Managing a major-league baseball club is an incredibly difficult job. Keeping millionaires in line, answering the same stupid questions game after game, constantly trying to think of new ways to say “Our starter sucked tailpipe,” always being second-guessed by chowderheads on talk radio, rarely getting the credit for wins, always getting fired for too many losses. It’s a credit to those men who can pull it off, and I could never do what they do.
None of which will stop me from ranking and criticizing the eight full-time managers in Blue Jays history. Because it’s fun.
Based on criteria I made up myself and riddled with all my own biases, here are my extensive rankings of these managers. I’ve left out the temporary or purely interim managers – Gene Tenace and Mel Queen – and I’m leaving aside Carlos Tosca too, because for managers even more than for players, you simply can’t judge a career until a year or two after it’s over.
As always, comments will be welcomed. Let’s get started.
First, there’s the criteria I’m using to rank the managers on this list. I ask two questions when determining if a manager was a success:
1. Did the team perform well on the field, winning games and getting close to or into the post-season? A manager’s primary job is to win, and the number and significance of the wins his squad delivers is the only measurable criterion by which he can be judged.
2. Did the organization prosper under his on-field leadership? Did established players meet or exceed expectations, and did young stars get the needed playing time and flourish, injury-free? In short, did the manager leave the organization in as good as or better shape than he found it?
Second is the entire question of whether a manager has any real effect on team performance; or put differently, is there any point to a list like this at all? The two extreme positions regarding a manager’s impact are
(a) a manager has no measurable effect on a team’s performance: all managers are relatively equal in their ability to generate more wins; and
(b) leadership and clubhouse chemistry are the keys to winning ballclubs, and selecting the right manager is the key to generating both of those qualities.
Some sabrmaticians are in the first group, and some sportswriters are in the second. A lot of people think a manager is only as good as his players, and others think it’s exactly the other way around.
As usual, I’m somewhere in between. I actually think a manager’s influence on a team is somewhat overrated, if for no other reason than the fact that Bob Brenly has a World Series ring. There are as many examples of teams that won despite their managers as there are examples of teams that won because of them. A workplace boss sets the tone and makes sure the operation flows smoothly, but by and large I don’t think he has a direct impact on the day-to-day productivity of those under him. I’ve always thought a good manager is one who steps in only when needed, and never for very long; the omnipresent, overactive manager who rah-rahs a team to victory, Monty Burns-style, is a nice image but has little grounding in reality.
At the same time, clubhouses don’t run themselves. Take 25 young men from a wide variety of cultures, with millions of dollars in the bank, considerable egos in the locker and widely differing definitions of “professionalism,” and stick them in a small clubhouse for eight months; there’ll be problems. Some are self-starters, some need a kick in the ass, and some go back and forth. Some listen to the coaches and learn, others need to be told to show up for extra BP. Some love the spotlight, some shrink from the attention, and both generate resentment in their own way. A volatile group like this needs to be managed properly, or they simply won’t make it through an extremely trying summer, let alone generate an outstanding performance together. It takes the right man in the right circumstances to get these players all pulling in more or less the same direction, generating respect and getting their undivided attention when it’s needed.
Now obviously, the GM of the day plays a large part in this process. It’s probably no coincidence that the three highest-rated managers on this list worked during the Gillick-Beeston regime. Managers with good players in well-run organizations invariably end up with better records than managers with lousy ones, and that affects the first criterion above (wins). But it’s an old dodge to say that anyone could manage a great team, that Sparky Anderson was window dressing on the Big Red Machine. I don’t think it’s that easy; I think it’s difficult to separate the dancer from the dance, the manager from the managed. Good teams are good at least in part because they were managed well: the same team can and does respond differently to a different leader (see Williams/Gaston, 1989). A manager gets extra points from me if he had good players precisely because I think they were good players at least partly because of him.
Okay, that’s enough introductory fluff. On to the ratings!
1. Bobby Cox, 1982-1985
355 W, 292 L (.549)
Division: 1
Pennant: 0
Pythagorean: +5
For some people, this will be a no-brainer choice for #1 manager; for others, it will also be a no-brainer, but for different reasons. How can you choose a manager with four seasons and no post-season series victories over one with nine years and two World Series under his belt? It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was also the right one, and here’s why.
First of all, no manager has had the impact on the franchise that Bobby Cox had. Here’s the Blue Jays’ record in the five seasons before his hiring:
54-107
59-102
53-109
67-95
37-69
and in the four seasons after:
78-84
89-73
89-73
99-62
With Cox’s arrival, the Blue Jays began a run of 11 consecutive winning seasons, unprecedented among expansion teams and since surpassed only by Atlanta. Young players who had shown sparks or flashes of potential broke out under his guidance. Consider the following everyday players who constituted the heart of the order for those Jays:
Damaso Garcia
1980 .278 .296 .381 13/26 stealing
1981 .252 .277 .304 13/16
1982 .310 .338 .399 54/74
1983 .307 .336 .390 31/48
1984 .284 .310 .374 46/58
1985 .282 .302 .377 28/43
Lloyd Moseby
1980 .229 .281 .365 4/10
1981 .233 .278 .357 11/19
1982 .236 .294 .370 11/18
1983 .315 .376 .499 27/35
1984 .280 .368 .470 39/48
1985 .259 .345 .426 37/52
Willie Upshaw
1980 .213 .284 .344
1981 .171 .252 .324
1982 .267 .327 .443
1983 .306 .373 .515
1984 .278 .345 .464
1985 .275 .342 .447
Ernie Whitt
1980 .237 .288 .353
1981 .236 .307 .297
1982 .261 .317 .440
1983 .256 .346 .459
1984 .238 .327 .425
1985 .245 .323 .444
Rance Mulliniks
1980 KC bench
1981 KC bench
1982 .244 .326 .363
1983 .275 .373 .467
1984 .324 .383 .440
1985 .295 .383 .454
Garth Iorg
1980 .248 .286 .329
1981 .242 .269 .293
1982 .285 .307 .365
1983 .275 .298 .376
1984 .227 .244 .304
1985 .312 .358 .469
In every case, each player had his breakout season in ’82 or ’83 under Cox’s tutelage. Cox understood the value of platoons and recognized those players (Whitt/Martinez, Mulliniks/Iorg) who could thrive by platooning and those (Moseby, Upshaw) who could play every day and post solid numbers. And pitchers both young and old (Clancy, Leal, Alexander) had their best seasons under his hand.
Should Cox be given credit for these breakouts? Some of these players might have simply been hitting their stride, and certainly Bobby Mattick had done an excellent job laying the groundwork the two previous seasons for their later success. But the fact remains that no Blue Jays manager can match the lineup of talent that exploded under Cox’s watch. Even if he only receives partial credit, and I think he deserves more, it’s still an impressive achievement.
In addition to bringing the franchise’s key players into full bloom, Cox also brought the franchise itself from expansion punching-bag to fairytale challenger to serious contender in the space of just two seasons. This young team gelled under his intense leadership and the respect he generated; there was not a hint of the clubhouse tension or rancour that would erupt soon after his departure. If not for a bullpen that failed time and again in crucial situations, Cox might have brought more than one division championship to Toronto before 1985.
There’s also the Pythagorean total of +5 referenced above. For those unfamiliar with it, the Pythagorean formula adds the team’s total runs scored and runs allowed and uses those figures to calculate how many games that team “should have” won or lost. Unless your team was on either end of a lot of 19-3 ballgames, a Pythagorean record inconsistent with your actual record is taken to mean you performed better or worse than your actual record would indicate. And since managers are usually assigned responsibility for having the team play above (or below) its abilities, the manager is the one on the spot for the Pythagorean record. Over his five seasons, Cox led his teams to five more wins than their on-field performance would expect them to achieve, a little over one per year, and that’s pretty good. In fact, only one Jays’ manager can top that, with an average of 3.5 wins above expected over his tenure. And it’s not who you think.
Now, all that said, Cox was far from perfect. He has never been a terrific in-game strategist, and other managers long ago realized that he goes by the book with the predictability of a metronome. His platoon solutions were too easily exploited by deep bullpens. He didn’t handle pressure particularly well – his intensity coiled up even tighter in such situations. This rubbed off on his young, impressionable teams, who also tended to seize up at key times (Danny Jackson, anyone?). The anecdote about how a preoccupied Cox sprayed aftershave into his armpits during the ’85 ALCS says it all. And maybe it’s no coincidence that a failure to put opponents away in the playoffs and an inability to assemble a crunch-time bullpen performance are two characteristics that have followed him to Atlanta. I should also add that personally, I’ll never understand why he left just when this team was ready to take the next step forward.
In summary, then, Bobby Cox was manager when this franchise reinvented itself, bursting onto the international baseball scene and commanding respect as a dangerous ballclub. The 1985 team, which came so close to a World Series showdown with Whitey Herzog’s Running Redbirds (one shudders to think of Ernie Whitt behind the plate for that), was the culmination of three years of contention and set the stage for the Blue Jays’ popularity and success for the next decade. His teams consistently performed better than their production, their key players flourished under his leadership, and he led them to their first division title and playoff appearance. No one served the Blue Jays better as manager than Bobby Cox did.
2. Cito Gaston, 1989-1997
683 W, 636 L (.518)
Division: 5
Pennants: 2
World Series: 2
Pythagorean: -2
He deserves a spot somewhere in the Hall of Fame, you know. The first African-American manager to win a World Series, and then he comes back and wins another one. The longest tenure with one team of any African-American manager until Dusty Baker came along. The manager after whom (I think) people stopped making a big deal about the colour of the manager’s skin (call it the Doug Williams Effect). And he was at the helm during the two greatest seasons in Blue Jays’ history. But for all that, Cito Gaston comes second on this list of all-time Blue Jays managers.
First the positive, and there’s a lot. It’s sometimes forgotten that Gaston’s greatest managerial feat might not have been the World Series years at all, but 1989. That year, he replaced the fired Jimy Williams with the team in last place and haemorrhaging badly. By season’s end, he had them in the playoffs against Oakland. When that team failed to advance and the 1990 squad also disappointed, it led to major roster changes: the acquisitions of Devon White, Robbie Alomar and Joe Carter, and the loss of George Bell, Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez, among the last of the mid-‘80s Jays.
These new players flourished under Gaston, none more so than White. He arrived from California with a reputation as a violent malcontent; within months, he was known as a graceful and unparalleled centerfielder, a capable leadoff man, and a steadying influence in the clubhouse. Joe Carter bonded immediately with Gaston and became the on-field leader, putting up some of his best seasons as a professional. Toronto’s young pitchers (Stottlemyre, Guzman, Hentgen) began to blossom, and in 1991 Gaston’s Jays again won the division, losing another heartbreaker in the playoffs.
(Sidebar: yes, Juan Guzman probably was a better choice to start Game 1 against the Twins, but it’s not like Gaston decided to put Galen Cisco out there. Candiotti was a veteran whose composure was reasonable to count on in an extremely tough park. I won’t penalize Cito for making that call. The Twins’ 1991 World Series crown should have an giant assist attached to it named “The Metrodome.”)
At the end of 1991, Gaston’s tenure could be likened to that of Jimy Williams, who also guided good teams to the brink but couldn’t quite put them over the top. But then Pat Gillick brought in two players who fit Gaston to a T – Dave Winfield and Jack Morris. And Gaston got the most out of them, a 100 RBI, 870-OPS season from Winfield and 20 wins from Morris.
Then, in the playoffs against Oakland, a new day finally dawned. Robbie Alomar’s home run marked a turning point for the franchise, comparable only to Ed Sprague’s 9th-inning blast a few days later. In the World Series against Bobby Cox, Gaston outmanoeuvred his old mentor with one of the finest strategic displays in Series history. For those who today doubt Gaston’s confidence in youngsters, remember that he removed tiring veteran Jimmy Key in extra innings in Game 6 and, with everything on the line, replaced him with rookie Mike Timlin. Two minutes later, Joe was jumpin’.
1992 was a triumph for Gaston, but 1993 might have been an even better performance. No team had repeated as Series champs since the ’78 Yankees, and as Toronto’s pitching wilted, it seemed the Jays would suffer the same fate. But Gaston mustered his troops and produced an offensive juggernaut that ripped through the American League (first in batting and slugging, third in OBP). Gaston was aided by two new classy veterans, Paul Molitor and Dave Stewart, and it was a difficult task to have them step into the shoes of Series heroes Morris and Winfield. But Gaston’s greatest managing feat that year might have been gaining the instant respect of Rickey Henderson down the stretch, and integrating this notorious personality into a championship clubhouse. The 1993 Series is overshadowed in retrospect by Joe Carter’s home run and the 15-14 game, but Gaston again managed well, making only one clear error in judgment (leaving a tanked Dave Stewart in the game to face Lenny Dykstra). Cito deserves enormous credit for taking a rich clubhouse with a vast array of challenging personalities and moulding them into a champion.
So why is Gaston second on this list? I’m afraid it’s because of five things: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and Shawn Green.
In his last four seasons, Gaston’s teams went 55-60 (3rd), 56-88 (5th), 74-88 (4th) and 76-86 (5th); with essentially the same talent available to him in 1998, Tim Johnson went 88-74. The incredible afterglow of the double World Series dissipated quickly; the ’94 strike had a huge role in that, of course, but it was also clear that the franchise had lost its way. The team’s on-field play was listless, and player development stagnated. Dynamic young players stayed on the bench, while recycled role players took away valuable at-bats.
Gaston, who had unfairly been targeted as a do-nothing manager during the team’s successful years, now seemed overly affected by these same attacks, construing them more than once as racially motivated. The team was adrift, and Gaston seemed unable or unwilling to change tactics and adapt to the new realities of the franchise. His legendary stubbornness took on more than a hint of arrogance, and the team picked up his attitude, constantly making excuses for lousy performances. The teams’ fans, who have always been sharper than management believed, picked this up and stayed away from the Skydome in droves. It was the start of the team’s Dark Ages.
As for Green, the Dodgers’ slugging right fielder will always be symbolic of the young players whom Gaston couldn’t or wouldn’t develop in his later years as manager. Here are Green’s offensive numbers year by year:
1995 .288 .326 .509 (379 AB)
1996 .280 .342 .448 (422 AB)
1997 .287 .340 .469 (429 AB)
1998 .278 .334 .510 (630 AB)
1999 .309 .384 .588 (614 AB)
2000 Gone
Those first three seasons, of course, are those in which Gaston had decided Green was a platoon player, and treated him accordingly. They were also Green’s key arbitration-eligible seasons, used up for nothing while guys like Jake Brumfield and Robert Perez took Green’s at-bats against lefties. Green didn’t become a full-time player until Gaston left, at which point the monster numbers started coming. By the time Green had to be dealt with long-term, the Jays had gotten just two great years out of him, and when Gaston was rehired as hitting coach in 2000 (not his fault, of course), that sealed the deal on Green’s tenure in Toronto.
Carlos Delgado fared better, but not by too much. After tearing up the American League in April ’94 (remember that monster home run to the upper, upper deck?), Delgado fell into a terrible slump and didn’t resurface as a Blue Jay regular until 1996. But it wasn’t until ’98 – after Gaston left – that Delgado broke out. And once again, his arbitration-eligible years had been used up with less benefit to the team than if they had perhaps allowed him to DH in ’95, instead of having Paul Molitor pad his Hall of Fame numbers.
There are other examples. John Olerud declined steadily under Gaston’s approach until being dealt away for next to nothing. Robbie Alomar’s attitude and petulance became problematic, and Gaston didn’t intervene. Shannon Stewart remained a part-timer or minor-leaguer during Cito’s reign. And the one young player that Gaston did stick with early and often, Alex Gonzalez, turned out to be the wrong one. Gobbling up at-bats during those latter years were the likes of Charlie O’Brien, Tomas Perez, Ed Sprague, Otis Nixon, and Juan Samuel — veterans to whom Cito became overly loyal, or youngsters who simply couldn’t do the job. Yes indeed, Gord Ash deserves a large part of the blame for this, but it’s also the manager’s job to continually develop young talent, especially when the team is on the downward part of the success cycle. Neither Ash nor Gaston recognized where the team was heading, and it cost the franchise dearly.
In the spring of 1993, Cito Gaston was already ahead of where Bobby Cox had been following Cox’s first four seasons; by spring ’94, Gaston was well in command. But he spun his wheels in his final four seasons, doing damage to the team’s reputation, on-field performance, attendance, and perhaps most importantly, player development. Those last four seasons, in my mind, are enough to pull Cito down to the second level. But that should not detract from the significance of his accomplishments and the positive results he achieved for a beleaguered franchise that put away the “Blow Jays” tag forever under his stewardship.
3. Bobby Mattick, 1980-1981
104 W, 164 L (.388)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +1
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but before you go Dubya on me, let me first note that the gap between the first two managers on this list and everyone else is a pretty canyonesque one. The Jays have essentially had two great managers in their history, and a lot of lesser ones. But I don’t want it to seem a backhanded compliment when I say that Bobby Mattick was the best of the rest.
On the surface, Mattick’s reign has little to distinguish it: a putrid .388 winning percentage, two last-place finishes, and one of the shorter Blue Jays managerial reigns. But look behind the numbers and you’ll see something more. For one thing, Mattick’s first season as manager was the first in which the team lost fewer than 100 games. Okay, that is damning with faint praise. How about this: in split-season 1981, the Jays entered the strike an awful 16-42, a .276 winning percentage that would have shattered every record had it continued to season’s end. But in the post-strike second half, Toronto was 21-27, as close to .500 as this franchise had ever been.
More importantly, Mattick was doing precisely the job for which he had been hired: he was teaching the Jays’ first wave of future stars how to play the game. At the end of the 1979 season, Dave Stieb, Jim Clancy and Alfredo Griffin were the only players on the roster who would constitute Toronto’s first contending team. By the end of Mattick’s tenure, they had been joined, in whole or in part-time, by:
Jesse Barfield
George Bell
Barry Bonnell
Damaso Garcia
Garth Iorg
Luis Leal
Lloyd Moseby
Willie Upshaw
Ernie Whitt
The heart of the Blue Jays’ contenders of the early- to mid-‘80s came into the league under Bobby Mattick’s supervision. And by the time he was finished, they knew how to play the game right. One of the best teachers in baseball made sure that this squad was relentlessly schooled in the fundamentals of the game. Whatever else may be said about Bobby Cox’s Blue Jays of 1982-1985, they were fundamentally solid and they showed up to play every day. Cox deserves credit for continuing that tradition, of course: but if he brought this team up to full speed, Mattick was the one who gave it a running start. And along with Cox, Mattick remains the only Blue Jays manager never to be fired.
"I don't know where this organization would be without him,” Paul Beeston once said of Mattick. I’ll tell you this, they would not have been the team of the decade (’83-’93). No chance.
4. Jim Fregosi, 1999-2000
167 W, 157 L (.515)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +7
Of the eight managers on this list, veteran Jim Fregosi lands just above the median, and that seems about right for a guy whose managerial stint in Toronto was thoroughly mediocre. Called into the breach when Gord Ash realized (six months too late) that Tim Johnson couldn’t continue to be manager, Fregosi is the walking definition of a veteran placeholder. His personality and style are set to intense, colourful, traditional and autocratic, and the settings are permanent. When you hire Jim Fregosi, you either have a veteran team that needs to take that one last step, or you don’t really have a plan. In the spring of 1998, with no one else ready to take over for the fired Johnson, Ash proved the latter to be the case.
Did anything interesting happen on Fregosi’s watch? Well, the Jays had adopted their usual blinkered belief that they were this close to contention, so young player development again took a backseat to trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado each had their first monster seasons under Fregosi, David Wells had 20 wins, Tony Batista became gold found in the street, and Homer Bush had his solitary useful season. On the downside, the likes of Craig Grebeck drained at-bats from younger players, John Frascatore went ape-shite on national TV, and by far the worst, the young starters struggled terribly, with Roy Halladay’s historic 2000 implosion the most horrific of a group of performances that included ERAs in the 5s and 6s for Chris Carpenter and Kelvim Escobar and the end of the line for Pat Hentgen. Fregosi coaxed fine seasons out of the veteran likes of Esteban Loiaza and Frank Castillo, which did the franchise no good in either the short- or the long-term.
About the only remarkable thing about Fregosi is that +7 Pythagorean number, indicating that he managed to find seven more wins than his teams should have won on paper. Impressive as that is, however, those seven extra wins merely fastened the Jays more snugly into third place. Fregosi’s time in Toronto was as forgettable a time as you could ask for: nothing ventured, nothing gained, nothing learned, and nothing won that mattered. The Jim Fregosi Era: so what?
5. Jimy Williams, 1986-1989
281 W, 241 L (.538)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -9
Which was the greatest team in Blue Jays history? If you go by World Series victories, of course, it’s a tossup between ’92 and ’93. If you prefer total wins in one season, it’s the ’85 Jays, winners of 99 games and the club’s first division crown. But if you use Pythagorean measures, you’ll find that the 1987 Toronto Blue Jays “should have gone” 100-62, the only century mark the franchise would ever have achieved.
That team did not, of course, win 100 games. It won 96, the last of which was a September 26th 10-9 victory over Detroit, giving the club a 3½ game division lead over the Tigers with seven games left to play. If you were there, you know what happened next. If you weren’t, then you’ll have heard all about The Collapse, the worst week in franchise history, when this club succumbed to bad fortune and folded under pressure. And leading the way, with his hands jammed resolutely into his powder-blue waistband and his face a grim mask, was Jimy Williams.
Williams was an odd case from the beginning. As a third-base coach under Bobby Cox, he was actually quite well-liked by the players, convivial and open to confidences. But Cox’s abrupt resignation took everyone by surprise, and the Jays hadn’t really been grooming anyone to fill the top job. Nonetheless, no one thought it strange that Williams should be handed the vacancy (he’d had great success as a minor-league manager), and few people were expecting anything but continued success from this gloriously promising franchise.
It didn’t work out that way. Williams decided that he had to change his personal style now that he was manager, and many players were surprised and alienated. The team fell apart dramatically in 1986, falling to fourth place as the starters were battered around. In 1987 came The Collapse, seven awful games at season’s end that wiped out a tremendous season up to that point. In 1988, there was the George Bell fiasco, when Williams (following Pat Gillick’s orders) set out to move MVP Bell to DH. Bell resisted fiercely, Gillick didn’t back Williams up, and the resulting feud broke Williams’ credibility with the players. When the team started terribly in 1989, Williams was history. Over his three-plus years as manager, Jimy’s teams won nine fewer games than Pythagoras would expect, second-worst in franchise history.
So if Williams was such a disaster, why isn’t he ranked lower on this list? Partly it’s because many key franchise players prospered under his watch. Jesse Barfield and George Bell had their best seasons, Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff became full-time stars, Kelly Gruber hit his stride and Tom Henke was one of the game’s best closers. Partly it’s because whatever else you can say about Jimy, he never had a losing record until his final few days in 1989, and not even Bobby Cox can say that. And partly it’s because I always felt that Pat Gillick left Williams twisting in the wind over the DH incident that came to define Jimy’s regime. These mitigating factors aren’t enough to move Jimy into the upper half of all-time Jays managers, but they’re more than enough to keep him safely ensconced high in the second division.
6. Buck Martinez, 2001-2002
100 W, 115 L (.465)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -3
What can you say here? Buck Martinez is by all accounts an upstanding guy. He was an underrated ballplayer, a great teammate and a wonderful broadcaster. But boy, was he a washout as manager. It wasn’t entirely his fault: he arrived on the scene in 2001 in the midst of Paul Godfrey’s ludicrous “I love a parade” marketing campaign that was trying to pass off as a contender a club that hadn’t cracked six games above .500 since 1993. His rotation stalwarts included the apathetic Esteban Loaiza and the lackadaisical Joey Hamilton, not to mention an immature bundle of damaged goods named Chris Carpenter. His middle infield was a disaster aside from first base, his outfield’s BB/K ratio was appalling, and his catcher’s career was about to drive off a cliff. After a 16-9 April, the team went 54-73 the rest of 2001 and started 2002 in a funk. It was during the painful 2001 tailspin that it finally became clear just how far this franchise had fallen under the Gord Ash–Dave Stewart administration, and when the house of cards finally came down, Buck happened to be inside.
At the same time, he also has to shoulder much of the blame himself. While Buck was in the broadcast booth, the game appeared to pass him by. Martinez discovered the hard way that players no longer step up and improve simply because you suggest they do so. His vaunted communications skills provide fruitless when it became apparent that his players weren’t interested in anything he had to say, and he didn’t have a Plan B. His hand-picked coaching staff was ragtag, and the team had little discipline or instruction both on the field and off.
I still remember the night when I finally concluded that Buck had lost his touch. Pointless veteran utility man Jeff Frye had already doubled, tripled and homered when he came to the plate one last time in a game that was well out of reach. Frye hit a gapper that would have been a double for anyone except Cecil Fielder carrying a full plate of chicken wings. But the first-base coach waved Frye back to first for a “single,” Frye acquiesced, and Martinez did nothing. The “second cycle in team history” was a joke and the franchise’s integrity took a major hit, because the“professional” in the dugout allowed his people to behave like high schoolers. I don’t know if any of the players lost respect for Martinez that night, but I sure did.
Buck was swept out of office by JP Ricciardi halfway through the season, but it’s clear to me at least that Ricciardi only allowed Martinez to stay on at a personal request from Paul Godfrey, who didn’t want to be seen giving up on his “ideal” choice as manager. Martinez never understood or bought into the Ricciardi philosophy, and it quickly became apparent that for better or for worse (it says here better), Buck had to go in order for the franchise to continue to rebuild. No players particularly prospered under Martinez, though no one really suffered either, and he did seem to have a positive impact on the pitchers. But the end result was, his tenure was the final chapter in the holding pattern that constituted much of the franchise’s last several years. Buck did not in any way distinguish himself, his teams played losing ball, and he’s as forgotten as yesterday’s box score. Only the fact that I still think he’s a fundamentally good guy keeps him ahead of….
7. Tim Johnson, 1998-1998
88 W, 74 L (.543)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +3
I struggled with this one, I really did. See, it all comes down to this: Johnson lied about serving in Vietnam. In fact, you could even capitalize and italicize that, and it becomes the nice little mantra that the media include every time they mention him: He Lied About Serving In Vietnam. Those six words are permanently associated with Tim Johnson, so much so that he’ll probably never hold a major-league job again. Whether that’s fair or not is a different story.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened. After a ridiculously long and public managerial search that included Davey Johnson, Larry Bowa, Paul Molitor, Davey Lopes, Larry Parrish, Buck Martinez, and my ninth-grade teacher Loyola Maher, Gord Ash settled on successful minor-league manager Tim Johnson. On the field, things seemed to go very well: the team won 88 games, a high-water mark in the last decade. Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green were finally given full-time jobs and responded with breakout seasons. Shannon Stewart stole a career-high 51 bases, Jose Cruz had his last promising season with the strike zone, and even Jose Canseco (remember that?) cranked out 46 homers. The final 88-win total exceeded Pythagorean expectations by three.
So what went wrong? Well, plenty. Johnson got off to a bad start with long-time veterans Pat Hentgen and Ed Sprague (though neither player performed well in response). He developed a serious personal rift with pitching coach Mel Queen, a high-level political dispute that spread through the clubhouse and reportedly got third-base coach Jack Hubbard fired. Charges of favouritism towards some players became pointed and bitter. Johnson rode Chris Carpenter and Kelvim Escobar hard down the stretch, putting 175 IP on Carpenter’s 23-year-old arm in a performance that some still link to his subsequent health problems. And the team’s impressive win total was in reality inflated by a meaningless late-season winning streak.
Late in the year is when it all blew up, though. Local sportswriters broke the story that Johnson, while trying to pump up his players, told them he saw combat duty during the Vietnam War, when in fact his service with the U.S. Marines was actually spent stateside, training recruits. Johnson denied it at first, and the front office attacked the local press’s integrity. But in one of the rare instances of Toronto sportswriters getting it completely right, Johnson eventually admitted the lie.
Ash gave him the option of resigning, which he should never have done; Johnson declined it, which he also should never have done. By the end of the season, veterans were openly saying they couldn’t wait to flee the clubhouse. The problem festered all winter and Ash had to wait till spring training to fire Johnson, saving face by saying it “became clear during the spring” that the issue would be a distraction. Outside of the Mike Sirotka deal, Ash never made a worse mistake than not firing Tim Johnson’s ass on the spot. It led to two more wasted years under Jim Fregosi and stalled the franchise’s development even further.
Is it fair to permanently brand Johnson with the “liar” stigma? Players and managers have done worse things and kept their jobs. A manager better liked by those around him might have actually survived the scandal, and a GM who offered less ambiguous support might have helped too. But Johnson made an error in judgment that looked too much like a basic flaw in his integrity, and while you can get over the first, it’s hard to explain away the second, at that time anyway. And from a purely practical point of view, Johnson lost his clubhouse with his error, and rightly or wrongly, he shouldn’t have stayed a day longer than the end of the season.
Tim Johnson led the Blue Jays to a successful season and oversaw the breakout development of some young hitters. But the damage he might have done to the organization’s young arms, the damage he did do to relationships in the clubhouse, and the far greater damage he caused to the franchise’s development, reputation and image throughout organized sports, all mean that he can’t place any higher than seventh on this list.
8. Roy Hartsfield, 1977-1979
166 W, 318 L (.343)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -10
Well, someone has to finish last, so it might as well be Roy. The least well-known of all Blue Jays managers, Hartsfield held this job for three seasons only because a brick tied to a lever wouldn’t have been able to walk out and take the ball from the starter. Hartsfield was the ultimate placeholder, occupying the manager’s seat for an expansion team that fielded only three players (Griffin, Clancy and Stieb) of any long-term significance to the franchise, while the future of the organization was developing in Dunedin and Syracuse. Hartsfield’s job was essentially to fill out the lineup card, argue with umpires, and keep the organization from embarrassing itself on the field while the Master Plan was getting underway. He succeeded on the first two counts, anyway.
Not many guys can go 54-107 in their first year as manager and then, after two years of hard work and dedication, manage to go 53-109. Not many guys can take a miserable expansion team and actually produce ten fewer wins over three seasons than their runs differential would dictate. Yet this was the Roy Hartsfield legacy, a thoroughly stinky team that just got stinkier as time went on.
Undeniably, Hartsfield was given virtually nothing to work with. In his final catastrophic season as manager, John Mayberry led the team with 21 HRs and 74 RBI. Roy Howell’s 715 OPS was second on the club. The team on-base percentage was .308. The closer was Tom Buskey (6-10, 3.43, 7 saves). Someone named Butch Edge actually pitched. This was a horrible team for three years running, but Hartsfield didn’t make it any better; by the end of ’79, even these expansion scrubs were calling for a new field boss. Mr. Irrelevant, Roy Hartsfield.
I’d like to close this article with a suggestion – or actually, more of a plea. Why is it that baseball is the only sport where the on-field coaches dress the same as the players? You don’t see Lenny Wilkens wearing a Raptors uniform on the bench, or Bill Belichek wearing pads and a helmet, or Scotty Bowman decked out in skates and oversized sweater. These guys usually show up to work wearing suits, or at the least a casual outfit in the team’s colours. If it was good enough for Connie Mack, shouldn’t it be good enough for today’s managers — many of whom don’t do anyone any favours when they wear close-fitting double-knit? I thank you.
None of which will stop me from ranking and criticizing the eight full-time managers in Blue Jays history. Because it’s fun.
Based on criteria I made up myself and riddled with all my own biases, here are my extensive rankings of these managers. I’ve left out the temporary or purely interim managers – Gene Tenace and Mel Queen – and I’m leaving aside Carlos Tosca too, because for managers even more than for players, you simply can’t judge a career until a year or two after it’s over.
As always, comments will be welcomed. Let’s get started.
First, there’s the criteria I’m using to rank the managers on this list. I ask two questions when determining if a manager was a success:
1. Did the team perform well on the field, winning games and getting close to or into the post-season? A manager’s primary job is to win, and the number and significance of the wins his squad delivers is the only measurable criterion by which he can be judged.
2. Did the organization prosper under his on-field leadership? Did established players meet or exceed expectations, and did young stars get the needed playing time and flourish, injury-free? In short, did the manager leave the organization in as good as or better shape than he found it?
Second is the entire question of whether a manager has any real effect on team performance; or put differently, is there any point to a list like this at all? The two extreme positions regarding a manager’s impact are
(a) a manager has no measurable effect on a team’s performance: all managers are relatively equal in their ability to generate more wins; and
(b) leadership and clubhouse chemistry are the keys to winning ballclubs, and selecting the right manager is the key to generating both of those qualities.
Some sabrmaticians are in the first group, and some sportswriters are in the second. A lot of people think a manager is only as good as his players, and others think it’s exactly the other way around.
As usual, I’m somewhere in between. I actually think a manager’s influence on a team is somewhat overrated, if for no other reason than the fact that Bob Brenly has a World Series ring. There are as many examples of teams that won despite their managers as there are examples of teams that won because of them. A workplace boss sets the tone and makes sure the operation flows smoothly, but by and large I don’t think he has a direct impact on the day-to-day productivity of those under him. I’ve always thought a good manager is one who steps in only when needed, and never for very long; the omnipresent, overactive manager who rah-rahs a team to victory, Monty Burns-style, is a nice image but has little grounding in reality.
At the same time, clubhouses don’t run themselves. Take 25 young men from a wide variety of cultures, with millions of dollars in the bank, considerable egos in the locker and widely differing definitions of “professionalism,” and stick them in a small clubhouse for eight months; there’ll be problems. Some are self-starters, some need a kick in the ass, and some go back and forth. Some listen to the coaches and learn, others need to be told to show up for extra BP. Some love the spotlight, some shrink from the attention, and both generate resentment in their own way. A volatile group like this needs to be managed properly, or they simply won’t make it through an extremely trying summer, let alone generate an outstanding performance together. It takes the right man in the right circumstances to get these players all pulling in more or less the same direction, generating respect and getting their undivided attention when it’s needed.
Now obviously, the GM of the day plays a large part in this process. It’s probably no coincidence that the three highest-rated managers on this list worked during the Gillick-Beeston regime. Managers with good players in well-run organizations invariably end up with better records than managers with lousy ones, and that affects the first criterion above (wins). But it’s an old dodge to say that anyone could manage a great team, that Sparky Anderson was window dressing on the Big Red Machine. I don’t think it’s that easy; I think it’s difficult to separate the dancer from the dance, the manager from the managed. Good teams are good at least in part because they were managed well: the same team can and does respond differently to a different leader (see Williams/Gaston, 1989). A manager gets extra points from me if he had good players precisely because I think they were good players at least partly because of him.
Okay, that’s enough introductory fluff. On to the ratings!
1. Bobby Cox, 1982-1985
355 W, 292 L (.549)
Division: 1
Pennant: 0
Pythagorean: +5
For some people, this will be a no-brainer choice for #1 manager; for others, it will also be a no-brainer, but for different reasons. How can you choose a manager with four seasons and no post-season series victories over one with nine years and two World Series under his belt? It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was also the right one, and here’s why.
First of all, no manager has had the impact on the franchise that Bobby Cox had. Here’s the Blue Jays’ record in the five seasons before his hiring:
54-107
59-102
53-109
67-95
37-69
and in the four seasons after:
78-84
89-73
89-73
99-62
With Cox’s arrival, the Blue Jays began a run of 11 consecutive winning seasons, unprecedented among expansion teams and since surpassed only by Atlanta. Young players who had shown sparks or flashes of potential broke out under his guidance. Consider the following everyday players who constituted the heart of the order for those Jays:
Damaso Garcia
1980 .278 .296 .381 13/26 stealing
1981 .252 .277 .304 13/16
1982 .310 .338 .399 54/74
1983 .307 .336 .390 31/48
1984 .284 .310 .374 46/58
1985 .282 .302 .377 28/43
Lloyd Moseby
1980 .229 .281 .365 4/10
1981 .233 .278 .357 11/19
1982 .236 .294 .370 11/18
1983 .315 .376 .499 27/35
1984 .280 .368 .470 39/48
1985 .259 .345 .426 37/52
Willie Upshaw
1980 .213 .284 .344
1981 .171 .252 .324
1982 .267 .327 .443
1983 .306 .373 .515
1984 .278 .345 .464
1985 .275 .342 .447
Ernie Whitt
1980 .237 .288 .353
1981 .236 .307 .297
1982 .261 .317 .440
1983 .256 .346 .459
1984 .238 .327 .425
1985 .245 .323 .444
Rance Mulliniks
1980 KC bench
1981 KC bench
1982 .244 .326 .363
1983 .275 .373 .467
1984 .324 .383 .440
1985 .295 .383 .454
Garth Iorg
1980 .248 .286 .329
1981 .242 .269 .293
1982 .285 .307 .365
1983 .275 .298 .376
1984 .227 .244 .304
1985 .312 .358 .469
In every case, each player had his breakout season in ’82 or ’83 under Cox’s tutelage. Cox understood the value of platoons and recognized those players (Whitt/Martinez, Mulliniks/Iorg) who could thrive by platooning and those (Moseby, Upshaw) who could play every day and post solid numbers. And pitchers both young and old (Clancy, Leal, Alexander) had their best seasons under his hand.
Should Cox be given credit for these breakouts? Some of these players might have simply been hitting their stride, and certainly Bobby Mattick had done an excellent job laying the groundwork the two previous seasons for their later success. But the fact remains that no Blue Jays manager can match the lineup of talent that exploded under Cox’s watch. Even if he only receives partial credit, and I think he deserves more, it’s still an impressive achievement.
In addition to bringing the franchise’s key players into full bloom, Cox also brought the franchise itself from expansion punching-bag to fairytale challenger to serious contender in the space of just two seasons. This young team gelled under his intense leadership and the respect he generated; there was not a hint of the clubhouse tension or rancour that would erupt soon after his departure. If not for a bullpen that failed time and again in crucial situations, Cox might have brought more than one division championship to Toronto before 1985.
There’s also the Pythagorean total of +5 referenced above. For those unfamiliar with it, the Pythagorean formula adds the team’s total runs scored and runs allowed and uses those figures to calculate how many games that team “should have” won or lost. Unless your team was on either end of a lot of 19-3 ballgames, a Pythagorean record inconsistent with your actual record is taken to mean you performed better or worse than your actual record would indicate. And since managers are usually assigned responsibility for having the team play above (or below) its abilities, the manager is the one on the spot for the Pythagorean record. Over his five seasons, Cox led his teams to five more wins than their on-field performance would expect them to achieve, a little over one per year, and that’s pretty good. In fact, only one Jays’ manager can top that, with an average of 3.5 wins above expected over his tenure. And it’s not who you think.
Now, all that said, Cox was far from perfect. He has never been a terrific in-game strategist, and other managers long ago realized that he goes by the book with the predictability of a metronome. His platoon solutions were too easily exploited by deep bullpens. He didn’t handle pressure particularly well – his intensity coiled up even tighter in such situations. This rubbed off on his young, impressionable teams, who also tended to seize up at key times (Danny Jackson, anyone?). The anecdote about how a preoccupied Cox sprayed aftershave into his armpits during the ’85 ALCS says it all. And maybe it’s no coincidence that a failure to put opponents away in the playoffs and an inability to assemble a crunch-time bullpen performance are two characteristics that have followed him to Atlanta. I should also add that personally, I’ll never understand why he left just when this team was ready to take the next step forward.
In summary, then, Bobby Cox was manager when this franchise reinvented itself, bursting onto the international baseball scene and commanding respect as a dangerous ballclub. The 1985 team, which came so close to a World Series showdown with Whitey Herzog’s Running Redbirds (one shudders to think of Ernie Whitt behind the plate for that), was the culmination of three years of contention and set the stage for the Blue Jays’ popularity and success for the next decade. His teams consistently performed better than their production, their key players flourished under his leadership, and he led them to their first division title and playoff appearance. No one served the Blue Jays better as manager than Bobby Cox did.
2. Cito Gaston, 1989-1997
683 W, 636 L (.518)
Division: 5
Pennants: 2
World Series: 2
Pythagorean: -2
He deserves a spot somewhere in the Hall of Fame, you know. The first African-American manager to win a World Series, and then he comes back and wins another one. The longest tenure with one team of any African-American manager until Dusty Baker came along. The manager after whom (I think) people stopped making a big deal about the colour of the manager’s skin (call it the Doug Williams Effect). And he was at the helm during the two greatest seasons in Blue Jays’ history. But for all that, Cito Gaston comes second on this list of all-time Blue Jays managers.
First the positive, and there’s a lot. It’s sometimes forgotten that Gaston’s greatest managerial feat might not have been the World Series years at all, but 1989. That year, he replaced the fired Jimy Williams with the team in last place and haemorrhaging badly. By season’s end, he had them in the playoffs against Oakland. When that team failed to advance and the 1990 squad also disappointed, it led to major roster changes: the acquisitions of Devon White, Robbie Alomar and Joe Carter, and the loss of George Bell, Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez, among the last of the mid-‘80s Jays.
These new players flourished under Gaston, none more so than White. He arrived from California with a reputation as a violent malcontent; within months, he was known as a graceful and unparalleled centerfielder, a capable leadoff man, and a steadying influence in the clubhouse. Joe Carter bonded immediately with Gaston and became the on-field leader, putting up some of his best seasons as a professional. Toronto’s young pitchers (Stottlemyre, Guzman, Hentgen) began to blossom, and in 1991 Gaston’s Jays again won the division, losing another heartbreaker in the playoffs.
(Sidebar: yes, Juan Guzman probably was a better choice to start Game 1 against the Twins, but it’s not like Gaston decided to put Galen Cisco out there. Candiotti was a veteran whose composure was reasonable to count on in an extremely tough park. I won’t penalize Cito for making that call. The Twins’ 1991 World Series crown should have an giant assist attached to it named “The Metrodome.”)
At the end of 1991, Gaston’s tenure could be likened to that of Jimy Williams, who also guided good teams to the brink but couldn’t quite put them over the top. But then Pat Gillick brought in two players who fit Gaston to a T – Dave Winfield and Jack Morris. And Gaston got the most out of them, a 100 RBI, 870-OPS season from Winfield and 20 wins from Morris.
Then, in the playoffs against Oakland, a new day finally dawned. Robbie Alomar’s home run marked a turning point for the franchise, comparable only to Ed Sprague’s 9th-inning blast a few days later. In the World Series against Bobby Cox, Gaston outmanoeuvred his old mentor with one of the finest strategic displays in Series history. For those who today doubt Gaston’s confidence in youngsters, remember that he removed tiring veteran Jimmy Key in extra innings in Game 6 and, with everything on the line, replaced him with rookie Mike Timlin. Two minutes later, Joe was jumpin’.
1992 was a triumph for Gaston, but 1993 might have been an even better performance. No team had repeated as Series champs since the ’78 Yankees, and as Toronto’s pitching wilted, it seemed the Jays would suffer the same fate. But Gaston mustered his troops and produced an offensive juggernaut that ripped through the American League (first in batting and slugging, third in OBP). Gaston was aided by two new classy veterans, Paul Molitor and Dave Stewart, and it was a difficult task to have them step into the shoes of Series heroes Morris and Winfield. But Gaston’s greatest managing feat that year might have been gaining the instant respect of Rickey Henderson down the stretch, and integrating this notorious personality into a championship clubhouse. The 1993 Series is overshadowed in retrospect by Joe Carter’s home run and the 15-14 game, but Gaston again managed well, making only one clear error in judgment (leaving a tanked Dave Stewart in the game to face Lenny Dykstra). Cito deserves enormous credit for taking a rich clubhouse with a vast array of challenging personalities and moulding them into a champion.
So why is Gaston second on this list? I’m afraid it’s because of five things: 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and Shawn Green.
In his last four seasons, Gaston’s teams went 55-60 (3rd), 56-88 (5th), 74-88 (4th) and 76-86 (5th); with essentially the same talent available to him in 1998, Tim Johnson went 88-74. The incredible afterglow of the double World Series dissipated quickly; the ’94 strike had a huge role in that, of course, but it was also clear that the franchise had lost its way. The team’s on-field play was listless, and player development stagnated. Dynamic young players stayed on the bench, while recycled role players took away valuable at-bats.
Gaston, who had unfairly been targeted as a do-nothing manager during the team’s successful years, now seemed overly affected by these same attacks, construing them more than once as racially motivated. The team was adrift, and Gaston seemed unable or unwilling to change tactics and adapt to the new realities of the franchise. His legendary stubbornness took on more than a hint of arrogance, and the team picked up his attitude, constantly making excuses for lousy performances. The teams’ fans, who have always been sharper than management believed, picked this up and stayed away from the Skydome in droves. It was the start of the team’s Dark Ages.
As for Green, the Dodgers’ slugging right fielder will always be symbolic of the young players whom Gaston couldn’t or wouldn’t develop in his later years as manager. Here are Green’s offensive numbers year by year:
1995 .288 .326 .509 (379 AB)
1996 .280 .342 .448 (422 AB)
1997 .287 .340 .469 (429 AB)
1998 .278 .334 .510 (630 AB)
1999 .309 .384 .588 (614 AB)
2000 Gone
Those first three seasons, of course, are those in which Gaston had decided Green was a platoon player, and treated him accordingly. They were also Green’s key arbitration-eligible seasons, used up for nothing while guys like Jake Brumfield and Robert Perez took Green’s at-bats against lefties. Green didn’t become a full-time player until Gaston left, at which point the monster numbers started coming. By the time Green had to be dealt with long-term, the Jays had gotten just two great years out of him, and when Gaston was rehired as hitting coach in 2000 (not his fault, of course), that sealed the deal on Green’s tenure in Toronto.
Carlos Delgado fared better, but not by too much. After tearing up the American League in April ’94 (remember that monster home run to the upper, upper deck?), Delgado fell into a terrible slump and didn’t resurface as a Blue Jay regular until 1996. But it wasn’t until ’98 – after Gaston left – that Delgado broke out. And once again, his arbitration-eligible years had been used up with less benefit to the team than if they had perhaps allowed him to DH in ’95, instead of having Paul Molitor pad his Hall of Fame numbers.
There are other examples. John Olerud declined steadily under Gaston’s approach until being dealt away for next to nothing. Robbie Alomar’s attitude and petulance became problematic, and Gaston didn’t intervene. Shannon Stewart remained a part-timer or minor-leaguer during Cito’s reign. And the one young player that Gaston did stick with early and often, Alex Gonzalez, turned out to be the wrong one. Gobbling up at-bats during those latter years were the likes of Charlie O’Brien, Tomas Perez, Ed Sprague, Otis Nixon, and Juan Samuel — veterans to whom Cito became overly loyal, or youngsters who simply couldn’t do the job. Yes indeed, Gord Ash deserves a large part of the blame for this, but it’s also the manager’s job to continually develop young talent, especially when the team is on the downward part of the success cycle. Neither Ash nor Gaston recognized where the team was heading, and it cost the franchise dearly.
In the spring of 1993, Cito Gaston was already ahead of where Bobby Cox had been following Cox’s first four seasons; by spring ’94, Gaston was well in command. But he spun his wheels in his final four seasons, doing damage to the team’s reputation, on-field performance, attendance, and perhaps most importantly, player development. Those last four seasons, in my mind, are enough to pull Cito down to the second level. But that should not detract from the significance of his accomplishments and the positive results he achieved for a beleaguered franchise that put away the “Blow Jays” tag forever under his stewardship.
3. Bobby Mattick, 1980-1981
104 W, 164 L (.388)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +1
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but before you go Dubya on me, let me first note that the gap between the first two managers on this list and everyone else is a pretty canyonesque one. The Jays have essentially had two great managers in their history, and a lot of lesser ones. But I don’t want it to seem a backhanded compliment when I say that Bobby Mattick was the best of the rest.
On the surface, Mattick’s reign has little to distinguish it: a putrid .388 winning percentage, two last-place finishes, and one of the shorter Blue Jays managerial reigns. But look behind the numbers and you’ll see something more. For one thing, Mattick’s first season as manager was the first in which the team lost fewer than 100 games. Okay, that is damning with faint praise. How about this: in split-season 1981, the Jays entered the strike an awful 16-42, a .276 winning percentage that would have shattered every record had it continued to season’s end. But in the post-strike second half, Toronto was 21-27, as close to .500 as this franchise had ever been.
More importantly, Mattick was doing precisely the job for which he had been hired: he was teaching the Jays’ first wave of future stars how to play the game. At the end of the 1979 season, Dave Stieb, Jim Clancy and Alfredo Griffin were the only players on the roster who would constitute Toronto’s first contending team. By the end of Mattick’s tenure, they had been joined, in whole or in part-time, by:
Jesse Barfield
George Bell
Barry Bonnell
Damaso Garcia
Garth Iorg
Luis Leal
Lloyd Moseby
Willie Upshaw
Ernie Whitt
The heart of the Blue Jays’ contenders of the early- to mid-‘80s came into the league under Bobby Mattick’s supervision. And by the time he was finished, they knew how to play the game right. One of the best teachers in baseball made sure that this squad was relentlessly schooled in the fundamentals of the game. Whatever else may be said about Bobby Cox’s Blue Jays of 1982-1985, they were fundamentally solid and they showed up to play every day. Cox deserves credit for continuing that tradition, of course: but if he brought this team up to full speed, Mattick was the one who gave it a running start. And along with Cox, Mattick remains the only Blue Jays manager never to be fired.
"I don't know where this organization would be without him,” Paul Beeston once said of Mattick. I’ll tell you this, they would not have been the team of the decade (’83-’93). No chance.
4. Jim Fregosi, 1999-2000
167 W, 157 L (.515)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +7
Of the eight managers on this list, veteran Jim Fregosi lands just above the median, and that seems about right for a guy whose managerial stint in Toronto was thoroughly mediocre. Called into the breach when Gord Ash realized (six months too late) that Tim Johnson couldn’t continue to be manager, Fregosi is the walking definition of a veteran placeholder. His personality and style are set to intense, colourful, traditional and autocratic, and the settings are permanent. When you hire Jim Fregosi, you either have a veteran team that needs to take that one last step, or you don’t really have a plan. In the spring of 1998, with no one else ready to take over for the fired Johnson, Ash proved the latter to be the case.
Did anything interesting happen on Fregosi’s watch? Well, the Jays had adopted their usual blinkered belief that they were this close to contention, so young player development again took a backseat to trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado each had their first monster seasons under Fregosi, David Wells had 20 wins, Tony Batista became gold found in the street, and Homer Bush had his solitary useful season. On the downside, the likes of Craig Grebeck drained at-bats from younger players, John Frascatore went ape-shite on national TV, and by far the worst, the young starters struggled terribly, with Roy Halladay’s historic 2000 implosion the most horrific of a group of performances that included ERAs in the 5s and 6s for Chris Carpenter and Kelvim Escobar and the end of the line for Pat Hentgen. Fregosi coaxed fine seasons out of the veteran likes of Esteban Loiaza and Frank Castillo, which did the franchise no good in either the short- or the long-term.
About the only remarkable thing about Fregosi is that +7 Pythagorean number, indicating that he managed to find seven more wins than his teams should have won on paper. Impressive as that is, however, those seven extra wins merely fastened the Jays more snugly into third place. Fregosi’s time in Toronto was as forgettable a time as you could ask for: nothing ventured, nothing gained, nothing learned, and nothing won that mattered. The Jim Fregosi Era: so what?
5. Jimy Williams, 1986-1989
281 W, 241 L (.538)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -9
Which was the greatest team in Blue Jays history? If you go by World Series victories, of course, it’s a tossup between ’92 and ’93. If you prefer total wins in one season, it’s the ’85 Jays, winners of 99 games and the club’s first division crown. But if you use Pythagorean measures, you’ll find that the 1987 Toronto Blue Jays “should have gone” 100-62, the only century mark the franchise would ever have achieved.
That team did not, of course, win 100 games. It won 96, the last of which was a September 26th 10-9 victory over Detroit, giving the club a 3½ game division lead over the Tigers with seven games left to play. If you were there, you know what happened next. If you weren’t, then you’ll have heard all about The Collapse, the worst week in franchise history, when this club succumbed to bad fortune and folded under pressure. And leading the way, with his hands jammed resolutely into his powder-blue waistband and his face a grim mask, was Jimy Williams.
Williams was an odd case from the beginning. As a third-base coach under Bobby Cox, he was actually quite well-liked by the players, convivial and open to confidences. But Cox’s abrupt resignation took everyone by surprise, and the Jays hadn’t really been grooming anyone to fill the top job. Nonetheless, no one thought it strange that Williams should be handed the vacancy (he’d had great success as a minor-league manager), and few people were expecting anything but continued success from this gloriously promising franchise.
It didn’t work out that way. Williams decided that he had to change his personal style now that he was manager, and many players were surprised and alienated. The team fell apart dramatically in 1986, falling to fourth place as the starters were battered around. In 1987 came The Collapse, seven awful games at season’s end that wiped out a tremendous season up to that point. In 1988, there was the George Bell fiasco, when Williams (following Pat Gillick’s orders) set out to move MVP Bell to DH. Bell resisted fiercely, Gillick didn’t back Williams up, and the resulting feud broke Williams’ credibility with the players. When the team started terribly in 1989, Williams was history. Over his three-plus years as manager, Jimy’s teams won nine fewer games than Pythagoras would expect, second-worst in franchise history.
So if Williams was such a disaster, why isn’t he ranked lower on this list? Partly it’s because many key franchise players prospered under his watch. Jesse Barfield and George Bell had their best seasons, Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff became full-time stars, Kelly Gruber hit his stride and Tom Henke was one of the game’s best closers. Partly it’s because whatever else you can say about Jimy, he never had a losing record until his final few days in 1989, and not even Bobby Cox can say that. And partly it’s because I always felt that Pat Gillick left Williams twisting in the wind over the DH incident that came to define Jimy’s regime. These mitigating factors aren’t enough to move Jimy into the upper half of all-time Jays managers, but they’re more than enough to keep him safely ensconced high in the second division.
6. Buck Martinez, 2001-2002
100 W, 115 L (.465)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -3
What can you say here? Buck Martinez is by all accounts an upstanding guy. He was an underrated ballplayer, a great teammate and a wonderful broadcaster. But boy, was he a washout as manager. It wasn’t entirely his fault: he arrived on the scene in 2001 in the midst of Paul Godfrey’s ludicrous “I love a parade” marketing campaign that was trying to pass off as a contender a club that hadn’t cracked six games above .500 since 1993. His rotation stalwarts included the apathetic Esteban Loaiza and the lackadaisical Joey Hamilton, not to mention an immature bundle of damaged goods named Chris Carpenter. His middle infield was a disaster aside from first base, his outfield’s BB/K ratio was appalling, and his catcher’s career was about to drive off a cliff. After a 16-9 April, the team went 54-73 the rest of 2001 and started 2002 in a funk. It was during the painful 2001 tailspin that it finally became clear just how far this franchise had fallen under the Gord Ash–Dave Stewart administration, and when the house of cards finally came down, Buck happened to be inside.
At the same time, he also has to shoulder much of the blame himself. While Buck was in the broadcast booth, the game appeared to pass him by. Martinez discovered the hard way that players no longer step up and improve simply because you suggest they do so. His vaunted communications skills provide fruitless when it became apparent that his players weren’t interested in anything he had to say, and he didn’t have a Plan B. His hand-picked coaching staff was ragtag, and the team had little discipline or instruction both on the field and off.
I still remember the night when I finally concluded that Buck had lost his touch. Pointless veteran utility man Jeff Frye had already doubled, tripled and homered when he came to the plate one last time in a game that was well out of reach. Frye hit a gapper that would have been a double for anyone except Cecil Fielder carrying a full plate of chicken wings. But the first-base coach waved Frye back to first for a “single,” Frye acquiesced, and Martinez did nothing. The “second cycle in team history” was a joke and the franchise’s integrity took a major hit, because the“professional” in the dugout allowed his people to behave like high schoolers. I don’t know if any of the players lost respect for Martinez that night, but I sure did.
Buck was swept out of office by JP Ricciardi halfway through the season, but it’s clear to me at least that Ricciardi only allowed Martinez to stay on at a personal request from Paul Godfrey, who didn’t want to be seen giving up on his “ideal” choice as manager. Martinez never understood or bought into the Ricciardi philosophy, and it quickly became apparent that for better or for worse (it says here better), Buck had to go in order for the franchise to continue to rebuild. No players particularly prospered under Martinez, though no one really suffered either, and he did seem to have a positive impact on the pitchers. But the end result was, his tenure was the final chapter in the holding pattern that constituted much of the franchise’s last several years. Buck did not in any way distinguish himself, his teams played losing ball, and he’s as forgotten as yesterday’s box score. Only the fact that I still think he’s a fundamentally good guy keeps him ahead of….
7. Tim Johnson, 1998-1998
88 W, 74 L (.543)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: +3
I struggled with this one, I really did. See, it all comes down to this: Johnson lied about serving in Vietnam. In fact, you could even capitalize and italicize that, and it becomes the nice little mantra that the media include every time they mention him: He Lied About Serving In Vietnam. Those six words are permanently associated with Tim Johnson, so much so that he’ll probably never hold a major-league job again. Whether that’s fair or not is a different story.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened. After a ridiculously long and public managerial search that included Davey Johnson, Larry Bowa, Paul Molitor, Davey Lopes, Larry Parrish, Buck Martinez, and my ninth-grade teacher Loyola Maher, Gord Ash settled on successful minor-league manager Tim Johnson. On the field, things seemed to go very well: the team won 88 games, a high-water mark in the last decade. Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green were finally given full-time jobs and responded with breakout seasons. Shannon Stewart stole a career-high 51 bases, Jose Cruz had his last promising season with the strike zone, and even Jose Canseco (remember that?) cranked out 46 homers. The final 88-win total exceeded Pythagorean expectations by three.
So what went wrong? Well, plenty. Johnson got off to a bad start with long-time veterans Pat Hentgen and Ed Sprague (though neither player performed well in response). He developed a serious personal rift with pitching coach Mel Queen, a high-level political dispute that spread through the clubhouse and reportedly got third-base coach Jack Hubbard fired. Charges of favouritism towards some players became pointed and bitter. Johnson rode Chris Carpenter and Kelvim Escobar hard down the stretch, putting 175 IP on Carpenter’s 23-year-old arm in a performance that some still link to his subsequent health problems. And the team’s impressive win total was in reality inflated by a meaningless late-season winning streak.
Late in the year is when it all blew up, though. Local sportswriters broke the story that Johnson, while trying to pump up his players, told them he saw combat duty during the Vietnam War, when in fact his service with the U.S. Marines was actually spent stateside, training recruits. Johnson denied it at first, and the front office attacked the local press’s integrity. But in one of the rare instances of Toronto sportswriters getting it completely right, Johnson eventually admitted the lie.
Ash gave him the option of resigning, which he should never have done; Johnson declined it, which he also should never have done. By the end of the season, veterans were openly saying they couldn’t wait to flee the clubhouse. The problem festered all winter and Ash had to wait till spring training to fire Johnson, saving face by saying it “became clear during the spring” that the issue would be a distraction. Outside of the Mike Sirotka deal, Ash never made a worse mistake than not firing Tim Johnson’s ass on the spot. It led to two more wasted years under Jim Fregosi and stalled the franchise’s development even further.
Is it fair to permanently brand Johnson with the “liar” stigma? Players and managers have done worse things and kept their jobs. A manager better liked by those around him might have actually survived the scandal, and a GM who offered less ambiguous support might have helped too. But Johnson made an error in judgment that looked too much like a basic flaw in his integrity, and while you can get over the first, it’s hard to explain away the second, at that time anyway. And from a purely practical point of view, Johnson lost his clubhouse with his error, and rightly or wrongly, he shouldn’t have stayed a day longer than the end of the season.
Tim Johnson led the Blue Jays to a successful season and oversaw the breakout development of some young hitters. But the damage he might have done to the organization’s young arms, the damage he did do to relationships in the clubhouse, and the far greater damage he caused to the franchise’s development, reputation and image throughout organized sports, all mean that he can’t place any higher than seventh on this list.
8. Roy Hartsfield, 1977-1979
166 W, 318 L (.343)
Division: 0
Pythagorean: -10
Well, someone has to finish last, so it might as well be Roy. The least well-known of all Blue Jays managers, Hartsfield held this job for three seasons only because a brick tied to a lever wouldn’t have been able to walk out and take the ball from the starter. Hartsfield was the ultimate placeholder, occupying the manager’s seat for an expansion team that fielded only three players (Griffin, Clancy and Stieb) of any long-term significance to the franchise, while the future of the organization was developing in Dunedin and Syracuse. Hartsfield’s job was essentially to fill out the lineup card, argue with umpires, and keep the organization from embarrassing itself on the field while the Master Plan was getting underway. He succeeded on the first two counts, anyway.
Not many guys can go 54-107 in their first year as manager and then, after two years of hard work and dedication, manage to go 53-109. Not many guys can take a miserable expansion team and actually produce ten fewer wins over three seasons than their runs differential would dictate. Yet this was the Roy Hartsfield legacy, a thoroughly stinky team that just got stinkier as time went on.
Undeniably, Hartsfield was given virtually nothing to work with. In his final catastrophic season as manager, John Mayberry led the team with 21 HRs and 74 RBI. Roy Howell’s 715 OPS was second on the club. The team on-base percentage was .308. The closer was Tom Buskey (6-10, 3.43, 7 saves). Someone named Butch Edge actually pitched. This was a horrible team for three years running, but Hartsfield didn’t make it any better; by the end of ’79, even these expansion scrubs were calling for a new field boss. Mr. Irrelevant, Roy Hartsfield.
I’d like to close this article with a suggestion – or actually, more of a plea. Why is it that baseball is the only sport where the on-field coaches dress the same as the players? You don’t see Lenny Wilkens wearing a Raptors uniform on the bench, or Bill Belichek wearing pads and a helmet, or Scotty Bowman decked out in skates and oversized sweater. These guys usually show up to work wearing suits, or at the least a casual outfit in the team’s colours. If it was good enough for Connie Mack, shouldn’t it be good enough for today’s managers — many of whom don’t do anyone any favours when they wear close-fitting double-knit? I thank you.
