Joe Maddon to the Cubs. UPDATE: He’s gone (p 19)

[jim]

I understand everything being said, but like I said before this went down something just doesn't quite sit well. And if it feels kind of wrong, it probably is. I've postulated this before - would the Giants/Cardinals etc... teams with that "class" tag on the organization do this?

[lukethedrifter]

Maybe the Rays get Addison Russell out of the deal.

[Cheddar Tom]

Maddon is a very good mgr....but I haven't seen one justification for why he is allegedly the best in the game.

[obucard]

Maddon is a very good mgr....but I haven't seen one justification for why he is allegedly the best in the game.

There's still a perceived correlation between payroll and wins. Folks are starting to understand the Young Cheap Talent concept (see: the Cardinal Way), but Maddon was winning before most people understood this, so he gets hailed as a genius. It'll likely get worse if he wins with the Cubs (who have a fresh supply of YCT ready to blossom, much like Tampa when he started there) while the Rays (whose supply is running dry) fall apart.

[fanforever]

George Steinbrenner is spinning in his grave

[jim]

I do put some stock in what their peers say about them, and Maddon is considered by his peers to be one of the best in the game. Last summer in Baseball America they gave the results of Best Manager based on stricly peer review - so all the managers in the game. The NL was 1. Bochy 2 Matheny and 3 Gonzalez. The AL was 1. Melvin 2. Scioscia 3. Maddon.

[pioneer98]

Maddon is a very good mgr....but I haven't seen one justification for why he is allegedly the best in the game.

Hes's a very good manager, but he's also a "star" manager. The one article I read touched on this. He has 180,000 twitter followers. He has gone up against the Yankees and Red Sox often over the years (including bean ball wars), which means he's gotton a ton of East Coast media coverage. He has the iconic glasses. Didn't he do a prescription drug ad a few years ago? And does unconventional things and tweets about it. None of these things make him a better manager but make him maybe more interesting or marketable than other good managers. Is he a better manager than Bruce Bochy? Probably no way in heck, but Bochy seems really boring compared to Maddon.

[BW23]

I'm going to get very tired of hearing about Maddon. Very tired.

[jim]

I was picking through the Bill James handbook, and Maddon is often thought of as kind of a poster child for modern tactics. Yet when I look - not so great. It is true that he implements alot of shifts - 2nd only to the Astros - but he got almost nothing out of them. To compare, the Rays implemented the shift 824 times compared to the Cardinals 367. Bill James calculated runs saved due to the shift, and the Rays were +2 where the Cards were a +12. So fewer and more effective shifts.

Platoon splits - he gets credit for playing those yet he was only at a platoon advantage 58% of the time - behind Francona, Gibbons, Girardi, McClendon, Melvin, Black, Bochy, Renteria (OH NOES), Sanberg, Williams. Maybe he didn't have the personell to use do that, but I know thirds was just on here recently saying how great he was with that.

He bunts like a madman, which again I'm not saying is bad but it's not consistent with the new age manager tag he gets.

I think he's a good manager, and pioneer had a good point about him being a "star" manager which important for the organization. But between the white lines - it's going to be Bryant and Baez and Rizzo and Soler and Russell that are going to carry the team, not Maddon.

[go birds]

5y/5m/y + postseason incentives; no opt-out clause