Why don't sabermetricians manage baseball teams

Agree with you there! Marilyn was great for her time but that time was long ago. Sorta like Ted Williams.

 

OMG, stop typing.

 

IJAG > Rashad McCants

 

Here's one. How do sabermetrics help the manager when his starting pitcher who has sucked all year gets a text message from TMZ.com one hour before he takes the mound in a game the team absolutely, positively has to win?
That's what happened to John Lackey last night. That's another indication why managing the game itself is approximately 15-20 percent of what a manager really does.

 

No, but they have talent in the system ... Pastornicky and Andrelton Simmons will both be major-league ready, soon.

 

Exactly. There are and have been plenty of big-league managers who successfully employ stats in their game strategies and most front offices arm their managers and players with enough information to make your head explode. It would be a disaster, however, to stick some stat geek in the dugout and expect him/her to command the respect of major league players.

 

Earl Weaver was legendary/notorious/mythical in the 60s/70s for keeping detailed situational stats (LH/RH splits, etc etc). And derided sometimes by the old-timers managing "by the seat of their pants."

 

A manager should probably at least have a working knowledge of the basics. Don't be Dusty Baker and complain that guys walk too much and "clog the bases."

A bench coach should have more than a working knowledge.

Have you ever sat in on or observed a pregame pow wow? To assume that managers and coaches don't know their way around a spreadsheet is ludicrous in this day and age. They have printouts that would make your head spin on defensive positioning, hitter tendencies, and everything in between.

 

I remember features on hitting charts and splits against individual pitchers in the early 1970s. This isn't sliced bread here. The glorification of this stuff is a product of the superior-to-thou snark of the Net. But yeah, being a manager is about managing people, not a game.

 

In crayon.