Bell has one winning season!
By Rob Neyer
ESPN Insider
According to reports, the Kansas City Royals strongly considered four men for the recently opened position as manager of the worst team in the major leagues. Having employed five straight managers with no previous experience as major-league managers, the Royals decided that this time their manager would be experienced.
So, before hiring Buddy Bell, they considered four candidates: Bell (six seasons as a major-league manager), Jerry Manuel (six), Terry Collins (six) and Gene Lamont (eight). Now, I would argue that a rebuilding team should at least consider trying to find the next Earl Weaver. The next Sparky Anderson. The next Buck Showalter.
Those guys are hard to spot, though (or so the thinking goes, which I suppose is why teams rarely bother trying). So let's look at just those four. All of them might be considered retreads, of course, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. I'm going to do something you don't often see: I'm going to consider each candidate's minor-league record along with the major-league record. I've heard the argument for not considering what happens in the minors: the manager is stuck with whatever talent the organization gives him. But isn't that essentially true in the majors, too? The manager's job is to get the most of the talent that's available, and that's true in both the minors and the majors.
Here, then, are the professional managerial records for this quartet of candidates, with the last column representing the number of winning seasons for each candidate. Look really close and see if you can find a difference between them.
Years Games Win Pct. .500+
Bell 6 807 .428 1
Manuel 8 1165 .525 6
Lamont 15 2251 .496 8
Collins 17 2437 .520 13
Notice anything?
OK, so the Royals weren't really going to hire Jerry Manuel; they wanted a tough guy who can get the lollygaggers to stop their lollygagging, and Manuel's heroes include Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King (one suspects Manuel was included mostly to satisfy MLB's directive regarding minority candidates).
But what about Gene Lamont and Terry Collins? Both have a great deal more experience than Bell as professional managers, and both have led their teams to a great deal more success than Bell. What exactly would lead a franchise to hire the candidate with the least experience and success?
Incompetence, that's what. When explaining the hiring of Buddy Bell, Royals general manager Allard Baird said, "We're very excited about this. If you look at his career – 18 years in the big leagues – he's a teacher, a communicator." Baird also raved about Bell's "presence," which must have come across during the interview process. These were, of course, the same sorts of things that Baird said upon hiring Tony Pena three years ago. More to the point, these sorts of things don't really have any ties to the sort of objective reality that some of us have come to prefer.
Is Bell really a teacher? A few of his young players in Detroit did develop, but he certainly didn't build a great reputation as a teacher. Is Bell really a communicator? He lost control of his teams in both Detroit and Colorado, which led to his firing before he'd completed three seasons with either club. Does he really have that indefinable something that we might describe as "presence"? I have absolutely no doubt that he does. It's "presence" that gets people like Buddy Bell hired for job after job, even after they've demonstrated their inability to perform (Praise be Presence, and long live the man-to-man Interview).
In Allard Baird's heart of hearts he's a scout, and this time he ignored all the objective evidence and went scouting for a manager. Do you know how often scouts fail? If not, take a look at the list of first-round draft picks from some season (any season) and get back to me.
In truth, though, it probably matters very little who's managing the Royals. The franchise's general manager blows virtually any decision that involves more than a million dollars. The franchise's hands-on president is 1) the owner's son and 2) oh, did I mention he's the owner's son? If you were trying to build the perfectly dysfunctional sports franchise, you'd have a hard time topping this one: incompetent ownership and management (complete with nepotism), tiny market and old (if still functional) ballpark.
This season marks my 30th as a fan of the Kansas City Royals, and columns like this one are painful for me (which is why I rarely write them). It's been a pretty good run, and I'm grateful for each of those 30 seasons (yes, even this one).
But it's been a dozen years since I lived within easy driving distance of Royals Stadium, and perhaps the distance allows me the perspective to write the following: Maybe it's time to give up. Maybe it's time to admit that Kansas City simply isn't a major-league city and can no longer support a poor, poorly managed franchise. Maybe there's not room for the NFL, NASCAR and major league baseball in the same medium-sized Midwestern city.
The Royals have become a laughingstock, and maybe it's time to find them a new home, where the laughs might someday be outnumbered by the cheers.
Senior writer Rob Neyer writes for Insider two or three times per week during the season. To offer criticism, praise or anything in between, send an e-mail to rob.neyer@dig.com.
By Rob Neyer
ESPN Insider
According to reports, the Kansas City Royals strongly considered four men for the recently opened position as manager of the worst team in the major leagues. Having employed five straight managers with no previous experience as major-league managers, the Royals decided that this time their manager would be experienced.
So, before hiring Buddy Bell, they considered four candidates: Bell (six seasons as a major-league manager), Jerry Manuel (six), Terry Collins (six) and Gene Lamont (eight). Now, I would argue that a rebuilding team should at least consider trying to find the next Earl Weaver. The next Sparky Anderson. The next Buck Showalter.
Those guys are hard to spot, though (or so the thinking goes, which I suppose is why teams rarely bother trying). So let's look at just those four. All of them might be considered retreads, of course, but that doesn't mean they're all the same. I'm going to do something you don't often see: I'm going to consider each candidate's minor-league record along with the major-league record. I've heard the argument for not considering what happens in the minors: the manager is stuck with whatever talent the organization gives him. But isn't that essentially true in the majors, too? The manager's job is to get the most of the talent that's available, and that's true in both the minors and the majors.
Here, then, are the professional managerial records for this quartet of candidates, with the last column representing the number of winning seasons for each candidate. Look really close and see if you can find a difference between them.
Years Games Win Pct. .500+
Bell 6 807 .428 1
Manuel 8 1165 .525 6
Lamont 15 2251 .496 8
Collins 17 2437 .520 13
Notice anything?
OK, so the Royals weren't really going to hire Jerry Manuel; they wanted a tough guy who can get the lollygaggers to stop their lollygagging, and Manuel's heroes include Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King (one suspects Manuel was included mostly to satisfy MLB's directive regarding minority candidates).
But what about Gene Lamont and Terry Collins? Both have a great deal more experience than Bell as professional managers, and both have led their teams to a great deal more success than Bell. What exactly would lead a franchise to hire the candidate with the least experience and success?
Incompetence, that's what. When explaining the hiring of Buddy Bell, Royals general manager Allard Baird said, "We're very excited about this. If you look at his career – 18 years in the big leagues – he's a teacher, a communicator." Baird also raved about Bell's "presence," which must have come across during the interview process. These were, of course, the same sorts of things that Baird said upon hiring Tony Pena three years ago. More to the point, these sorts of things don't really have any ties to the sort of objective reality that some of us have come to prefer.
Is Bell really a teacher? A few of his young players in Detroit did develop, but he certainly didn't build a great reputation as a teacher. Is Bell really a communicator? He lost control of his teams in both Detroit and Colorado, which led to his firing before he'd completed three seasons with either club. Does he really have that indefinable something that we might describe as "presence"? I have absolutely no doubt that he does. It's "presence" that gets people like Buddy Bell hired for job after job, even after they've demonstrated their inability to perform (Praise be Presence, and long live the man-to-man Interview).
In Allard Baird's heart of hearts he's a scout, and this time he ignored all the objective evidence and went scouting for a manager. Do you know how often scouts fail? If not, take a look at the list of first-round draft picks from some season (any season) and get back to me.
In truth, though, it probably matters very little who's managing the Royals. The franchise's general manager blows virtually any decision that involves more than a million dollars. The franchise's hands-on president is 1) the owner's son and 2) oh, did I mention he's the owner's son? If you were trying to build the perfectly dysfunctional sports franchise, you'd have a hard time topping this one: incompetent ownership and management (complete with nepotism), tiny market and old (if still functional) ballpark.
This season marks my 30th as a fan of the Kansas City Royals, and columns like this one are painful for me (which is why I rarely write them). It's been a pretty good run, and I'm grateful for each of those 30 seasons (yes, even this one).
But it's been a dozen years since I lived within easy driving distance of Royals Stadium, and perhaps the distance allows me the perspective to write the following: Maybe it's time to give up. Maybe it's time to admit that Kansas City simply isn't a major-league city and can no longer support a poor, poorly managed franchise. Maybe there's not room for the NFL, NASCAR and major league baseball in the same medium-sized Midwestern city.
The Royals have become a laughingstock, and maybe it's time to find them a new home, where the laughs might someday be outnumbered by the cheers.
Senior writer Rob Neyer writes for Insider two or three times per week during the season. To offer criticism, praise or anything in between, send an e-mail to rob.neyer@dig.com.
