Evaluating Baseball's Managers: A History and Analysis of Performance in the Major Leagues, 1876–2008

For anyone who understands Bill James, the famous baseball historian and statisican that changed the way general mangers see baseball statistics and the value of players, Chris Jaffe has made yet another breakthrough with his book that evaluates great managers.

Great Toronto managers like Bobby Cox and Cito Gaston are included in his book which is published by McFarland and set to be released sometime in Feburary according to amazon.com.

“Way back in the 20th century, Bill James wrote the first essential book about baseball managers. Chris Jaffe has just written the second.”—Rob Neyer, ESPN.com

“These days it’s tough to find an important aspect of baseball that hasn’t been studied and analyzed a hundred different ways, but Chris Jaffe has done just that with a unique, compelling look at the men who run thing on the field. . . . This book is for you, whether you like hardcore numbers crunching and objective analysis or biographical sketches and interesting anecdotes.”—Aaron Gleeman, writer, NBCsports.com

“I can think of no work on managers that as effectively and completely evaluates the men in the dugout. It is a leap forward in our understanding of these hardball leaders.… From now on, whenever I have a question about a manager, Jaffe’s book will be the first and last one I reach for.”—Sean Forman, founder of Baseball-Reference.com

THERE'S NO WAY TO GO...BUT UP, UP, UP, FOR THE TORONTO BLUE JAYS...

Anthopoulos: This job is 24/7. And, I don’t think you ever take time. I’m getting married in January but I’ve already prepared my fiancee that I will be on my Blackberry quite a bit when we go on our honeymoon. I’ll always continue to explore trades to make the team better. It never stops for me.

Good luck in marriage AA!

Alex is changing the face of the Toronto Blue Jays. This is going to be a completely different team under the new general manager. To many, 2010 being the year the Jays go back to winning games is wishful thinking, but for some reason I believe in this team and their ability to compete in the American League East.

I see an offense that can put up a crazy amount of runs with bombers like Aaron Hill, Randy Ruiz, Adam Lind, and sweet swingers like Brett Wallace and Travis Snider. Add in Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay who can both chip in 20 homeruns a season, along with John Buck's decent catcher production, you've got a very difficult offense that includes utility man Jose Bautista who hit 11 homeruns in September alone. The pitching staff can be just good enough- you've got Kyle Drabek, the return of Shaun Marcum, newly acquired flamethrower Brandon Morrow, Scott Richmond, Marc Rezepysnki, Brett Cecil, Rookie of the Year Candidate Ricky Romero, and not to mention Dustin McGowan if he ever gets healthy! Many rotational options with guys like Richmond that can be thrown into the bullpen as long relievers. The Blue Jays bullpen has been one of the best in the game since 2007 when the offense went south, and boasts powerful arms like Jason Frasor, Dick Hayhurst, Jeremy Accardo and Scott Downs.

It's a fight between the Angels, Seattle, Boston and Toronto for the Wild Card, and no one in the United States possibly sees it that way, I bet.

This team has talent. It's just a question of whether they can put it all together!

We'll see in 2010, and ironically, the year everything changed begins tommorrow.

goodbye league!

Brandon League is finally on the move!

Reports are saying AA managed to package League and a prospect (hopefully one of the many catchers JP aqquired) for Mariner's pitching prospect Morrow. I won't be surprised if the prospect is a high end one, since to me League brings down the value of the trade. League does have the talent to strike out the side, just to me he seemed to strike out the 3 after he let 3 in. All the best to him in Seattle...

More importantly we are getting Brandon Morrow in return for League. Morrow is a former 1st round (5th overall) pick, who has one amazing arm and is another piece to a young pitching staff. With the potential to be a #2 or #3, the Jays have a bright future with their pitching. All that is left for AA to do is go out and grab that vet pitcher to lead these young arms. Maybe he can unload Overbay in a trade for one


*UPDATE*

Turns out the lucky prospect getting included in this deal is none other than right fielder Yohermyn Chavez. His stats speak for a lot of the reason why he got included. In single A last year he hit for .289 with 21 home runs, and 89 RBI's in 134 games. Before you get all angry at AA for trading him away please realize he struck out 137 times when drawing only 40 walks. That means he struck out over once a game... and would 2 strike outs for each RBI he got... Let's be serious... losing that type of player in right field plus getting rid of league when getting a top pitching prospect in return is an amazing job.

OH, NO WAY, HALLADAY TRADED

I might be the only Blue Jay fan who just glanced around and just saw Roy Halladay from the sidelines as an abberation. I never thought he was the greatest pitcher in the game. I was just told he was the greatest pitcher in the game, the greatest pitcher the Blue Jays had ever had. And I trusted them. And it seemed extremely apparent. But for me, Halladay was never the greatest pitcher of all time until he just masterfully one-hit the New York Yankees. The Yankees would go on to win the World Series with the big three Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia and of course A.J. Burnett. And who can forget Mariano Riveria? Fuck.

I always just thought Delgado was like the sweetest player of all time. He was a humble man, a man who gave to charity because he was rich like that, and he won the ROBERTO CLEMENTE!

The Jays should sign him to be their DH, mentor the younger hitters and he could be an explosive left-handed 30 homer guy that just pushes TORONTO OVER THE EDGE!

I seriously think playoffs in 2010. This offense is too good.

LOVEDEEP MINHAS

While I'm still on the e-mail train...a joke my friend sent me.


Hi,

My name is Lovedeep Minhas and I'm a Rutgers student who just began interning at Bigflysports.com, a website that sells sports memorabilia. I am a huge Red Sox fan and I'm an occasional reader of your blog. I thought it might be worthwhile if you can link to our website from the sidebar of your blog. Being a small company that is trying to compete with the big boys, that link would be a huge help.

We have a huge selection of Boston Red Sox products that your readers might be interested in. Ideally, the link would link to our MLB page http://bigflysports.com/category/1471085741/1/MLB-Baseball.htm with text "MLB Shop" or "MLB Memorabilia".

Over this past holiday season, as a thank you to our blog partners, we ran a special promotion offering a 10% coupon code to all of their readers and 10% of the revenue from those sales to the blogger. We plan on offering this promotion on an ongoing basis during 2009, to any bloggers who link to us. It was quite successful and we would love for you to be a part of it!

Please respond with any questions you may have. Thanks for your time and hopefully we can partner up shortly!

Sincerely,

Lovedeep Minhas
BigFlySports
201-653-4414

DAVE MERCER OUTDOORS

The Cabinet sometimes recieves rather interesting e-mails...

My name is Jeff Slute from Dave Mercer Outdoors. Just wanted to share this with you as it may make a comedic addition to your page. It is the first time in Major League History that the opening pitch was “cast” across the plate. It happened Monday September 27th in a game between the Blue Jays and the Orioles...



Judging by the Jays season and this pitch maybe they could hire Dave...might put a few more fans in the seats.

That was certainly true. And he also gave me a cool photo!

DOUG DRABEK VS. KYLE DRABEK

DOUG DRABEK...



Oh, and on a side note, I've been digging up all kinds of areas of the Internet trying to find a video of Doug Drabek pitching, who won the 1990 Cy Young Award with the Pittsburgh Pirates. THE VIDEO CONTENT IS SO LIMITED because MLB owns ALL THE RIGHTS. I can only find baseball cards, so I've posted one above...

JUICY PROSPECTS....VIDEOS.

Brett Wallace's sweet swing.



Kyle Drabek pitching.



ENJOY!

Thanks for the MemoRoys

It's (soon to be) over. Roy Halladay's tenure as a Toronto Blue Jay is nearing a close, following yet another circus of speculation that rivaled the midsummer nights' clusterfuck started by Kenny Ken. Bastian, Olney and Heyman are all chiming in on it over on Twitter the Toronto-Philly-Seattle megadeal is sealed saying Doc has signed a 3 year extension with Philly for $60 Million plus a couple of vesting options. Rumours right now indicate the Jays picking up $6 million of Roy's 2010 salary as well.

To the Jays as of right now consensus points to pitcher Kyle Drabek, LF Michael Taylor and C Travis d'Arnaud coming north...eventually since they're not big league ready. While this is an alright haul from the Phillies' farm system one could have hoped that at least one big league ready player would come over to help ease the burden right away of losing our best player. In my talks with Dan the Man last night he seemed to be holding out hope for J.A. Happ to get thrown into the deal but signs right now point to that not happening.

Enough can be said about how these prospects can help the team, I don't know enough to judge prospects so I'm not going to pretend to be able to, all I've heard about Drabek, Taylor and d'Arnaud is that Drabek and Taylor have the potential to be f'awesome and d'Arnaud isn't too shabby himself so I'll steer clear of any knee-jerk reactionary stuff about this making us amazing or this being the "death of the franchise, fuck the Jays" (which I've already heard plenty of). All I'm gonna say is that I hope that somewhere down the line they can help improve the club and live up to the massive pressure placed on their shoulders as "they guys we got for Roy Halladay".

Since I'm not gonna do any of that bullshit I want to talk about some of my favourite Doc memories, or memoRoys as you might say.

• September 27, 1998: Jays v. Tigers. At the age of 10 I tuned in to the last Blue Jays game of the season on CBC after getting told "some guy on the Blue Jays is a couple innings away from a perfect game and witnessed something spectacular, that was nearly much more spectacular. In his 2nd career start Halladay retired 26 straight Detroit Tigers before giving up a solo home run to Bobby Higginson that scraped the back of the left field fence to break up Halladay's perfect game effort in the 9th. Despite how much his game has changed since 1998, Roy's line for the day reads like something you'd see in the summer of 2009: 9 IP, 8 K, 0 BB.
• I'm not gonna lie, I took a sabbattical from the Jays for a little while in the early 00's. Halladay pulled me back in, hearing how awesome he was during his 2003 Cy Young season got me to watch. Roy Halladay pulled me back into baseball.
• April 4, 2006: Jays v. Twins. Opening Day 2006. My first opening day since the 2001 "If we lose you get a free ticket" deal. The first game in the wake of JP's winter of spending like a teenaged girl with daddy's credit card. Halladay dominated the Twins for 7.2 innings, giving up 5 hits and 2 ER. Bengie Molina smacked a huge home run of the facing of the 500 level in left and BJ Ryan got his first save as a Blue Jays.
• May 31, 2007: Jays v. White Sox. I took my brother to a game as his university grad present with some sweet seats I scored off of Dan, right behind the plate on the 100s. The only time I've got to see Doc work his magic that close. We witnessed a dismantling of the White Sox. 7 shutout innings, 7 strike outs. 2-0 victory. Just how on was Halladay that night? Time of game: 1 hour, 50 minutes.
• August 14, 2007: Jays v. Angels. What started as a mission of Cheesehead and myself to abuse Shea Hillenbrand on his return to Toronto was turned into a mission to get wasted and heckle the Angels in general. After pounding an abundance of cold shots on the train and carrying a lovely coloured sign (complete with sparkles) saying "We came to heckle Shea but even the Angels don't want him" our plans were overshadowed by a Halladay masterpiece. Doc mowed through the Angels tossing a 97 pitch complete game, allowing 5 hits and 1 run, in less than 2 hours. Also we almost got in a fight with a 45 year old woman.
  
• September 27, 2007. Jays @ Tigers. Dan and I roadtripped down to Detroit to witness the replay for a game that got rained out in April. Despite being a walk-off loss we witnessed an incredible game. Johnny Mac's contributions on that day are etched in the side of our blog. Doc's efforts saw him go 8.2 giving up only 3 runs. We worked his way out of trouble all game long, and if the offence hadn't shit the bed maybe the results would've been different. This was a scenario we saw far too often during Halladay's tenure.
• May 13, 2008: George W. Bush tells an interview with Politico that if had to pick one position player and one pitcher to build a baseball team around he would start with Roy Halladay.
  
• June 2, 2009: Jays v. Angels. Doc dominated the Angels. 14 strike outs. Complete game shutout. Arguably his most dominating performance ever.

It's gonna suck not getting to see Halladay pitch every 5th day anymore. But we'll learn to deal with it I'm sure. Let's not be angry about losing Roy, let's just remember how awesome having Doc around was.

THE TRICKS OF THE ROY HALLADAY TRADE..

The Roy Halladay trade stunningly reeks of the brutal Johan Santana trade...I'll go into detail, but first let's review the tricks of the trade.

It's hard to watch the team you love fall into the quicksand under new general manager Alex Anthopolous...

That's kind of what the feeling is around the fanbase right now, that this deal is the defining moment of Anthopolous' GM career. I don't want to go as far to say that, although Halladay, for eight seasons was certainly the cornerstone pitcher of the organization. Will the prospects turn out to be any good? Well, time will tell. They got the AA rookie of the year, the son of legendary pitcher Doug Drabek who's supposed to be even better, and a catching prospect that I really am not sold on considering we always have five or six highly-touted catching prospects in the organization that don't seem to pan out.

The one thing that shocks and annoys me is that the Blue Jays are being asked to pay SIX MILLION DOLLARS to the Phillies for part of Halladay's 15.75 million dollar contract this season, like honestly, what the fuck? How does that make any sense at all? The Phillies are gaining baseball's best pitcher over the last eight seasons. Anthopolous is an economics major, he should understand that this is six million dollars he wasted, and especially to buy players that may not even make it to the major league level? Unproven minor leaguers.

I don't get what the Phillies are thinking either- shipping Cliff Lee, who was just absolutely outstanding for Philadelphia down the stretch and in the playoffs to Seattle. Clearly, Philadelphia was concerned about their own future and giving up their prospects in obtaining Phillipe Aumont, who is rumored to be like a Randy Johnson, but not a number one. I never saw how that made any sense as top prospects often fall off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. Just check out this next example.

The Minnesota Twins dealt Johan Santana for four prospects:
Feb 2, 2008: Minnesota Twins traded Johan Santana to the New York Mets for Carlos Gomez, Philip Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra.

It didn't hurt Minnesota too much. Gardenhire led Minnesota to another improbable AL CENTRAL title, their fifth in eight seasons.

The prospects?

Phillip Humber- very mediocre starter in the minors, .500, ERA over 4.50...a few major league appearences out of the bullpen, but nothing impressive
Kevin Mulvey- not even with the team anymore
Carlos Gomez- hit .229 last year...brutal numbers in 137 games
Deolis Guerra- 20 years old, but not impressive in the minors;

The Minnesota Twins? They got fuck all for Johan Santana.

The Toronto Blue Jays? Did they just get fuck all for Roy Halladay?

FUCK.

Anthopolous better have picked some damn good prospects, because prospects aren't golden always. Prospects are prospective, remember? I sure as fucking hell hope this doesn't turn out to be like the Santana trade, because at the very least, the catcher they picked seems to be a flop.

Bye, Bye Scooter

After being made blindingly obvious upon the signings of Johnny Mac and Alex Gonzalez; shortstop Marco Scutaro is officially on his way out of Toronto to the land of chowdah heads and Massholes known as Boston.

Terms of the deal were just confirmed by SI's Jon Heyman who tweeted:

scutaro just got another raise. just kidding, i guessed low before. sources say he got $12 mil for 2 with #redsox

This comes off the heals of AA coming out and saying he offered a 2 year deal to Scooter who shot it down to go test the open market and try and find a winner which everyone knows he won't find in Toronto.

Scutaro had a solid but unspectacular tenure in Toronto; his first season saw him cover admibaly for GBOAT at third then take over the starting SS job from Scrappy Doo before having a career year in 2009 as the team's starting shortstop. He was a lynchpin in last year's offense when it was working, him and A-Hill were a deadly 1-2 atop the order early on; but during the massive shitdive midway through the year his efforts became less and less noticable.

This of course means some compensation picks but you've got to start wondering how much the Yankees proving once again that payroll can win the World Series how much of a shit teams are gonna give about mortgaging their future for a shot at the title? Boston's clearly gonna sign at least one more Type A to keep up with the Yanks, throwing away yet another pick to who they're departing from. And that's probably gonna fuck AA's efforts over and make him have to draft lower.