Postseason Managerial Report Card: Dave Roberts
If grade schoolers have to come home with a report card, why shouldn’t big league managers? We at FanGraphs tend to veer towards egalitarianism, and if little Liam or Daenerys can be sent to bed without Roblox or whatever it is the kids like these days, then why can’t Big Stephen or Dodger Dave? That’s why every time a postseason manager is eliminated from contention, we run down their playoff performance and see who gets a Grape Job! sticker.
Ben Clemens already assessed the work of Will Venable and Aaron Boone, while Jon Becker broke down the October runs of Walt Weiss and Craig Stammen, as well as the losing managers from the Wild Card round. Today, it’s Dave Roberts’ turn.
Crafting these report cards can be an odd exercise. Major league managers simply don’t have as large an effect on a team’s on-field performance as, say, an NFL team’s head coach. Baseball is a game of player execution, and a manager’s job mostly comes down to making sure that the best players are on the lineup card and that everyone refrains from killing each other in August. But that doesn’t mean that managers have no effect on their team’s fortunes. Baseball is, by its very nature, a very coin-flippy, volatile game, where the fates of both teams hang on a knife’s edge. Small decisions can have a big impact. Last year, I gave Pat Murphy somewhere between an A- and a B+ overall. Let’s see how Roberts fares!
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Tough but fair
Thought platooning Muncy was wrong. This year and career he has very small splits. In the playoffs he was arguably their 2nd best hitter behind Tucker. C+ at best
It’s funny about Muncy. If you didn’t know anything about his actual platoon splits, you’d think he would have a big one. Someone tells you “OK, here’s a rather squatly-built left-handed hitter in his mid-30s. He’s not particularly fast and tends to have low BA, but still hits for really good power,” you’d probably assume as your base expectation that he’s kind of a platoony guy. But even if adjust for the fact that the average lefty he faces is worse than the average righty he faces, he actually has a significantly smaller platoon split than the typical left-handed hitter.
That’s an interesting point. I likened Muncy to an only slightly taller version of Matt Stairs, who was a platoon guy by this point in his career. I would have naively guessed that Muncy would then be worse than the average lefty hitter in terms of splits. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since Muncy has also defied my expectations on defense his whole career.
One comment I heard after the 2016 World Series wrapped up was annoyance/concern that Joe Maddon was so jittery with his pitching staff that he darn near blew the thing. I was no complainer but yeah for the era it felt extreme. (This was a team that kept all five starters healthy all season long, and regularly had Arrieta and Lester going deep into games, including in the playoffs.) I watch the playoffs now and think he was ahead of his time.
It’s crazy how deep pitchers worked even ten years ago compared to now. Workload deescalated quickly.
“I especially hated the Rojas-De Paula-Enrique Hernández switcheroo in the sixth of Game 3 of the NLCS, after Abner Uribe issued three walks and allowed a double to Smith that scored two runs. De Paula was quickly announced as the pinch-hitter, but I was yelling at the screen that there was no way that Uribe was going to stay in the game even if Roberts himself had gone up to the plate. Naturally, the Brewers went to DL Hall, who was ready to go, and De Paula was out of the game without ever coming to the plate.”
This one inning should have reduced Roberts’ batting grade to a B- or lower. This was managerial malpractice. Agree though with the conclusion that as bad as Roberts was in the NLCS —Dodgers would have lost this series if the managers were flipped and Murphy was brilliant.
Robert’s not burning Diaz until Game 4 is the decision I still can’t understand. Game 2 Bottom of the 8th seemed like the perfect time to use him as it was a 5-4 and the brewers had the top of the lineup almost up. Also given that Diaz didn’t pitch Game 1 and there was an upcoming off day Diaz would’ve been perfectly fine to throw again in Game 3. But Robert’s didn’t throw his Marquee Arm and the Dodgers gave up 2 huge insurance runs which effectively ended the game. This series felt like Robert’s was managing for a full 7 game series and that came back to bite him big time.
I think there was still a lack of trust with Diaz here in the postseason. He was so shaky when he came back from injury it was just hard to really believe in him as a fan. I can’t imagine Roberts and company were immune to that.
Robert’s not burning Diaz until Game 4 is the decision I still can’t understand. Game 2 Bottom of the 8th seemed like the perfect time to use him as it was a 5-4 and the brewers had the top of the lineup almost up. Also given that Diaz didn’t pitch Game 1 and there was an upcoming off day Diaz would’ve been perfectly fine to throw again in Game 3. But Robert’s didn’t throw his Marquee Arm and the Dodgers gave up 2 huge insurance runs which effectively ended the game. This series felt like Robert’s was managing for a full 7 game series and that came back to bite him big time.
I think these are lenient grades. B and C, without the plusses, seems more accurate.