Postseason Manager Report Cards: Craig Counsell and Don Mattingly
Ben Clemens’ managerial report cards have become a postseason staple here at FanGraphs. We’re continuing the tradition this year, while expanding the pool of writers who’ll contribute, and I’ll be stepping in with grades for the abbreviated Wild Card Series. Since I’m only going over two or three games per manager, these will be briefer than the report cards for the managers who are eliminated from the playoffs in later rounds. We’ll start with the two eliminated National League managers today, and then get into Joe Espada’s and Chad Tracy’s decisions in a couple of days.
Like Ben, I care about process and not results here. It’s easy to say “that was a great move because it worked” or “that was a bad move because it failed,” but managers obviously can’t know the result of their decision as they’re making it. I’ve tried my best to transport myself back to the moment of each decision — taking into account the pitches, innings, and plate appearances that led up to it — while ignoring the outcomes.
Before we get into it, I’ll caution that while these are ostensibly manager report cards, there’s a much larger group of people behind the manager that helps to inform his decisions. Before the game, that includes discussions with the front office, which provides the reams of data that every manager has at his disposal during play; in-game, he’s getting feedback from his coaching staff and players on their levels of health and readiness. It really does take a village to get through a baseball game, and realistically, the praise and scorn doesn’t belong to the manager alone.
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Hitting Turner lead off to “spark” the lineup was pretty funny given how bad Turner was this year, and Mattingly hit Turner second a good deal during the season too. I had no problem with going to Duran in that spot I figured Mattingly would only use him in the ninth with a lead. I’m sure Dombrowski played a big role in Nola starting over Wheeler and also Nola pitching on two days rest last Saturday with the wild card seemingly slipping away until the Phillies just held on. I don’t disagree with the grades— and suspect Mattingly is likely days away from being replaced by Cora, but that was likely unless Mattingly got the Phillies to the nlcs.
Counsell didn’t really have good choices to make with their pen as lousy as it is. As noted, his history is to be aggressive in taking out starters. I just don’t think that was a real option here with their bullpen; not much to manage when either path is littered with landmines.
I think Mattingly deserves more credit than this for getting three strong innings out of Andrew Painter in an absolutely crucial spot in game 2. To minimize this seems like it’s focusing on results instead of process.
Apologies for the pedantry, but the misuse of reticence as a general synonym for reluctant is one of my biggest pet peeves. Reticence comes from the Latin root “reticere,” which means “to be silent.” Thus, reticence should only be used in reference to a reluctance to speak and not a reluctance toward other actions that do not involve speech.
I’m not sure I see the misuse of the word in this case – even in its stricter original meaning.
“Perhaps Counsell’s reticence to call for a reliever” is referring to speech in the sentence – and literally referring to Counsell’s reluctance to talk – he has to pick up the phone and speak with someone in order for a reliever to come in.
The easy way to test this is to replace reticence with “reluctance to speak” and see if the sentence still makes sense. In this case, it clearly doesn’t, as the author was using reticence to refer to the action of changing pitchers rather than reluctance to express his opinion.
In general, the idea that the meaning of a word in English must comport with its Latin root is silly. Reticence of course didn’t even come directly from Latin but via Middle French. And today in modern French, the figurative meaning of réticence is extremely common. Your pedantry is ill conceived.
No, my pedantry is justified. Just ask any English professor if you don’t want to take my word for it. Reticence has maintained its etymological meaning throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty first for most sources. It’s mostly younger, less experienced writers who have begun using it as a general synonym for reluctance because they have seen it used by other authors in reference to speech and mistakenly assumed a broader application.
0 English professors believe in descriptive linguistics? As the son of a former English professor, I beg to differ.
Some English professors prefer descriptive linguistics yet the overwhelming majority like the one I cited below prefer prescriptivism. Descriptivism is much more popular in the Anthropological field than in the English Department.
The Latin root of a word is irrelevant to the current English meaning of a word. It can correlate at best and perhaps be an interesting curiosity, but that is not the means to figure out what a word means — you need to look at actual modern usage.
To be fair to jd, I think we should apply his standard consistently. “Reluctant” comes from the Latin reluctari, “to struggle against,” so unless Counsell was physically wrestling the bullpen phone, he wasn’t reluctant either. “Apologies” derives from the Greek apologia, a formal speech in one’e own defense, so jd’s opening line was, etymologically speaking, the most accurate word in his comment. And “pedantry” comes from the Italian pedante, a schoolmaster, so I’m afraid jd can only be guilty of it if he’s employed as a tutor.
There’s actually a name for this: the etymological fallacy, the belief that a word’s “true” meaning is its oldest one. If we took it seriously, calling someone “nice” (from Latin nescius, “ignorant”) would be an insult, and every “silly” person (Old English saelig, “blessed”) would be a saint. Meanings drift. “Reticent” picked up its broader “reluctant” sense in English over a century ago, and while some usage guides still frown on it, a word’s history explains where it came from, not where it’s allowed to go.
Careful, your claude copy paste is showing.
I copied and pasted that from a Wall Street Journal article about misuse of reticent, which you would have realized if you bothered to search those quotes, but good job trying to deflect from you being proven wrong.
Actual modern usage does limit reticence to context involving speech. It’s only a minority of less experienced writers who don’t fully understand the meaning of the world who are misapplying it to situations that don’t involve speech, which is precisely why I am letting this author know that he used it incorrectly.
Go ahead and ask any English professor if I am correct about the specific meaning of reticence.
Agricola est poeta!
I found CC’s lineup decision a little questionable. The most common lineup during the season has Seiya second and Bregman fourth. They were flipped for the series. You could argue the Bregman’s second half justified it; but despite Bregman’s recent 2 HR game he was coming off an unsettling injury and he didn’t produce. I also found the decision to bury Imanaga, by pitching him the weekend before the playoffs, strange and very wrong. Best starter all year long. The obsession with his tendency to give up home runs didn’t justify moving almsot equally HR prone Boyd or the injured Gausman–both of whom performed much worse than he did over the second half–ahead of him. And again events (especially Boyd’s giving up HRs) didn’t help justify the decision. It seemed like they were trying to justify personnel moves rather than put the best team at the moment on the field.