MLB: The pressure is on for most-recently hired mangers

Which newly hired MLB manager has the best chance at sticking around long-term?

One-third of MLB’s 30 teams will be breaking in a new manager in 2020. From teams still in the midst of a long rebuild to those expecting another year of contention, the latest round of MLB’s manager carousel has resulted in quite the shakeup.

Ten new managers is definitely a big deal, although it’s not too outlandish these days. As MLB.com‘s Will Leitch mentioned back in February: only three current managers have been with their respective teams for at least five seasons. Therefore, the Oakland Athletics have the longest-tenured skipper, with Bob Melvin entering his ninth season with the team. The truth is, MLB is far from college football (granted, the latter has had its own share of coaching turnover lately).

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Also, the latest trends in baseball have folks arguing whether MLB managers really matter that much anymore. These days it seems like most on-the-field decisions are based on big data, or tendencies measured from a computer-generated dataset. With so many different advances in technology (like TrackMan, which is soon to be Hawk-Eye), should we really concern ourselves with the guy standing on the top step of each team’s dugout?

Apparently we should, given the average salary for the top-five highest-paid MLB managers has risen over $1 million overall over the last five seasons (according to an annual study done by sportscasting.com).

The average salary of 5 highest-paid managers

• 2014 — $3.450 million
• 2019 — $4.540 million

Heck, that’s a larger increase, in terms of average salary, than MLB players have experienced in that time frame. Since 2014, the average big league salary has jumped by just roughly $670,000 (per a study by Statista last August):

Why MLB Owners Should Be Ashamed

Average MLB salary (2014-19)

• 2014 — $3.690 million
• 2015 — $3.840 million
• 2016 — $4.380 million
• 2017 — $4.450 million
• 2018 — $4.410 million
• 2019 — $4.360 million

Of course, we’re talking about a pool of just 30 managers (and the highest paid ones at that), compared to 882 total players that were rostered by MLB teams on Opening Day last season. It’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison, especially when considering all of those players making the league-minimum, but the point remains… MLB managers are being paid for more than just handing out the daily lineup card