So much depends on the team that is assembled on their MLB player roster. Hodges had so much fall together with pitching, a season for the ages with Cleon Jones hitting .340 and management being smart enough to pluck Tommie Agee and Al Weis and Donn Clendenon from competitors. Johnson had the next explosion of pitching with Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and the team pulled it together over three seasons with the trades for Carter, Hernandez, Knight and Ojeda. Collins had the next explosion of pitching with Harvey, deGrom, Thor and the imported bat of Yoenis Cespedes and Showalter looked like a genius one year and a washed up leader the next.
In Mendy’s first season, this group ripped him apart constantly second guessing his moves. Over time we realized how good a manager he is and how well he relates to the players and does make good in game decisions. Kudos to the Yankees for all their years of training. Again look at what management brought to the table with Holmes, Soto and Torrens and you see the impact on the success of the manager even with two fifths of the expected rotation not having thrown a pitch. I like Mendoza but not ready to anoint him until he wins a title. If he does win this year, he will have matched the number of titles by any other Met manager and then I will join you in singing his praises.
I feel like comparing Mendoza to Hodges or anyone else is sort of premature. I like where your mind is headed though haha! I actually really love Mendoza’s resolve. He doesn’t make panic moves. He makes decisions, sticks to them (like his handling of Holmes). As opposed to Hodges, who made do with what he had and as Steven says above, he had a lights out rotation, it was also a different time. A lot of the credit now has to go to our ownership that is dedicated to winning and to Stearns, who has a knack for finding these diamonds in the rough. Stearns I think deserves more credit than Mendoza, but that’s not to say i think he’s a bad manager or anything. I think he’s the right guy for this team right now. I’d say he has a while to get to be a Davey Johnson (whom I happen to think had teams that severely *under* achieved) or even Terry Collins (who basically operated his teams wearing a FEMA cap and for way more of his teams than we ever expected). This team is now not afraid to win. And there’s no real 24 + 1 mentality even with guys like Soto. That says more to
Me about the leadership than worrying about comparing him to the past. It’s a different game, different era, different attitude
It's very difficult to rate managers as there are a lot of things that you could look at. If you go purely by record (which is the least subjective measure), Davey Johnson is the clear winner, even though I agree with Taryn that he may have actually underachieved with some of the talent he had. He was, however, one of the earlier managers as it related to analytics. I remember reading a lot of stories about Davey sitting in front of the computer looking at data, before that was a thing (or maybe as it was starting).
If clubhouse harmony and intangibles are your thing, then you can make the arguments for others, including Mendoza. That's harder to evaluate though and can turn on a dime if things go bad.
My opinion has generally been that managers don't have as big an impact on a team's record as many people think, as I think talent wins out more often. With that said however, a manager who figures out how to unlock the potential of someone clearly has value (but it's also very difficult to know why someone broke out and whether it was the manager or not).
Thought provoking article Charlie, and honestly, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, depending on which side you want to debate.
Fans are the last to know about managers. We don't have access and we have to rely on the mainstream press. But the MSM is much more interested in preserving access than accurately portraying what goes on. For years we heard so much about how great Terry Collins was. And it wasn't until he was leaving the Mets' beat that Marc Carig wrote that piece detailing what Collins was really like. And it was not pretty.
As for Hodges, I know as Mets fans we're not allowed to even think, much less say, anything that might not be 100% positive. Dying young has its privileges. And for the record, I'm more than familiar with what his players have said about him over the years. It's just that no one is beloved by 100% of his players. The old Casey Stengel quote -- the key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from the ones who are undecided. Yet somehow we're supposed to believe that all Mets players genuflected when in Hodges' presence? Sorry, I don't buy it.
I'm all for judging everyone by making a list of pros and cons. The pros for Hodges have been well delineated over the years. But no one's making a list of cons. In an era where it was very common for teams to win back-to-back, the Mets went 83-79 in the two years Hodges managed after the World Series victory. If he was such a great manager, why was he able to lead a team to the championship and then be so mid in the two following years with mostly the same players? Why did he run off Nolan Ryan and Amos Otis? Why did he think acquiring Jim Fregosi was such a great idea? Why couldn't he get more out of Gary Gentry?
I wish we could recognize Hodges' place in team history, which is an extremely important one, without making a saint out of him. The Hodges myth is so ingrained that people who weren't there take it as gospel. As for me, give me the manager that won 90 or more games 6X in 7 years while dealing with massive egos, rampant drug use, crippling injuries and head-scratching trades. That's the guy who did the great managerial job, not the one whose team won it all because the best team collapsed while his team exceeded its Pythagoran win total by 8 games. And then under-performed Pythagoras by a combined 8 games the following two years.
Its amazing how a goodteam makes the manager look better. Look at Joe Torre, a mere mortal of a manager, then he goes to the Yankees and os a "Hall of Fame" manager. I like Mendoza. It does feel though like we could make a real run at winning the World Series.
I am pro-Mendoza. No manager is perfect, but golly is he a breath of fresh air after the likes of Mickey Callaway, Luis Rojas, and even Showalter. It was a tough stretch after Collins, but I think we've found the guy to hold it down for the next few years.
So much depends on the team that is assembled on their MLB player roster. Hodges had so much fall together with pitching, a season for the ages with Cleon Jones hitting .340 and management being smart enough to pluck Tommie Agee and Al Weis and Donn Clendenon from competitors. Johnson had the next explosion of pitching with Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and the team pulled it together over three seasons with the trades for Carter, Hernandez, Knight and Ojeda. Collins had the next explosion of pitching with Harvey, deGrom, Thor and the imported bat of Yoenis Cespedes and Showalter looked like a genius one year and a washed up leader the next.
In Mendy’s first season, this group ripped him apart constantly second guessing his moves. Over time we realized how good a manager he is and how well he relates to the players and does make good in game decisions. Kudos to the Yankees for all their years of training. Again look at what management brought to the table with Holmes, Soto and Torrens and you see the impact on the success of the manager even with two fifths of the expected rotation not having thrown a pitch. I like Mendoza but not ready to anoint him until he wins a title. If he does win this year, he will have matched the number of titles by any other Met manager and then I will join you in singing his praises.
I feel like comparing Mendoza to Hodges or anyone else is sort of premature. I like where your mind is headed though haha! I actually really love Mendoza’s resolve. He doesn’t make panic moves. He makes decisions, sticks to them (like his handling of Holmes). As opposed to Hodges, who made do with what he had and as Steven says above, he had a lights out rotation, it was also a different time. A lot of the credit now has to go to our ownership that is dedicated to winning and to Stearns, who has a knack for finding these diamonds in the rough. Stearns I think deserves more credit than Mendoza, but that’s not to say i think he’s a bad manager or anything. I think he’s the right guy for this team right now. I’d say he has a while to get to be a Davey Johnson (whom I happen to think had teams that severely *under* achieved) or even Terry Collins (who basically operated his teams wearing a FEMA cap and for way more of his teams than we ever expected). This team is now not afraid to win. And there’s no real 24 + 1 mentality even with guys like Soto. That says more to
Me about the leadership than worrying about comparing him to the past. It’s a different game, different era, different attitude
It's very difficult to rate managers as there are a lot of things that you could look at. If you go purely by record (which is the least subjective measure), Davey Johnson is the clear winner, even though I agree with Taryn that he may have actually underachieved with some of the talent he had. He was, however, one of the earlier managers as it related to analytics. I remember reading a lot of stories about Davey sitting in front of the computer looking at data, before that was a thing (or maybe as it was starting).
If clubhouse harmony and intangibles are your thing, then you can make the arguments for others, including Mendoza. That's harder to evaluate though and can turn on a dime if things go bad.
My opinion has generally been that managers don't have as big an impact on a team's record as many people think, as I think talent wins out more often. With that said however, a manager who figures out how to unlock the potential of someone clearly has value (but it's also very difficult to know why someone broke out and whether it was the manager or not).
Thought provoking article Charlie, and honestly, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, depending on which side you want to debate.
Fans are the last to know about managers. We don't have access and we have to rely on the mainstream press. But the MSM is much more interested in preserving access than accurately portraying what goes on. For years we heard so much about how great Terry Collins was. And it wasn't until he was leaving the Mets' beat that Marc Carig wrote that piece detailing what Collins was really like. And it was not pretty.
As for Hodges, I know as Mets fans we're not allowed to even think, much less say, anything that might not be 100% positive. Dying young has its privileges. And for the record, I'm more than familiar with what his players have said about him over the years. It's just that no one is beloved by 100% of his players. The old Casey Stengel quote -- the key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from the ones who are undecided. Yet somehow we're supposed to believe that all Mets players genuflected when in Hodges' presence? Sorry, I don't buy it.
I'm all for judging everyone by making a list of pros and cons. The pros for Hodges have been well delineated over the years. But no one's making a list of cons. In an era where it was very common for teams to win back-to-back, the Mets went 83-79 in the two years Hodges managed after the World Series victory. If he was such a great manager, why was he able to lead a team to the championship and then be so mid in the two following years with mostly the same players? Why did he run off Nolan Ryan and Amos Otis? Why did he think acquiring Jim Fregosi was such a great idea? Why couldn't he get more out of Gary Gentry?
I wish we could recognize Hodges' place in team history, which is an extremely important one, without making a saint out of him. The Hodges myth is so ingrained that people who weren't there take it as gospel. As for me, give me the manager that won 90 or more games 6X in 7 years while dealing with massive egos, rampant drug use, crippling injuries and head-scratching trades. That's the guy who did the great managerial job, not the one whose team won it all because the best team collapsed while his team exceeded its Pythagoran win total by 8 games. And then under-performed Pythagoras by a combined 8 games the following two years.
Its amazing how a goodteam makes the manager look better. Look at Joe Torre, a mere mortal of a manager, then he goes to the Yankees and os a "Hall of Fame" manager. I like Mendoza. It does feel though like we could make a real run at winning the World Series.
You know Johnson and Valentine were both very good.
I am pro-Mendoza. No manager is perfect, but golly is he a breath of fresh air after the likes of Mickey Callaway, Luis Rojas, and even Showalter. It was a tough stretch after Collins, but I think we've found the guy to hold it down for the next few years.