MLB Outsider - Does Firing the Manager Actually Ever Help?

Over on my personal Cubs blog, Cheap Plugs of the Apocalypse, I recently made the mistake of suggesting that the Cubs would be better off without Lou Piniella as manager. The result of this view was a firestorm of ANGER from Cub fans everywhere who love Lou. Let that be a note to you if you ever want to stir up controversy: all you need to do is talk smack about Ron Santo or Lou Piniella and Cub fans everywhere will be on you like mosquitoes on bannanas. Basically, the Con Firing argument appears to be this: it's not the manager's fault if the general manager fails to give him the tools necessary to build a winner. Besides, if the entire team plays really badly how can you blame the manager for that? It's not like he's the one out there swinging the bat as if he'd never held one in his hands before. It's hard to dispute that a manager getting canned is often an over-reactionary move which accomplishes nothing. What, Alfonso Soriano will suddenly, magically start to hit well if the Cubs fire Piniella? But on the contrary, I actually think that there is evidence that a manager plays a bigger part in baseball than the modern StatHound would lead you to believe -- or else teams wouldn't need a manager, they'd just need coaches. Let the hitting coach do the lineups, let the pitching coach figure out the rotation and bullpen, and spend the extra money saved from not having a manager on another player or something.First, I will not contest that a manager's impact on the game once it begins are debatable. For sure, if the manager has the tendency to leave in his starters for too long, he risks injury and diminished returns. Or if he encorporates a flawed strategy -- lots of bunts and steals, sacrificing outs for small gains -- then that will impact the wins and losses column. Same thing with the bullpen -- if he makes bad choices about which pitcher to use when, obviously that will slide a few more games over to the losses column. But still, if the players do their jobs, then the manager's impact is marginal. But I think that a manager does a lot of prep work between games that have a bigger impact. First, a manager probably has a lot of say regarding the 25-man roster. The GM might blow in a call for a border-line player out of options, but chances are the guy in the dugout gets to pick his starters and backups. So, on a runs-deprived team like the Cubs, maybe we can agree that Piniella is responsible for a 13-man pitching staff, not to mention the fact that his team's only backup third baseman at the start of the year was their starting second baseman. Second, the manager may cost his team runs if, like Dusty Baker is prone to do, he writes a ridiculous lineup in which his best hitters are batting behind the Neifi Perezes and Corey Pattersons of the world. Clearly, that will cost the team some runs over the course of a year. Third, if the manager refuses to give young players the chance to produce -- Dusty Baker -- in favor of long-time veterans, that will hurt too. Not to mention if he trusts those veterans to "know their jobs" to the point where he doesn't work with them on fundamentals, possibly resulting in bad fielding and baserunning plays.Fourth, the manager should be responsible at least to some degree for the attitudes and actions of his players. Otherwise, why would they call him a manager? In 2004, Dusty Baker's Cubs were confrontational with umpires and the WGN broadcast crew. Moises Alou tried to get Steve Stone and Chip Caray thrown off the team flight, Kent Mercker threatened to assault them, and the list goes on. If a baseball team has a number of players with attitude problems, who are constantly getting ejected and suspended, then who's responsible for keeping them in check but the manager?Now, I'll admit I am hardly a smart man. But if you took two managers with equal ability to manage "in game," but Manager A was completely lax and incompetent in the four things I outlined above, and Manager B was a master at those four things, on two teams of equal talent I believe that Manager B will win more games. In fact it might be the difference between being a .500ish team and a playoff contender.Anyway, that's all hard to prove. In a stat-oriented online baseball community, a number of things go into proving or disproving a claim. But I will present a handful of examples from the past 20 to 30 years of when a team fired a manager and went on to enjoy tremendous amounts of success with his replacement. Look, in no particular order:When the Rockies fired Clint Hurdle, they went on an 11 game winning streak immediately after. Coincidence? Probably.Of course we have the Brewers last year who fired the incompetent Ned Yost and then made the playoffs as the wild card team, but the firing happened late in the season and it's probably impossible to argue that they managed to hang onto a playoff spot for dear life because of it -- even if Yost WAS incompetent.The Red Sox -- 1988, fired John McNamara (43-42), replaced by Joe Morgan (46-31), went on to lose the ALCS.The Rockies -- too early, but they're 14-5 since they fired Hurdle (18-28). But! Hurdle got them to the Series just two years ago! He couldn't possibly have lost it since then! (Or maybe they got there on the merits of their talent and not the merits of his managerial skills)Florida - 16-22 in '03 under Jeff Torborg, 75-49 under Trader Jack McKeon and eventual World Series Champions.Houston Astros - 44-44 under Jimy Williams in '04, 48-26 under Phil Garner and eventual NLCS losers (and World Series losers the next year)The '78 Yankees - 52-42 under Billy Martin, 48-20 under Bob Lemon, World Series winners.The '83 Phillies - 43-42 under Pat Corrales, 47-30 with Paul Owen, World Series losers.Last year's Jays - 35-39 under John Gibbons, 51-37 under Cito Gaston, didn't reach the playoffsThe '92 Expos - 17-20 under Tom Runnells, 70-55 under Felipe Alou, didn't make the playoffs.The '08 Mets - 34-35 under Willie Randolph, 55-38 under Jerry Manuel, just missed the playoffs. That is 10 examples, some stronger than others, of teams dramatically putting up better numbers upon the firing of a manager. But we can't just say that, clearly, these teams did better because they had a new skipper. After all, there are a variety of factors to consider. Did injured players come back and deliver under the new manager? Were there minor league prospects who received promotions and put on clinics? Did the other teams in the same divisions suffer injuries that affected their play? Was there a team-wide slump that eventually ended? And so-on. There's no clear-cut way to prove that it was the changeover of managers that resulted in the improved play of those 10 teams. Probably where you fall in this argument is based on whether or not you agree that managers can make a difference. Me, I think they can. I've seen great managers and terrible ones and it doesn't take long to identify the differences between the two, even if it would be a month-long project to find the evidence through research.