As the reader will likely already know, Ron Roenicke was relieved of his managerial duties with the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday. Nor was this development entirely surprising. After a successful first year with the club in 2011 — a year that ended with a trip to the National League Championship Series — Roenicke’s Brewers were decidedly more pedestrian between 2012 and -14, finishing either third or fourth among NL Central teams in every case. The club was just 7-18 when Doug Melvin et al. made the announcement regarding Roenicke’s dismissal. So, even less impressive than those recent, average-ish teams.
On the one hand, 7-18 is a bad record. On the other, it’s not obvious at all that Milwaukee’s poor play was a product of equally poor coaching by Roenicke. The team were originally projected to win 77-78 games by the methodology used at the site here — with roughly a 4% chance of winning the division and only a 13% chance of making any sort of postseason appearance (including the Wild Card play-in game). Insofar as those probabilities had dropped to about 0% and 1%, respectively, it can be said that the team was underperforming expectations. Objectively, though, the expecations weren’t particularly high to begin with.
Nor can one ignore that a number of circumstances were out of Roenicke’s control. His best player, Jonathan Lucroy, broke his toe in mid-April. His other best player, Carlos Gomez, missed two weeks with a strained hamstring. Ryan Braun, at one point a perennial All Star, had produced fewer wins than a theoretical freely available player. All told, as of today, the club’s five mostly well-compensated players have produced a collective -0.5 WAR. To what degree that’s Roenicke’s fault is debatable — with the caveat that one side of the debate is much easier to support.
As a person who lives constantly (and justifiably) under the impression that he’s about to be fired, the author of this post felt some sympathy for Roenicke. Of course, our situations aren’t entirely analogous. While, on the one hand, Roenicke has earned millions of dollars and will remain compensated by Milwaukee through 2016, my salary is more the kind that allows me to buy a fancy cheese every now and then. Still, the prospect of unemployment isn’t a pleasant one — and, in the case of a major-league manager, is generally the product of disappointing results.
What, I wondered, are Ron Roenicke’s career prospects now that he’s been dismissed from a major-league managerial position? The means by which to answer that question are manifold. The haphazard one I chose was to first identify all those managers who’d assumed that role for at least 162 games over the course of no fewer than two seasons — this, in order to work with a sample of managers who’d been given the job on a full-time basis, and not just held it in an interim capacity. I only considered managers who’d been dismissed from their jobs or not extended following the end of their respective contracts. Which, that’s to say managers who either retired (Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella) or who left of their own volition (Mike Hargrove from the Mariners, Grady Little from the Dodgers) were excluded from consideration. Finally, I considered only those managers who were dismissed at some point between 2006 and -10 — this, in order to examine a sample of former managers who’ve had the opportunity (roughly five to ten years) to move on to other positions.
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