Managerial Report Cards: AL Wild Card Losers
As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?
My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.
I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it.
Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays
Batting: A-
The Rays ran out an all-righty (or switch) lineup against Jordan Montgomery to start the series. That sounds like a great plan, but as Tom Tango pointed out, it’s not as simple as it seems. The data suggest that all-righty lineups haven’t fared as well against Montgomery as ones with three or four lefties. But that’s not really what ailed the Rays here. They didn’t use all these righties because they’re addicted to platooning, though you might have been able to level that charge against them in past years. They’re just out of lefties, and light on switch hitters. Wander Franco is on indefinite administrative leave. Brandon Lowe and Luke Raley are injured. Raimel Tapia and Jonathan Aranda aren’t in Cash’s regular rotation. It wasn’t so much a matter of sitting lefties; Josh Lowe was the only batter added to the starting lineup against righty Nathan Eovaldi in Game 2.
As such, Cash didn’t have many levers to pull. Another way of putting it? They had to claim Tapia, a guy who couldn’t find playing time on the Red Sox or Brewers, and he ended up on their playoff roster. To my eyes, Cash had only two or three reasonable pinch hitting choices: Junior Caminero, Aranda, and whichever of Jose Siri or Lowe didn’t start that day.
The flatness of the roster also made pinch hitting difficult. The pinch hitters were only clearly better than catcher René Pinto – Taylor Walls is right on the cusp, but you’d need a good spot to sub out a switch-hitting plus defender. In the first game of the series, Cash played it straight. When Pinto batted in a high-leverage spot in the seventh, he got pulled for Caminero. He likely would have been pulled in the fifth if he hadn’t batted with one out and none on. Then when Montgomery left the game after seven strong innings, Cash broke out the semi-platoons: Lowe hit for Siri and Aranda hit for Curtis Mead. It didn’t really work – the pinch hitters went 0-for-2 with a walk – but it was quite straightforward, and there just aren’t good enough pinch hitting options on the team these days to consider substituting out any part of the top of the order.
The second game was even more straightforward, because the Rangers only used righties. The first time a pinch hitter might have mattered was when Pinto led off the bottom of the sixth, but his spot was going to come up again, which means pinch hitting here would just swap a Pinto at-bat now for a Christian Bethancourt one later. Caminero pinch hit for Walls with two on and two out in the seventh, a perfectly logical place to do so. Pinto ended up batting for himself the next inning with the bases empty, and at this point saving Aranda isn’t an obvious choice, but I still think it’s okay. Contingent on the Rays tying the game, they’d be turning the lineup over again, and there would probably be a better spot to use Aranda given that. Overall, Cash didn’t have a lot of decisions to make.
Pitching: C+
Tyler Glasnow was shaky in the opener, giving up two runs in the first five innings, though his defense sure didn’t help matters. Cash sent him back out for the sixth – a marginal decision in my opinion – and he walked the first two batters. I didn’t love letting Glasnow face Marcus Semien a fourth time, but I don’t think this was an obvious one either way. With Corey Seager up and the game on the line, Cash brought in a righty. That sounds bad, but it was Chris Devenski, a changeup specialist with huge reverse splits. Seager hit a single to right on the first pitch he saw, and an error turned that into two runs, but I don’t mind the decision.
The next time that 9-1-2 part of the lineup came up, with two lefties and Semien, Cash used lefty Jake Diekman. Andrew Kittredge got the low-leverage ninth. Unless you would’ve pulled Glasnow earlier, there wasn’t much to critique about these decisions.
With their season on the line, the Rays came back with Zach Eflin in Game 2. He ran into trouble in the fourth inning, but not in a way where there was much chance to pull him in a big spot; he gave up a solo homer, a run-scoring triple, and then a two-run homer. Hey, sometimes your starters give up runs. I’m less enamored with leaving Eflin in for the whole fifth inning. Seager and Robbie Grossman both reached to start the frame, but Cash stuck with Eflin, and he gave up a run-scoring groundout to push things to 5-0. The Rays aren’t short on guys with huge strikeout rates; I would have liked to see one of them in the game instead of Eflin with a runner on third and less than two outs. Every run is of dire importance when you’re down 4-0.
Maybe it didn’t matter, though, because setup man Colin Poche came out the next inning and gave up two more runs. Shawn Armstrong and Zack Littell then pitched out the string. I can’t in good conscience say Cash did a good job in this game; somehow Pete Fairbanks and Robert Stephenson, two of the team’s top three relievers, didn’t pitch in a game where the team gave up seven runs. The game wasn’t close, so the decisions didn’t matter much, but it was strange to see the Rays ease up on the bullpen gas in a series where they probably needed it.
John Schneider, Toronto Blue Jays
Batting: B+
The Blue Jays came out with their standard lineup against Minnesota’s raft full of righties. Schneider was ready the first time he got a chance to bring in a righty pinch hitter against a lefty reliever; Whit Merrifield subbed in for Daulton Varsho against Caleb Thielbar. The bench thins out quickly after that, though – Davis Schneider has cooled off to the point of barely being involved, and Santiago Espinal is not a fearsome hitter – so Schneider didn’t overdo the lefty-swapping, leaving Brandon Belt in the game. Managerial moves weren’t the differentiator here; the Jays just couldn’t score with their best facing Minnesota’s best.
Now that we’ve established that Merrifield is Schneider’s favorite hitter off the bench, Game 2 seems confusing. Espinal replaced Kevin Kiermaier as soon as Thielbar entered the game. I’m not really sure why the roles were reversed, but to be honest, I don’t think there’s a meaningful difference between the two. By the ninth inning, Schneider was using Merrifield as a pinch runner (for Espinal of all people), but there’s just not much you can do managerially when the opposing team only uses a single lefty reliever. You can hide your lefty hitters against him, but that’s about it. The most disastrous Jays offensive move, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s fall-asleep pickoff play, mattered far more than all of Schneider’s maneuvering combined.
Pitching: D-
Let’s breeze through the first game, because the second game is what everyone wants to read about. The Jays clearly came into this series looking to leverage their bullpen. Kevin Gausman, a Cy Young candidate and clearly the best pitcher on the team, went only four innings and 73 pitches. The Jays replaced him with a string of situational relievers, and to their credit, their bullpen can eat innings in huge quantities. Erik Swanson gave way to Tim Mayza against a pocket of lefties, Chad Green came back in for the next group of righties, and then Génesis Cabrera entered to force the Twins to pinch hit for Edouard Julien. Jordan Hicks delivered a typically Hicks-ian inning — two baserunners but no runs — to finish Toronto’s bullpen day.
I don’t like pulling Gausman there in a vacuum, but he was laboring and was about to face the top of the order for a third time. Royce Lewis had already tagged him for two homers. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions when your pitcher doesn’t have it, and the Jays bullpen is so good that I understand this move even if I don’t agree with it.
Now, moves that I don’t understand or agree with? That’d be pulling José Berríos the next day. Berríos was rolling; he had five strikeouts through three innings. He then walked Lewis to lead off the fourth, and Schneider had seen enough; he went to Yusei Kikuchi out of the bullpen. The Twins had a bunch of lefties coming up, and Schneider wanted the platoon advantage.
Of course, he didn’t really get it. Max Kepler stayed in the game and singled. Donovan Solano replaced Alex Kirilloff, an easy change for the Twins, and walked. Carlos Correa singled home a run. The first actually tough decision for the Twins was Willi Castro pinch hitting for Matt Wallner. I think the Jays somehow got worse matchups by making the pitching change, and it’s not like Berríos was laboring; he hadn’t even gotten to 50 pitches. He’s been better than Kikuchi this year, and Kikuchi had to adjust to entering out of the bullpen with a runner on base, perhaps not easy for a guy with very particular habits.
It would be one thing if the Jays were trying to make the whole game out of bullpen. As I mentioned up above, their relief corps is among the best in baseball. But I’m not including Kikuchi in that unit; he’s their fourth starter, and hadn’t thrown a single pitch in relief this year. This was different than the previous day’s move to Swanson in the fifth; that came about because Schneider counted it out and realized that every remaining inning could feature a high-leverage reliever. This time, he gave up on a starter for some speculative relief options instead, a far less defensible plan.
It would be one thing if Kikuchi were clearly better than Berríos. It would be one thing if the Twins had only lefties and no other options. Berríos has large platoon splits in his career, but so does Kikuchi, and Kikuchi had to deal with three righties in his first four batters faced. It’s a risky move, and I don’t even think there was much reward. The Twins did a good job breaking up their lineup so that it wasn’t particularly easy to attack with lefty relief; for whatever reason, the Blue Jays tried anyway.
The weirdest part? If the Jays were truly intent on leaning more into the bullpen, they should have asked Berríos for more, not less. If he gave them five-plus innings, they’d be able to completely finish out the game with lockdown arms. They could even dip into the arms they’d used the previous day – Swanson pitched in both games, but no one else did – knowing that Chris Bassitt, the Game 3 starter, eats innings effectively.
The weird middle ground they opted for has the downsides of both approaches. They didn’t use a stable of lockdown relievers – they used Kikuchi, who’s a back-end starter. They didn’t save the bullpen for a final game, either; the first time a tough righty came up against Kikuchi after the three batter minimum was satisfied, Schneider went back to his relief corps. It just feels like they came up with an idea – get Kikuchi in there against some lefties – and then used it even though it didn’t make much sense in the context of the game.
I’m not here to tell you that Berríos would have continued throwing up scoreless innings if he’d stayed in the game. He’s been susceptible to lefties his entire career. He’s more good than great. How a pitcher is going in the first three innings isn’t strongly predictive of what will happen in the next three. But you won’t convince me that Berríos’s matchup would have been worse than Kikuchi’s. The Blue Jays picked Berríos to start the game for a reason — he’s better. They lost sight of that in trying to be cute, and it cost them. I’m not giving Schneider an F, because I thought his Game 1 decision-making was solid, but he made a hash of Game 2. Toronto didn’t score enough runs, and that’s why they’re going home, but they also made perhaps the most head-scratching decision we’ll see all October.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Please answer True or False, and tell me why.
The decision to pull Berrios was worse than the Showalter not putting Britton in the game.
(For the record, I have no idea whether I think this is true or false, just that both were bad)
True. Because ultimately, if Britton pitched that inning, sure it would have given the O’s another chance to hit, but then Ubaldo would have just come in the next inning and coughed up a lot of runs like he did. The O’s would have had a better chance by having that one last shot but not a good one.
Unless Britton was in for the duration
In a do or die scenario, I think you leave Britton in for 2 innings if he threw less than 15 pitches his first one. So you get 2 chances to score runs. An average offense scores a run 70% of the time if given 2 innings to try. That’s something.
100% accurate
I don’t understand the logic here. Let’s say Britton is guaranteed to go 1 inning without giving up a run and Ubaldo is guaranteed to go an inning and give up 2. There is definitely value in putting Britton in first. This gives the O’s another inning to score two/three runs and withstand the runs that Ubaldo will give up.
There is absolutely no defense to saving Britton.
The other memorable one was replacing Blake Snell with Nick Anderson
That was not a bad decision, I will maintain to this day.
Putting in Nick Anderson was a bad decision. Anderson gave up a run in every prior appearance in the series. And he gave up a run in that appearance.
It was like the Astros taking out Greinke in the seventh game of the 2019 World Series. An overthought decision.
false, because you could argue Showalter’s blunder lost the game for them, can’t really say that about Shneider’s,.. Jays lost cuz their bats got pulled, not their pitcher.
Showalter’s was worse given the Jays had EE up, 2 runners on, Jimenez pitching, and the Jays burned through all their high leverage arms. If Britton comes in and shuts down the Jays, they have very little chance of shutting down the O’s offence another inning. And if he gave up a run? At least you went down with Britton pitching, and there isn’t this “what would have happened if…” scenario.
The Berrios decision was absolutely dumb, but it’s not as bad by the smallest of margins.
Good post. Very true.
Now let’s compare it to Grady Little leaving Pedro in.
We should do the greatest hits for all the AL East teams.
I’ll never criticize someone for leaving in the best pitcher of his time. Randy Johnson pitched in relief after starting the previous day. That worked, but might not have. It’s less bold with Pedro.
Johnson pitched in relief the following day, because Arizona had exactly two pitchers who weren’t total butt… and Schilling was already on the mound.
Wow That was EXACTLY what I was thinking. This dumb move reminded me of the Showalter refusal to use his ace closer for 11 innings. Glad you mentioned it. I call it a tie in stupidity.
The Kikuchi thing is tough, because although the Twins had lefties coming up their righty bench bats are just about as good as the lefties they replace, and Baldelli has been very willing to make those changes relatively early all year.
Both of the games they won could easily have ended differently (MAT’s catch at the wall was essentially the same play Jose Siri didn’t make, the pickoff of Vladito in Game 2, plenty of others). It sure was nice for the Twins to come out on the right end of those for once.
But then why not go to Mayza, an actual mid/high leverage reliever who is used to pitching with runners on? Why put Kikuchi in a spot with runners on at all? And why not use Kikuchi down 3-0 in the 5th of game 1 where you need multiple innings, to save the bullpen for the rest of the series?
I can’t defend it. It was a very weird move.
The Kikuchi thing is tough because it can be construed as trying to fix Game 1s mistake in Game 2. Not that leaving Gausman in was necessary a mistake, per se, but there was chatter to that effect.
How does Cash get an A- for batting when he didn’t have many decisions to make? A top grade should indicate he DID something, and that something was both inspired and successful. I don’t know that there was anything unconventional to be done that wouldn’t have been a Hail Mary, so no penalties for not trying…but simply leaving well enough alone and going with the cards you’re dealt is a B at best.
I think it’s reasonable to call “no obvious tactical mistakes” an A- or B+ in regard to managers?
Angry to disagree. No obvious mistakes should be the baseline, not the above average case
A is doing something good
B is the baseline. You go with what got you here, do what’s expected, and don’t screw it up
Ç is … Fine. Maybe something could have gone another way, maybe you rolled the dice and lost, maybe you got dealt a crappy hand, you didn’t cover yourself in glory but managing probably didn’t lose the game
D is screwing up. Clearly and obviously
F is getting yourself fired
I don’t agree to that!
You think so little of major league managers, as a class, to award them an A for simply doing their job without screwing it up? Is this an Arbys?
Sir, this is a Simpsons bit.
There are 30 major league managers – out of how many managers/coaches in the minors, independent leagues, college, etc. “Not screwing up” for a major league manager is a pretty high bar when every single decision is micro analysed.
If you went for a meal at a Michelin starred restaurant, and the chef did his job without screw ups, what grade would you give it?
It depends. A, for sure, relative to an Arbys. Relative to another Michelin starred restaurant? That would depend.
Are we grading Cash relative to the thousands of other people who earn a paycheck for managing a baseball team? Or are we grading him relative to the cohort of postseason MLB managers?
You seem neither happy nor fun. I’m all for irony but this is just false advertising.
I would be tempted to give Cash an incomplete. Maybe that’s a discomfort with the exercise moreso than the specific grade but I can’t quite swallow an A-.
all I can really ask from a manager is to stay out of the way and not sabotage the game. There’s no brilliant play call like there is in the NFL, or switching from a zone defense to man to man in the NBA
He didn’t start Caminero and went with Walls. That’s not an A- move
It sounds like the Rays used their incredible depth to go as far as they did, and the injuries and administrative leaves were so numerous that putting very good role players in suboptimal situations eventually doomed them.
Blue Jays needed Gausman to win.
Three game series also helps the team with a weak bullpen
The Jays’ hapless lineup/clutch hitting can make even the weakest of bullpens look mighty!
The Kepler single was a borderline error, and even so, the Jays gave up 2 runs over 5 innings (starting with 0 outs and a runner on 1st) using their strat. Got 2 righty mashers out of the game after 1 AB each, so the Jays had big platoon advantages for the 3rd and 4th time through the order.
I still would rather have saved the bullpen and kept Berrios in for another 9 batters but it’s not that bad.
Yes, this is the key point that so many other are overlooking. Going to Kikuchi was only partly about having him face that pocket of left-handed batters. It was more about the Twins having all those right-handed batters in the rest of the game for Swanson/Garcia/Hicks/Romano. Schneider knew the Twins would likely pinch-hit for at least some of the lefties when Kikuchi came in and the calculus was that was worth it to get the lefties out of the game.
So he obviously couldn’t choose the best reliever with runners on in an elimination game?
I guess he didn’t get bogged down in a land war in Asia, so that’s something.
Of course he could have done that. I think it was a mistake to pull Berrios and replace him with Kikuchi. All I said was the move wasn’t solely about the match-ups in that inning.
Think you’re quite generous with Schneider on both counts.
For hitting – yes Davis Schneider cooled down…to a 105 wRC+ in September. Whit was a 44 wRC+ from August to October, and 25 in September/October. He was absolutely done as a hitter. And in the game before the season ended Davis went 2/5 with 2 doubles. Whit had 2 XBH in the last 10 days. I don’t even think you can justify pinch hitting Whit there.
For the bullpen – game 1 you breezed through it, but down 3-0 it’s hard to justify a parade of relievers (5 for 4 innings), multiple high leverage arms, no low leverage arms (Richards/Garcia), and no multi inning relievers – that game was where Kikuchi made the most sense.
Game 2 was a disaster, but game 1 was also pretty blatantly bad. All the high leverage arms with clean innings, and the low leverage or long relief (Kikuchi) in a higher leverage scenario (tie game vs down 2-3) and with runners on.
He actually had a 91 wRC+ in September. And that was mostly propped up by a bunch of walks. He had a 34% K rate and .301 wOBA in september. If he didnt walk he basically did nothing.
Cash also made a head scratching call to have Siri bunt in the 2nd inning of game 1 with runners on 1st and 3rd. Note that Siri has zero bunt hits or sacrifices all year and has the third highest SLG% on the team. If you missed it Siri had a bunt pop out to pitcher. Poor decision!
Siri played that entire game like the dude who shows up to your rec league 12” softball games six beers deep.
Whether it’s a D- or an F is immaterial to the Jays fan base. Schneider and his minions, by removing a pitcher who was painting, gave energy to the Twins, and sucked the life out of the Jays and their fans. Pink slips are expected.
There has been universal disdain for the Jays pulling Berrios. The usual crab cakes have been denouncing analytics — it’s all they ever do, right or wrong — but even FanGraphs is baffled by the move!
What confuses me: Even if you can justify bringing in a lefty that early, why Kikuchi? Mayza and Cabrera have been great for the Jays. Bring them in mid-inning with runners on, which they are accustomed to. Use Kikuchi to start an inning that would feature lefties, and leave him in if he is dealing, especially if the game is tied and you are concerned about having arms for extra innings.
What Schneider et al did makes no sense, even if Kikuchi had not been scored on.
If it were Mayza instead of Kikuchi?
If Berrios hadn’t walked the previous batter and Kikuchi came in with 0 on and 1 out instead of 1 on and none out?
All decisions are judged based on what happened.
The Berrios decision defined and entire organization, to the dismay of the fans the players and the announcers. If you do something so obviously bizarre aimed at creating a platoon advantage in the late innings for your shut down guys, it had better work. Everyone knows this was a pre-game decision, unrelated to anything going on in the game.
Every manager, every fan and every player prays that in a crucial game his pitcher be not just good but lights out. If you get that guy, and decide to replace him in the fourth, well you get what you deserve.
I can’t agree that Schneider gets a decent grade for how he handled his hitters. Whit Merrifield was ice-cold since July – 56 wRC+ in August, 25 in September, and for the year he dramatically outperformed his xwOBA. He’s pretty clearly the worst hitter on the Jays. I don’t care how cold Schneider was (and, fwiw, he finished the season with two doubles and a walk in game 162), you need to use the guy with the 176 wRC+.
I don’t think Berrios getting removed was Schneider’s decision.
Looking back to 2020 WC: The Jays didn’t start 3rd place finisher in the AL Cy Young Hyun Jin Ryu with regular rest in game 1. The Jays opted to start RHP Matt Shoemaker who goes 3 IP with 2H,0BB,0 R, 2K, and was pulled for lefty Robbie Ray.
The front office loves that move.
I think that one was a matter of “We only have one legit starter, we need to plan for 2 bullpen games to win a 3 game set.” Starting Ryu in game 2 allowed for Shoemaker-> Ray in G1, Ryu in G2, and then whomever in game 3 if it went that deep.