Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (28 page)

Red Rolfe was the third baseman for Joe McCarthy’s Yankees in the late 1930s, a good ballplayer. He was a left-handed hitter, a four-time .300 hitter, and he scored an average of 138 runs a year over a three-year stretch, 1937–1939. Until Graig Nettles he was regarded as the best third baseman in Yankee history, and I suppose some people would argue that he still is.

Rolfe had finished his education before he entered baseball; he was a 1931 graduate of Dartmouth University, where he played for Jeff Tesreau, who had played for John McGraw. After his playing career Rolfe was head baseball coach at Yale, replacing Smokey Joe Wood. He coached a year with the Yankees, under Bucky Harris, and worked a year as the director of farm clubs for the Detroit Tigers.

In 1949 Rolfe was assigned to manage the Tigers. For two seasons he was tremendously successful. Taking over a .500 team, he went 87–67 in 1949 and 95–59 in 1950, missing Stengel’s men by only 3 games. He made only a few personnel moves in those two years, but they were good ones. He replaced an unproductive first baseman with a productive platoon. The Tigers traded a marginal pitching prospect and $ 100,000 to the Browns for Gerry Priddy, who had an outstanding season at second base in 1950.

His young players seemed to be coming around. A pitcher named Art Houtteman, who had gone 2–16 in 1948, won 19 games in 1950. Houtteman was only twenty-two years old, threw very hard, and was at the time regarded as a superstar of the future.

In 1948 a twenty-one-year-old center fielder named Johnny Groth had a spectacular season at Buffalo, hitting .340 with 30 homers, 97 RBI, and leading the International League in hits (199), runs scored (124), doubles (37) and triples (16). Rolfe put him in center field, scooting Hoot Evers, who had been in center, over to left, and sending Vic Wertz, who had been in left, to right.

Groth was good in 1949, and in 1950 he was great. He hit .306 with 85 RBI, but what really gets your attention is his strikeout/walk ratio: 95 walks, only 27 strikeouts. He wasn’t quite Joe DiMaggio, but projected from that point in his career, he looked very much like a Hall of Fame center fielder. The emergence of Groth gave the 1950 Tigers one of the best outfields in American League history:

Red Rolfe was named the American League Manager of the Year in 1950. In a preseason poll in 1951, several sportswriters picked the Tigers to win the American League.

Even more quickly than things had come together for Red Rolfe, they fell apart on him. Art Houtteman was drafted by the United States Army. Hal Newhouser came up with a sore arm. Johnny Groth never had another season as good. Billy Evans, the Detroit general manager who had hired Rolfe, retired and was replaced by Charlie Gehringer.

Spiking Rolfe’s rapid descent was a curious choice: He decided to make Vic Wertz a platoon player.

Vic Wertz in 1951 was only twenty-six years old. A slow-moving left-handed slugger, Wertz had come to the Tigers in 1947, and by 1949 had established himself as the cleanup hitter. He drove in 133 runs in 1949, 123 more in 1950. Rolfe’s decision to convert him to a platoon player can perhaps best be explained by the old aphorism that a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Platooning, you will remember, had fallen into disuse from 1925 to 1945, but in the late 1940s underwent a strong revival. Stengel talked a lot about platooning and about how it helped him, so in the early 1950s platooning was a hot topic. There were no published stats at that time on how players hit against left-handed and right-handed pitchers, so Rolfe decided to start keeping his own stats.

And his own stats showed, guess what, that Vic Wertz didn’t hit much against left-handed pitchers. This isn’t terribly surprising. The exact statistics have, as far as I know, never been published, but Wertz probably batted 150 times against left-handers in 1950. If he hit .190 in those 150 at bats, that wouldn’t be noteworthy. When you look at 150 at bats, you’ll get numbers like that. My impression is that Rolfe may not have been maintaining the stats for a full season before he decided to platoon Wertz; it may have been only a couple of months.

Anyway, the Tigers stumbled out of the gate in 1951. Rolfe, searching for more offense, started platooning Vic Wertz with Steve Souchock, a veteran outfielder rescued from the Pacific Coast League. Wertz was not pleased, and blasted Rolfe in the newspaper. The Tigers fell to fifth place in 1951 (73–81), and in June, 1952, were mired in the basement with a record of 23–49, 7 games behind the St. Louis Browns. Rolfe was fired. He had lasted only a year and a half after being named the major league manager of the year.

The Tigers, cleaning house, traded Vic Wertz to the Browns; despite contracting polio in mid-career, Wertz would drive in 100 runs three more times for other teams. Red Rolfe returned to his native New Hampshire and would never manage again.

Platooning? Hey, platooning is a wonderful strategy. I’m all for it. Common sense dictates that you don’t platoon guys who can drive in 125 runs a year.

Paul Richards and Al Lopez were both born in 1908 in the South, Lopez in Florida, Richards in Texas. Both were catchers, and both reached the major leagues with Brooklyn, under Wilbert Robinson.

Richards was a better hitter in the minor leagues than Lopez, but converted to catching late, and did not have the innate defensive skills, the quickness and throwing arm, with which Lopez was gifted. Lopez got to Brooklyn first and had firm command of the job before Richards arrived. Richards was traded to New York and was a part of the 1933 Giants, along with Charlie Dressen and several other future managers.

Both Richards and Lopez played until the late 1940s. Lopez was a far better player than Richards, but Richards did receive one honor that eluded Lopez. In 1945, playing only 83 games, batting only 234 times, and hitting only .256, Paul Richards was honored by
The Sporting News
as the outstanding catcher in the major leagues, as recognized by his inclusion on the major league postseason All-Star team. He was probably the weakest player ever to win a place on that team.

Both received their chance to manage in the American League in 1951, Lopez with Cleveland, Richards with Chicago. Lopez took over a strong team; Richards, a young team which was acquiring talent.

Lopez managed 15 full seasons, parts of 17 seasons, retiring after the 1965 season, coming out of retirement briefly and unsuccessfully in 1968. Richards managed for almost 11 full seasons, stepping down in 1961 to become general manager of the expansion Houston Astros, then making an unsuccessful comeback, as a manager, in 1976.

Both managers had outstanding records. Lopez had a career winning percentage of .581 and managed the only two teams to take the American League championship away from Casey Stengel’s Yankees. Richards’s record is superficially bland, a .506 winning percentage and no titles, but his teams were 63 games better than they could have been expected to be based on their peformance in previous seasons. This would rank him as the tenth most successful manager of all time by that method.

He took over two down-and-out teams and systematically built them both into contenders. He took over the White Sox in 1951, after they had three straight seasons of 90+ losses. His team improved by 21 games in his first season; for that reason it might be worth a look at what happened on that team.

Richards used essentially the same team that the White Sox had the year before—catcher Phil Masi, first baseman Eddie Robinson, second baseman Nellie Fox, shortstop Chico Carrasquel, number-one starter Billy Pierce. The Sox did make a couple of trades, including a three-cornered trade in which they gave up their starting center fielder, Dave Philley, and their cleanup hitter, Gus Zernial, in exchange for a collection of young, unproven players including Minnie Minoso, who took Zernial’s spot in left field. Jim Busby, up from the minors, went into center, which improved the team’s defense, but the largest improvement was at second base, where Nellie Fox, a .250 hitter prior to Richards’s arrival, blossomed suddenly into the Nellie Fox we remember today.

His team got steadily better from then on, winning 81 again in 1952, 89 in 1953, and 94 in 1954. He resigned late in the 1954 season, accepting the challenge of building a contender out of the hapless Baltimore Orioles.

Al Lopez in 1951 took over a Cleveland Indians team which had been winning 90 games a year like clockwork, and continued to win 90+ games a year. He had the big season in 1954, of course, and then began to feel unappreciated by the Indians’ front office.

According to the 1957
Baseball Guide:

We have a habit of dating the thirty-five-year dead spot in the history of the Cleveland Indians from 1959, the Indians’ last good season before the exile. In retrospect, it might be more accurate to date the collapse of the Indians from the departure of Al Lopez. The Indians, still winning 90 games a year under Lopez, played .500 ball in 1957–1958, under a series of different managers.

Anyway, Lopez moved on to Chicago, meaning he took over the team that Richards had so carefully constructed. Between the two had been a two-year stint for Marty Marion. The team played well for him, but, like Bucky Harris in New York and Burt Shotton in Brooklyn, Marion somehow never could step out of the shadow of his predecessor.

The Cleveland and Chicago franchises in the 1950s are intertwined like one big hillbilly family. Frank Lane was the general manager of both teams, Lopez managed both, and a seemingly endless list of players
played
for both teams—Minnie Minoso, who played for Cleveland, then Chicago, then Cleveland, then Chicago, but also Al Smith, Chico Carrasquel, Early Wynn, Eddie Robinson, Dick Donovan. The teams employed, at different times, many of the same scouts. Luis Aparicio, the defining White Sox player of the Al Lopez era, had actually made a handshake agreement to sign with the Indians for $10,000, but Hank Greenberg balked at paying the bonus, offended Aparicio during the subsequent negotiations, and Aparicio signed with the White Sox for $6,000; from that moment, too, the decline of the Indians’ franchise could be dated.

Since 1920, the Cleveland Indians had always been a solid franchise—not the Yankees, but one of the better teams in the American League. The White Sox had always been an also-ran organization—not the Senators, but one of the weaker teams. Somehow, out of this “melding” of the two franchises, the life force transferred from Cleveland to Chicago. The White Sox became what the Indians had been; the Indians became what the White Sox had been. Although the Paul Richards era prepared the way for what was to come, the movement of Al Lopez in October 1956 would have to be cited as the precise moment at which this transfer occurred.

Meanwhile, Paul Richards was doing in Baltimore exactly what he had done in Chicago, although it took a little longer. First, as he had done in Chicago, he traded a couple of his established talents for a package of unproven players—Willie Miranda, Gus Triandos. He began putting young players in the lineup to see what they could do. Tito Francona, Brooks Robinson, Wayne Causey, Bob Boyd, Billy Gardner. Some of them panned out; most of them didn’t. He gave major league opportunities to minor league veterans and second chances to struggling stars, and by so doing came up with Jim Gentile and Hoyt Wilhelm. The Orioles, losers of 100 games in each of the two previous seasons, edged up to 57–97 in 1955, to 69 wins in 1956, to 76 wins in 1957, to 89 wins in 1960, and to 95 wins in 1961. (Actually, the 1961 Orioles were on target for 100+ wins until Richards resigned suddenly on September 1.)

As he had done in Chicago, Richards prepared the way for a highly successful era which did not actually arrive until he had moved on. Meanwhile, Lopez managed the White Sox for nine good years. Both Richards and Lopez were “defense first” managers. Lopez once said that all a team really needed was pitching and defense, because if you didn’t allow the other team to score, eventually they would give you a run, and you’d win the game. Richards was less extreme in this regard.

Both Richards and Lopez were reluctant to give up on a player, even if they were not 100% satisfied with his performance. Both men followed a principle which seems to me self-evident, but which an astonishing number of managers do not recognize: never give up on a player until you know whom you’re going to replace him with. Most major league managers, in my experience, will sometimes decide that a player can’t play, bench him or release him, and then start looking around for somebody else to put into the slot. Both Richards and Lopez were careful to know what Plan B was before they dropped Plan A.

Lopez was a man of dignity and composure, a nice-looking man with brilliant white hair and sun-reddened skin. Richards was a tall, gaunt man with a caved-in mouth, a weak chin, shifty eyes, and salt-and-pepper hair that stuck out sideways although he tried to lay it flat across the top of his head. Lopez was a great admirer of Casey Stengel; Richards, of Leo Durocher. Paul Richards’s luck, in any area of his life, was never as good as Al Lopez’s. He wasn’t as handsome or as athletic. He didn’t get to the majors as quickly. Lopez took over two good teams; Richards took on building projects.

Both men managed many of the same players. Paul Richards’s favorite player was Nellie Fox. When he was general manager at Houston in the 1960s and Nellie was about done, he traded to get him back. Lopez reportedly didn’t much like Fox, who won an MVP award for him, and thought he was overrated.

Both Richards and Lopez had the reputation of being outstanding at working with pitchers, in part because they were ex-catchers, and ex-catchers get that reputation, but in large part because they were both “defense first” managers. Both men were able many times to take on pitchers who had been unsuccessful with other teams and turn them around—not because they were brilliant with pitchers, in my opinion, but because they put strong defenses behind the pitchers, which made the pitcher’s stats look a whole lot better. Among the most amazing stats in baseball history: In 1954 Mike Garcia led the American League in ERA, at 2.64. The Cleveland Indians’
staff ERA
was 2.78.

In working on the managers’ all-star teams, I noticed something that surprised me. Al Lopez managed sixteen 20-game winners in his fifteen full seasons as a manager. Paul Richards never managed a 20-game winner. None. He had a reputation as a great handler of pitchers, but he never had a twenty-game winner.

Even if you excluded the 20-game winners, Al Lopez could still pick a brilliant staff from seasons like Mike Garcia, 1954 (19–8, led the league in ERA) Bob Lemon, 1955 (18–10), Herb Score, 1955 (16–10, 245 strikeouts), Bob Shaw, 1959 (18–6), Gary Peters, 1963 (19–8, 2.33), and Juan Pizarro, 1964 (19–9, 2.56). Paul Richards just never had a starting pitcher who had that kind of a season. His best pitchers were all guys who were like 18–11 or 19–12.

This is not to detract from his record with pitchers. The White Sox team ERA improved from 4.41 to 3.50 the year that Paul Richards took over, and the White Sox had the second-best team ERA in the league from 1952 through 1954. In Baltimore he took over a team with little pitching, traded away his only established starter, but had the team about the league average in ERA in two years (1956), better than league the year after that, second in the league in team ERA for three straight years after that, and finally, in his last year there, with the best team ERA in baseball.

Paul Richards wrote a book,
Modern Baseball Strategy
(Prentice-Hall, 1955, with a foreword by Leo Durocher). The book is quite intelligent. He writes about managing, about the day-to-day details of how to manage a baseball team, rather than writing funny stories about silly stuff that happened twenty years ago. In many ways, Richards was ahead of the other managers of his own time, and would be ahead of many of the managers of today. Al Lopez is a Hall of Famer and deserves to be; Paul Richards was a brilliant and talented manager.

But I wouldn’t hire him. Richards was devious, a man who always had his own agenda. He was the kind of man who answered every question thoughtfully. What he was thinking about was what he wanted you to believe. I would want a manager who, like Paul Richards, was intelligent, was patient with young players, and who always had a plan three innings ahead and three years down the road. I would want a man who emulated Paul Richardsin these respects. I wouldn’t want the genuine article.