Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (12 page)
Read Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The Online
Authors: Bill James
Tags: #SPORTS &, #RECREATION/Baseball/History
Year of Birth:
1887
Years Managed:
1926–1950
Record As a Manager:
2,125–1,333, .615 McCarthy’s only losing record as a manager was at Lousiville in 1922. In the minors he managed one year at Wilkes-Barre (1913), playing .600 ball, and seven years at Louisville (1919–1925), posting winning records in six of the seven seasons. In the majors he managed the Cubs for five years, posting winning records all five times, the Yankees for sixteen seasons, posting winning records all sixteen times, and the Red Sox for three seasons, posting winning records all three years.
McCarthy’s career winning percentages were .579 with the Cubs, .627 with the Yankees, and .606 with the Red Sox.
The Cubs improved by 14 games his first season in Chicago. The Yankees improved by 8½ games his first season in New York. The Red Sox improved by 12½ games his first season in Boston.
Managers for Whom He Played:
McCarthy never played in the majors, and never played for a famous manager in the minors that I am aware of.
Others by Whom He Was Influenced:
McCarthy grew up in Philadelphia and was a great admirer of Connie Mack. By nature he was a different man than Mack—more intense and more moody. He was less restrained by nature, but emulated Mack’s restraint. He always tried to think twice before he said anything that might hurt someone’s feelings, although this did not come naturally to him, as it did to Connie.
Characteristics As a Player:
He was a fairly typical minor league second baseman; his records look exactly like Earl Weaver’s, except that he didn’t walk as much as Weaver. He hit around .260 with no power, usually reached double figures in triples.
McCarthy’s batting records, as printed in
The Sporting News
books, contain an obvious error, which has nonetheless gone uncorrected for over fifty years. They show him hitting .325 at Wilkes-Barre in 1913, with 36 doubles and 6 homers, but only 13 RBI. The New York State League didn’t record RBI at that time; the “13” was his stolen bases.
WHAT HE BROUGHT TO A BALL CLUB
Was He an Intense Manager or More of an Easy-to-Get-Along-With Type?
He was somewhat intense, but a long way from being John McGraw. Through most of the 1930s, the public image of Joe McCarthy was that of a gentleman, a man who treated his players well and was well liked by the press. He appears to have gotten somewhat cranky about 1943, and after that the things that happened in his salad days were reinterpreted to make him appear more intense than he really was. An apocryphal story about his breaking a card table with an ax, for example, was picked up and repeated ad infinitum, creating the impression that he was a theatrical dictator in the John McGraw tradition.
Was He More of an Emotional Leader or a Decision Maker?
A decision maker and a disciplinarian. He set great store by the concept of professionalism, but apart from that he made less effort to be an emotional leader than any other great manager except perhaps Bill McKechnie.
Was He More of an Optimist or More of a Problem Solver?
He was very much a problem solver. He was
not
a man to sit and wait for a problem to solve itself. Edward Barrow said that the best thing about him was that he always saw problems coming two years down the road.
HOW HE USED HIS PERSONNEL
Did He Favor a Set Lineup or a Rotation System?
A set lineup.
Did He Like to Platoon?
He occasionally platooned at one outfield position—for example, in 1927 he platooned Earl Webb with Pete Scott, and in 1948 he platooned Stan Spence with Sam Mele. He didn’t platoon a lot.
Did He Try to Solve His Problems with Proven Players or with Youngsters Who Still May Have Had Something to Learn?
Joe McCarthy got more distance out of “second chance” players and problem players than anyone else in baseball history. His 1929 National League Champion Cub team was almost entirely built out of players who had failed their first major league trials or who had been cast away by other teams because of conflicts with the manager: Hack Wilson, Riggs Stephenson, Kiki Cuyler, Rogers Hornsby, Zack Taylor, Charlie Root, Hal Carlson. With the Yankees he had a stronger stream of talent coming along, and thus less need to rely on those players.
McCarthy’s philosophy was that there were a very few players who had exceptional skills, but otherwise there were a lot of guys who could play baseball, some of them in the majors and some of them in the minors. He had definite ideas about how everything was supposed to be done, and if you didn’t want to do things his way, the hell with you, he’d get somebody else who would appreciate the opportunity to play.
As a rookie manager in 1926, McCarthy inherited a last-place team with one superstar, Pete Alexander. In the first month of the season, McCarthy and Alexander had a shouting match in the locker room. A few weeks later, Alexander missed (or ignored) curfew, and McCarthy put him on waivers.
He was ridiculed for doing this, by the press and by Rogers Hornsby, who took Alexander and rode him to the pennant in St. Louis. The derogatory nickname “Marse Joe” was hung on him as a result of this incident, but he knew what he was doing. “Alex always obeyed the rules,” he said, “the only problem was, they were Alex’s rules.” McCarthy was patient with players who had drinking problems—as long as they obeyed his rules. He released Alexander, but by the end of the year he had a better staff than he started with, plus he had established a principle: We’re going to do this my way.
What I’m saying is, his basic orientation wasn’t “young” or “old”; it was “Do it right or I’ll look at the next guy.” With the Yankees, who had Paul Krichell out there turning up players left and right, the next guy was almost always a youngster.
How Many Players Did He Make Regulars Who Had Not Been Regulars Before, and Who Were They?
At least forty such players, among them Riggs Stephenson, Hack Wilson, Woody English, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller, Red Rolfe, Frank Crosetti, Joe Gordon, Tommy Henrich, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Goodman.
The most impressive part of his record with youngsters is with rookie pitchers. Of the 3,487 major league games managed by McCarthy, I would bet that more than 30% were started by rookie pitchers or pitchers who had less than five wins heading into the season. He almost always had a pitcher who had been in the minors the year before winning 15 or more games.
Did He Prefer to Go with Good Offensive Players or Did He Like the Glove Men?
Basically, with hitters. McCarthy believed in fundamentals. As long as a player did things the right way, McCarthy would use him, even if his defensive skills were limited. Riggs Stephenson, for example, couldn’t throw, because of an arm injury suffered playing football at the University of Alabama. Hack Wilson didn’t really have a center fielder’s speed or arm, and Vern Stephens did not have the agility or quickness of a traditional shortstop. They made the plays they were supposed to make, and that was good enough for McCarthy.
Did He Like an Offense Based on Power, Speed, or High Averages?
Power. Thirteen of his teams led the league in home runs, only two in batting average, and only four in stolen bases.
Did He Use the Entire Roster or Did He Keep People Sitting On the Bench?
He relied mostly on his frontline players. He didn’t use the bench much.
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?
Veterans.
| Faux Pas If you’re going to lose a pennant race by a game or two, I would recommend that you lose it from behind. Make a list of the most famous teams in history that blew the pennant race—the 1934 Giants, the 1951 Dodgers, the 1962 Dodgers, ’64 Phillies, ’69 Cubs, ’78 Red Sox, the ’95 Angels … well, make your own list. What do they all have in common? They all lost from ahead. There is an unwritten rule of sports journalism, which applies to pennant races, to series, and to single games in all sports. If you get behind early, come up strong at the end and lose by a thin margin, you’ve shown great character in dealing with adversity. But if you play well early and lose at the end, you blew it. You choked. You lost a race (or a game) that you should have won. It is ironic that Bill Terry, who never said three words when two would do, should be remembered for a careless remark.
Blowing a pennant brings forth the urge to scapegoat, and Foster chose George Watkins. “The Giants,” wrote Foster, “made one great mistake in trading George Davis, an outfielder, to St. Louis for Watkins. The latter was not as good a batter as Davis and did not add any strength to the club. It was not very long before he demonstrated how weak he had really become, and then the manager was left in the sorry plight of experimenting in his outfield. Had Watkins shown anything like the spirit that moved him during his first year at St. Louis he might have won the championship for New York, as a good batter was all that was needed to swing a half-dozen games.” Foster was relaying the gospel according to Bill Terry. Terry, looking for someone to share the credit for his team’s collapse, had focused on poor George Watkins, a minor league veteran who got a chance with the Cardinals in 1930 and hit .373 as a rookie. He followed that up with a couple of seasons of solid-to-good performance, but he was thirty years old before he made the Show, and in his mid-thirties by the time he put on a Giants uniform. January 1934. McGraw had retired, but the Giants remained the proudest team in baseball. The Dodgers were their little brothers, comical and frustrated. Envious. The Giants had won the pennant in 1933, and Bill Terry was confident they would repeat. In a meeting with several members of the press, Terry picked Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago as the teams to beat in ’34. “What about Brooklyn?” asked Rud Rennie of the “Brooklyn?” said Terry. “Is Brooklyn still in the league?” Sarcasm, like murder, was invented by Cain. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Brooklyn was still in the league and, as a matter of fact, still in town. “Never kick the office boy in the shins,” wrote Paul Gallico. “You never can tell when you will come to work some morning and find him sitting at the vice president’s desk with three telephones and a beautiful blond secretary.” The Giants played well, despite George Watkins, and had a 5 game lead with three weeks to play. With 4 games left to play, they still led by 2½. Unfortunately, they had to play their little brothers. New York baseball fans at that time generally did not travel to the rival’s park, but they would make an exception for special circumstances. The 1934 schedule concluded with the Dodgers playing a two-game series at the Polo Grounds. Terry found his friendly bleachers filled with hostile fans. The Dodgers won both games, giving St. Louis the pennant, and Bill Terry an epitaph. |
GAME MANAGING AND USE OF STRATEGIES
Did He Go for the Big-Inning Offense, or Did He Like to Use the One-Run Strategies?
The big-inning.
Did He Pinch-Hit Much, and If So, When?
The numbers aren’t large, because he was normally ahead, but he pinch-hit aggressively when he was behind or tied in the late innings. In the 1936 World Series, for example, he pinch-hit with Red Ruffing in Game Three, but then used a left-hander to pinch-hit
for
Ruffing in Game Five.
Was There Anything Unusual About His Lineup Selection?
1) In 1940, when the Yankees lost by 2 games, McCarthy led off Frankie Crosetti almost all year, although Crosetti hit .194. It may be the lowest batting average of all time for a leadoff man, and certainly was for that era, when a lot of runs were scored. His 1940 Yankees, despite leading off a .194 hitter, still scored 817 runs.
2) This probably reflects available talent rather than strategy, but all of his career, McCarthy got phenomenal power production out of his second basemen. His 1929 second baseman, Rogers Hornsby, hit .380 with 39 homers and drove in 149 runs. In New York he had Tony Lazzeri, who drove in 100 runs a year, and replaced him with Joe Gordon, who also drove in 100 runs a year. At Boston he had Bobby Doerr, who hit 27 homers and drove in 111 runs in 1948, drove in 109 runs in 1949, and drove in 120 runs in 1950. His 1944 second baseman, Snuffy Stirnweiss, had 125 hits, 205 hits, 16 triples, and 55 stolen bases.
Actually, the one position at which McCarthy
didn’t
get rather phenomenal offensive production was third base. Until about 1930, second base was more of a power position than was third base. If you look back at 1915 or 1920, you’ll find that the top second basemen hit more than the top third basemen did. This shifted about 1925—but not on McCarthy’s teams.
Did He Use the Sac Bunt Often?
No.
Did He Like to Use the Running Game?
No.
In What Circumstances Would He Issue an Intentional Walk?
Seems standard. He would sometimes use the intentional walk to load the bases and set up a force at home plate.
Did He Hit and Run Very Often?
No.
Were There Any Unique or Idiosyncratic Strategies That He Particularly Favored?
McCarthy’s basic idea, on offense, was to wear the pitcher down by taking pitches, taking pitches, taking pitches, until the pitcher started to crack. This was before modern bullpens, remember. He’d make the pitcher throw about 150 pitches, and about the seventh inning the pitcher just wouldn’t have enough left to get out of trouble.