus on those who have managerial positions for a meaningful period of time, so I considered only those who had logged at least 81 games, or half of a current season, at the helm.
From 1920 through 2018, the average career statistics of managers who have played in the Majors, per my filters, are as follows:
Career Statistics – Position Players
- Games Played = 1036
- AVG = 0.250
- HR = 77
- League-Adjusted OPS = 90.9
Career Statistics – Pitchers
- Games Played = 272
- IP = 1523.7
- League-Adjusted ERA = 135
- K = 616
- BB = 486.9
- SV = 11.7
Based on these findings, we can draw a few conclusions. Perhaps the most glaring piece of information is how mediocre these MLB players performed at the plate. A 0.250 AVG is not terrible, but it’s not fantastic either, especially considering that on the whole, this group was about 10% worse in OPS when compared to their contemporaries. On the mound, managers seemed to have faired better, posting an above-average league-adjusted ERA. Notably, the average career length in each group is sufficiently large.
Former MLB Players as Managers: What The Past Tells Us
So, after seeing how these former MLB players performed during their more spry, athletic years, how have they faired after transitioning to the dugout steps?
Using the same sample, I looked at the average games managed and the win-loss percentage of each group. Former position players have managed more, logging around 954 games as managers compared to only 762 games for former pitchers.
That being said, the pitching group has been slightly more successful, with an average win-loss percentage of .486. Alternatively, the position players group has only performed slightly worse, winning 47.9% of their games.
It’s important to note how many more position players have held managerial spots. The hitters’ sample contained 159 players, whereas the pitchers’ sample had only 23. That being said, neither group suffered from a lack of high performance in either category. Position players considered here included the likes of Frank Robinson and Joe Torre, with the pitching group consisting of Walter Johnson and Tommy Lasorda, among others.
With this knowledge, we can now turn our attention to a more interesting question: do any of these on-field statistics relate to managerial performance in a meaningful way?
Former MLB Players as Managers: What The Past Tells Us
With the hope of finding some sort of relationship between on-field and managerial performance, I ran multiple simple linear regression models. While no batting statistics seemed to relate, the pitching data produced some unexpected results.
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The r-squared value for the relationship between win-loss percentage and games played was a slightly significant .178, while the relationship between win-loss percentage and innings pitched was a similar .18. What was interesting, however, is that the were negative relationships, suggesting that longevity on the mound does not bode well for winning as a manager. This is likely a result of a very small sample size, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in this being true just yet.
What can be made of this, then? Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Frankly, there’s a lot of noise in this data – we see a massive span of success in both groups and in both career phases. This is something I hope to revisit in the future with more data or more statistics, or perhaps its something an inspired individual can run with to uncover some interesting conclusions.
As it pertains to the current managerial candidates, a fun exercise is to look to see how those that are former MLB players stack up in terms of on-field statistics. Obviously, Beltran was the best of the bunch, as the potential Hall of Fame outfielder hit 435 home runs while cementing his status as a postseason legend.
However, those with statistics that most closely resemble our sample groups are David Ross, Gabe Kapler, Rod Barajas, Mark Kotsay, and Skip Schumaker. This subgroup seems to fit a mold, as despite not being the best player on their respective teams, each was considered a leading veteran presence in their clubhouse during their lengthy careers.
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Rather than look at how great these former MLB players were on the field, it seems as if teams should focus more so on their understanding of the game and their relationship skills, which are crucial for managers. Even if you’re just an average player, you can enjoy a long career if you’re skilled in those two areas. In fact, these may ultimately be the skills that turn former players into great managers.
Statistics from Baseball-Reference and the Sean Lahman Database.