Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (24 page)
Read Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The Online
Authors: Bill James
Tags: #SPORTS &, #RECREATION/Baseball/History
ASEY
S
TENGEL
(As he would be remembered today if he hadn’t gotten the Yankees job)
Year of Birth:
1890. Stengel was only seventeen years younger than John McGraw. Stengel was hired to manage the Yankees at about the same age that John McGraw retired.
Years Managed:
1934–1936, 1938–1943, 1949–1960, 1962–65
Record as a Manager:
1,905–1,842, .508
Managers for Whom He Played:
Bill Dahlen, Wilbert Robinson, Hugo Bezdek, Gavy Cravath, John McGraw, Dave Bancroft
Others by Whom He Was Influenced:
Zack Wheat, a Hall of Fame outfielder with the Dodgers when Stengel came up, had lived in the Kansas City area, where Stengel was from. Wheat took Stengel under his wing, got him a locker next to his, and worked with him in the outfield.
Characteristics As a Player:
Left-handed hitting and throwing outfielder, a decent ballplayer but lacked any one outstanding skill. Above average speed, good arm, some power, lifetime .284 hitter.
WHAT HE BROUGHT TO A BALL CLUB
Was He an Intense Manager or More of an Easy-to-Get-Along-With Type?
Inside the locker room, he was intense. Stengel was friendly with the press, but distant and occasionally harsh with his players.
Was He More of an Emotional Leader or a Decision Maker?
More of a decision maker.
Was He More of an Optimist or More of a Problem Solver?
He was the ultimate problem solver. He never waited for things to break before he started to fix them.
HOW HE USED HIS PERSONNEL
Did He Favor a Set Lineup or a Rotation System?
He rotated players with mad abandon. Stengel really was the first manager who made up a new lineup every day. We don’t have counts, but he probably used 70 to 100 lineups every year with the Yankees, at a time when a lot of managers were using 15 or 20.
Did He Like to Platoon?
He loved to platoon, and he loved to talk about why he platooned.
Did He Try to Solve His Problems with Proven Players or with Youngsters Who Still May Have Had Something to Learn?
In midseason, he’d always prefer to bring in a veteran. He always wanted to spend a lot of time with a youngster in spring training before he put him in the lineup.
How Many Players Did He Make Regulars Who Had Not Been Regulars Before, and Who Were They?
Stengel wouldn’t make a man a regular unless the guy was really good; otherwise, he’d make him a platoon player. He did make a regular or near-regular out of Mantle, Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Tony Kubek, Bobby Richardson, Bill Skowron, Gil McDougald, Ron Hunt, Lonny Frey, Len Koenecke, Max West, Eddie Miller, and a few others. Berra was sort of a three-quarters regular before Stengel got to New York.
Did He Prefer to Go with Good Offensive Players or Did He Like the Glove Men?
Glove men. He wouldn’t risk his defense by trying to play a hitter in the middle infield, for example.
Did He Like an Offense Based on Power, Speed, or High Averages?
Not speed; none of Stengel’s teams ever led the league in stolen bases. Five of his teams led in batting average, five in home runs. Stengel’s Yankees had nowhere near as much power (relative to the era) as McCarthy’s Yankees.
Did He Use the Entire Roster or Did He Keep People Sitting on the Bench?
He used everybody.
Did He Build His Bench Around Young Players Who Could Step into the Breach If Need Be, or Around Veteran Role-Players Who Had Their Own Functions Within a Game?
Some of each. Stengel always had on his bench two or three veteran players who had been outstanding regulars, but had slipped to part-time status, such as Enos Slaughter and Eddie Robinson. But he also had his platoon players—Bauer, Woodling, Cerv, Cliff Mapes—and he also had young players that he was taking a look at, seeing if they could earn more playing time. Occasionally, like Elston Howard and Bobby Richardson, these players would emerge as regulars. More often, like Norm Siebern and Jackie Jensen and Jerry Lumpe, they would wind up with some other team.
All managers become burdened by their success, a heavy portion of which is their loyalty to a group of players. Stengel was different. With a few exceptions (Yogi Berra, Billy Martin) he made no emotional commitment to his players. He instructed them, corrected them, yelled at them, and if they didn’t respond he traded them, but he kept them at arm’s length.
In Stengel’s years with the Yankees, there were an extraordinary number of times when a pitcher would give him a big season, then would disappear from the rotation by June of the following season. Bob Grim in 1954 (20–6), Tommy Byrne in 1955 (16–5), Johnny Kucks in 1956 (18–9), Tom Sturdivant in 1957 (16–8)—all of them dropped suddenly from the rotation the following summer. Don Larsen, despite pitching well as a spot starter for several seasons, was never able to break
into
the rotation.
This is unusual. Almost any manager, when a pitcher gives him a big season, will make a commitment to that pitcher. If he has a couple of bad starts, the manager will say “It’s just a couple of bad starts; he’ll get it turned around.” If he has another bad start, the manager will say, “Well, we need him to pitch well if we’re going to contend.” Then he’ll have a good start or two, and the first thing you know, he’s 5–13, and you’re out of the race.
Stengel didn’t do that. With Stengel, unless you were Vic Raschi or Whitey Ford, you were only as good as your last start. And that was a large part of why he was able to stay on top, year after year, in a way that few other managers ever have. It’s not that he wasn’t “loyal” to his players, but his idea of loyalty wasn’t “Joe helped me win the pennant last year, so I owe it to him to let him work through his problems.” It was “These boys are trying to win. I owe it to them to do everything possible to help them win.”
Stengel got started this way with the Yankees, I think, because he took over an old team, with repairs that just had to be made—but he won. He won in 1949 with a team that simply couldn’t be forced through 1950, and he won in 1950 with a team that just wasn’t going to make it through 1951. He got in the habit of looking to replace players, even though the team was doing well, and that habit served him very well.
| Popular Vote Zack Taylor was an old catcher, played several years for Wilbert Robinson, parts of two years for Joe McCarthy, one season for Casey Stengel. In the early 1950s three American League teams were managed by Wilbert Robinson’s old catchers—Taylor, Al Lopez, and Paul Richards. Taylor had attended Rollins College before entering baseball, and after his playing career was on the staff of the Joe Stripp baseball school, which tutored young players from all over the country. He got the opportunity to manage, following Fred Haney into the Toledo job, then on to a job as a coach with the Browns. From 1948 to 1951 he was the Browns manager, losing about 100 games a year. He was the Browns manager at the time that Eddie Gaedel batted. A few days after that, on August 24, 1951, Taylor took the field in civilian clothes and bedroom slippers, smoking a curved-stem pipe. He seated himself in a rocking chair near the dugout, picked up a newspapers and read leisurely as the game proceeded. It was Bill Veeck’s latest stunt. Veeck had arranged a promotion in which two fans would would win the right to manage the team for a day. American League president Will Harridge had vetoed that idea, however, and Veeck decided instead to make everybody who had entered the contest a winner. 1,115 fans got placards, on which were printed “bunt,” “steal,” “yes,” “no,” etc. As the game progressed, these fans (one of whom was Connie Mack) held up their placards, voting on what the Browns should do. The Browns won the game, 3–2. The fans voted on the starting lineup and opted to replace Taylor’s choice at catcher, Matt Batts, with Sherm Lollar. What strikes me about this is that the fans were obviously smarter than Taylor was, at least in this respect. The Browns had acquired Lollar three years earlier, for nothing, and he had played about half the time, although he was one of the better hitters on the team. After the season the Browns traded him on to Chicago, where he played for Paul Richards. Richards made Lollar a regular catcher, and he was the second-best catcher in the American League during the 1950s. |
GAME MANAGING AND USE OF STRATEGIES
Did He Go for the Big-Inning Offense, or Did He Like to Use the One-Run Strategies?
Not one more than the other.
Did He Pinch-Hit Much, and If So, When?
In 1954 the New York Yankees used 262 pinch hitters. The 1955
Baseball Guide
reported that “the New York Yankees used more pinch hitters than any club in American League history in 1954 as Casey Stengel juggled his lineup constantly in a desperate attempt to overhaul the pennant-bound Cleveland Indians.” The 262 pinch hitters were extremely successful, hitting .292 with a record-tying seven pinch-hit home runs.
Stengel was famous, at the time, for using pinch hitters in odd ways, particularly early in the game. There is a tracer in this
book
which concerns a Moose Skowron story about being pinch-hit for in the first inning. A famous Stengel quote occurred when Casey was asked by a reporter why he had used three pinch hitters in the first three innings of one game. “Whaddaya want me to do,” he asked. “Sit there and lose?”
However, Stengel’s pinch-hitting totals were
not
uniformly high—in fact, in many seasons he was at or near the bottom of the league in the number of pinch hitters used. In 1958 the Yankees used only 159 pinch hitters, while every other American League team used at least 189. This may be somewhat misleading, because remember, the Yankees were usually
ahead
in the game. Normal pinch-hitting situations occur when the team is
behind
, when they need runs.
The Yankee pinch hitters were almost always good. Pinch-hitting batting averages are normally low. Yankee pinch hitters hit .292 in 1954, when only one other American League team got a pinch-hitting average higher than .218. In 1958, when the Yankees were last in the league in pinch hitters used, they were again first in pinch-hitting average, at .275.
Was There Anything Unusual About His Lineup Selection?
Everything about it was unusual. He rotated infielders around, one day at second, one day at short, the next day at third; I have never been able to understand how he was able to do this without undermining his defense.
Stengel never had a regular leadoff man and often used players who had below average speed or no speed at all in the leadoff spot. Look at his leadoff men in World Series games. In the 1951 World Series: Mantle, Mantle, Woodling, Bauer, Woodling, Rizzuto. In the 1952 World Series: Bauer, Bauer, Rizzuto, McDougald, McDougald, McDougald, McDougald. In the 1953 World Series: McDougald, Woodling, McDougald, Woodling, Woodling. In the 1955 World Series: Bauer, Bauer, Cerv (!), Noren, Howard (!), Rizzuto, Rizzuto.
Did He Use the Sac Bunt Often?
In Brooklyn and Boston, Stengel was a nonbunter, as one would expect from a John McGraw disciple. His Dodger and Brave teams were last in the league in bunts several times.
With the Yankees, this was no longer true. Stengel’s Yankees never led the league in sacrifice bunts, but they were never last, either. They were always in the middle.
I looked at the game logs from Stengel’s 63 World Series games to see
when
he would bunt. The most striking thing is that Stengel very often bunted with one out. Of his 23 World Series bunts, eight, or 35%, came with one out. In 1990s baseball, the one-out bunt is essentially extinct except for the squeeze play, but Stengel used it quite often. Also, Stengel bunted when his team was behind only four times in 63 games, which explains the low sac hit totals with Brooklyn and Boston.
Did He Like to Use the Running Game?
Stengel’s teams didn’t steal many bases.
In What Circumstances Would He Issue an Intentional Walk?
Most commonly to set up a double play.
Did He Hit and Run Very Often?
My belief is that Stengel probably used the hit and run more often than any manager in baseball now (1996).
Were There Any Unique or Idiosyncratic Strategies That He Particularly Favored?
One thing that stands out about Stengel’s great teams in New York is their tremendous advantage in the double play categories.
To consolidate what you may already know, good teams do
not
, as a rule, have outstanding double play totals. A team with good pitching will normally not have large numbers of opposing baserunners, which limits the double play opportunities for their defense. Conversely, a team with a strong batting lineup will have many more runners on base than a team with a weak offense, and for that reason will tend to ground into more double plays. Thus, while double play skills may well be very important, there is not, in general, a strong correlation between double plays and wins.
The Yankees are an exception. In Stengel’s first ten years in New York (1949–1958), the Yankees turned at least 180 double plays every year. They led the American League in double plays, as a team, in 1952, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958. Four of Stengel’s teams in Brooklyn and Boston also led the league in double plays.
What makes this particularly notable is the tremendous instability in the middle of the Yankee infield in those same years. The Pirates led the league in double plays every year, too, but they had Mazeroski. The Yankees had no regular second baseman and no regular shortstop from 1954 to 1958—yet they led the league in double plays every season. At second base they used Gil McDougald, Jerry Coleman, Bobby Richardson, and Billy Martin 150 to 385 games each during those years, rotating more or less randomly among them, and sprinkling in a few games from Willie Miranda, Tony Kubek, Fritz Brickell, Phil Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, and Bill Skowron. At shortstop the picture was even murkier, with no one playing more than 235 games at short for the Yankees over the five-year period.
