Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (7 page)

In part, McGraw’s teams could dispense with the bunt because they had so much speed. In pre-1920 baseball moving the runners was central to the game, much more so than later. The question wasn’t
if
the manager would do something to move the runner; the question was, what would he do? Teams bunted more, stole bases more often, and used the hit-and-run more often. Playing station-to-station baseball just wasn’t done. McGraw’s teams had outstanding speed, and they probably had fewer bunts simply for that reason.

There is a good deal of discussion about McGraw and the bunt in
The Glory of Their Times
. The thrust of this discussion is that, while the sportswriters perceived John McGraw to be an absolute dictator who determined every detail of strategy, in fact he wasn’t; he gave his players a great deal of leeway. The players themselves, at least prior to 1920, would put the hit-and-run on, or the batter would signal to the runner that he intended to bunt, without waiting for a signal from McGraw. McGraw expected them to know how to play baseball, and they did.

Post-1920, McGraw did become more of a dictator.

Did He Like to Use the Running Game?
A great deal, yes, particularly before 1920. When the lively ball era arrived, he cut back on his base stealing.

In What Circumstances Would He Issue an Intentional Walk?
In 55 World Series games, McGraw’s men issued four walks which were certainly intentional, plus a dozen or more other walks which may have been ordered from the bench. Of the four clearly intentional walks, two came in situations which would now be regarded as odd.

Both of the odd intentional walks were issued by a man who hardly ever walked anybody, Christy Mathewson. In Game Two of the 1913 World Series, against Connie Mack’s Athletics, Mathewson intentionally walked Amos Strunk to pitch to Jack Barry, with the game scoreless in the fourth inning. Christy Mathewson, afraid to pitch to Amos Strunk? In the fourth inning?

That’s odd enough, but the even odder one was in Game Eight of the 1912 World Series, against Boston. In the tenth inning the score was tied 2–2, runners on second and third, one out. Mathewson intentionally walked Duffy Lewis to pitch to Larry Gardner. Gardner hit a sacrifice fly to win the game.

The walk to Lewis set up a force at every base and created the opportunity for Mathewson to get out of the inning with a ground ball. But on the other hand:

a) Gardner had hit .315; Lewis, .284, and

b) Gardner was left-handed; Lewis, right-handed.

With the game on the line, Mathewson intentionally walked a right-handed hitter to get to a left-handed hitter who was also a better hitter.

This event provides good evidence that, prior to 1914, no one was really paying much attention to the platoon differential. Managers were aware of the theory that a left-hander would hit better against a right-hander, had been since the 1870s, but I think at the time it was nothing more than that—a theory.

Did He Hit and Run Very Often?
A lot. He expected his players to be able to hit and run.

Were There Any Unique or Idiosyncratic Strategies That He Particularly Favored?
Pinch running was unusual in his time; he used pinch runners religiously. He was the first manager to have a pitcher who was used mostly in relief, that being Doc Crandall.

How Did He Change the Game?
It’s in the details.

McGraw certainly did more to establish the
profession
of managing than anyone else in history. He helped to ease the way for relief pitchers and professional bench players, but really, relief pitching was inevitable, and I doubt that McGraw caused it to develop any sooner than it otherwise would have.

McGraw was the first manager to hire a coach, although that, too, was probably inevitable.

John McGraw was not a great innovator, and in many ways, he was a dinosaur. He was a part owner/operator, a species which wasn’t common when he started, and was becoming rare. He personally evaluated young players, personally signed them, and personally taught them to play baseball. This was the exception in 1920, and by 1940, that kind of manager was gone.

But McGraw’s legacy is in those hundreds of people that he taught to play baseball, in the tiniest details of what he taught them—where you plant your foot when you pivot on the double play, where you place a bunt under what circumstances, who backs up what base on which play, what you do on the sixth day of spring training, and what the baserunner looks for when he decides whether to break for second or get back to first. McGraw and Connie Mack established orthodoxy in all of these things. He took his job seriously, and he was good at it. He changed it from a young man’s job to a job that required the wisdom of a few gray hairs.

HANDLING THE PITCHING STAFF

Did He Like Power Pitchers, or Did He Prefer to Go with the People Who Put the Ball in Play?
Control pitchers. He never had any use for a hard-throwing pitcher who didn’t throw strikes. Again, McGraw was always afraid of losing. He figured a wild pitcher would lose the game for him.

No John McGraw team ever led the league in walks allowed
. Eleven of McGraw’s teams led the league in
fewest
walks allowed.

Did He Stay with His Starters, or Go to the Bullpen Quickly?
From the beginning of his career to the end, McGraw went to the bullpen more quickly than almost any other manager of his era.

In McGraw’s time, a pitcher’s stamina was considered a moral quality. I say this in dead earnest, and without a trace of irony. A pitcher who was unable to finish a game was looked down upon, disparaged. He was a “seven-inning pitcher,” meaning that he didn’t have what it took to pitch when it really counted, when the game was on the line.

When McGraw began managing, almost 90% of starts ended in complete games. By the time he retired, less than 50% of starts were completed—yet the perception that the starting pitcher failed if he could not complete the game was, if anything, even stronger in 1932 than it had been in 1900. Pitchers were taken out when they
lost
, or when they were behind. Or when, God forbid, they “lost their stuff.”

Part of the secret of John McGraw is that he saw through that. McGraw understood that the practical consequence of confusing physical stamina with moral courage was that tired pitchers would be on the mound when the game was on the line, when fresh pitchers would be available.

“Saves” did not exist in McGraw’s time—not as a statistic, not as a concept. But when saves were figured retroactively, many years later, McGraw’s teams had led the league in saves seventeen times—in 1903, when the Giants led the majors with 8 team saves, in 1908, when they led with 18, in 1921, when they led again with 18. Only in his last few seasons did the league catch up to McGraw in this respect.

This was probably worth at least five games a year to his teams. I don’t have statistics to prove this—it hasn’t been studied—but I would bet that a typical team in the early 1920s probably blew 20 to 25 leads in the late innings. McGraw’s teams probably blew 15 to 20.

Did He Use a Four-Man Rotation?
Never for any sustained length of time, except possibly in 1921.

Did He Use the Entire Staff, or Did He Try to Get Five or Six People to Do Most of the Work?
Early in his career, McGraw rode his two best pitchers like they were mules. In 1903 Mathewson and McGinnity pitched 800 innings, 63% of the team total. Of course, starting pitchers pitched more innings then than they do now, but even in 1903, few teams got 50% of their innings out of two pitchers, and no one else was close to the innings pitched by Matty and the Iron Man, who were 1–2 in the majors in innings pitched.

But as time passed, this became less and less true. The last McGraw pitcher to lead the league in innings pitched was Mathewson, in 1908. McGraw managed twenty-four years after that. After 1920, few of McGraw’s pitchers were even listed among the league leaders in innings pitched.

He became, in this respect, the manager that Casey Stengel emulated—a man who kept lots of pitchers around and used each of them in his own role. In 1924, when McGraw won his last pennant, Virgil Barnes led the team in starts, with 29. He had six pitchers with 16 to 29 starts apiece, and six other pitchers who started one game or a few games. Barnes led the team in innings, with 229; no one else threw more than 188.

McGraw probably went overboard in this respect. One
could
interpret it this way: that as McGraw became more and more arrogant in his later years, he began to see himself as the center of the Giants’ team and began to see his pitchers as interchangeable parts. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but there probably is an element of truth there. One of the things that Bill Terry did that got the Giants back to first place in 1933 was to give Carl Hubbell enough innings to allow him to dominate the league.

How Long Would He Stay with a Starting Pitcher Who Was Struggling?
Not long.

Was There Anything Unique About His Handling of His Pitchers?
Several things—his willlingness to use his bullpen, his willingness to use his sixth starter, his fondness for using one pitcher to pinch-hit for another one.

What Was His Strongest Point As a Manager?
Organization. Foresight. Vision.

Call it what you will, McGraw had a plan, and he stuck to it. Frank Graham, in
McGraw of the Giants
, tells an innocuous little story about Bill Terry in the spring of 1924. It’s not even an anecdote; it’s just something Graham remembered and wrote about twenty years later. George Kelly was entrenched as the Giants’ first baseman, and Terry was frustrated about sitting on the bench. “Try me in the outfield,” said Terry.

McGraw snorted. “You think I want you to get hit on the head and killed?” he asked.

“I played the outfield at Shreveport,” said Terry.

“This isn’t Shreveport,” said McGraw.

Something showed in Terry’s face, irritation or despair. “Take it easy,” said McGraw. “Stick to first base. You’ll be a big-league first baseman some day. Forget about the outfield.”

I would suggest that, with almost any other manager, this incident would have ended differently. You’ve got a talented young hitter here, can’t get in the lineup, and he’s frustrated. “Let me play the outfield,” he says. Almost any manager is going to figure, “Well, why not? We need another bat; if I can use this kid in the outfield, that gives me another option. He wants to play; I don’t want him to sit around and get frustrated and get impatient with me. Sure, let him play the outfield.”

But McGraw didn’t. McGraw had a plan, and he stuck to it. His plan was for Bill Terry to replace George Kelly at first base when the time came, and that’s exactly what happened.

If I had been asked to explain John McGraw’s success, before I began work on this book, I would have given an answer something like this. McGraw had inherent advantages on the rest of the league. He was in New York, and he had money behind him. He was part owner of the Giants. He wasn’t going to be fired. The Giants could make money, so they could spend money. When he wanted a good young player, he could get him. The Giants had Christy Mathewson before they had McGraw. He was a good manager, but with another team, he was probably just another good manager.

But when you look closely at McGraw’s teams, that’s really not it. McGraw had Mathewson and Bill Terry and Frankie Frisch, yes, but the other teams had some good players, too. Mathewson was great, but he was no more than the equal of two contemporaries, Walter Johnson and Pete Alexander. Frisch was great, but he wasn’t Honus Wagner, either. He wasn’t even Eddie Collins. McGraw never had an outfielder like Tris Speaker or Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth, or even Zack Wheat or Harry Heilmann.

McGraw accomplished an awful lot with players like Doc Crandall, Buck Herzog, and Walter Holke. In McGraw’s career, there were a few times when he purchased players that his team critically needed, like Art Nehf or Dave Bancroft, and there were times when he bought young players in a bidding war, like Rube Marquard, Benny Kauff, and Jack Bentley. But there were many, many
more
times when he worked out anonymous young kids, liked what he saw, and built them into baseball players.

In McGraw’s time the minor leagues were all independant operators, and there was always some hotshot rookie who was being hyped as the greatest thing since gravy. McGraw was generally just not interested in those guys. If you compare the talent going into the system, the Philadelphia Phillies probably acquired more talent in McGraw’s time than the Giants did. The Phillies had Pete Alexander, Gavvy Cravath, Fred Luderus, Tom Seaton, Dave Bancroft, Cy Williams, Pinkie Whitney, Lee Meadows, Jimmie Ring. The Boston Red Sox certainly had more star players to work with than the Giants did. What they didn’t have was the
depth
in quality players, and the reason they didn’t have that is because they didn’t build it.

If There Was No Professional Baseball, What Would He Probably Have Done with His Life?
McGraw would have been a businessman, a good one. He’d have made a lot of money running a midsize business, a steel mill or a mine or something. He would also have made a good military officer.