stands at 7 WAP for his 13 seasons. His best season 1997 at +10 and his worst 2004 at -5. With San Fran he totaled 12 WAP’s, Chicago -7 WAP’s (with 2003 as his only positive WAP season) and this year with the Reds he was +2.

The thing I am trying to find now is a good manager on a bad team. If this can show that the manager can add wins to a bad team just as well as to a good team then this might have some merit. I couldn’t think of any great examples so I cheated a little and cherry picked from LaRussa’s career.

I picked 10 of his worst teams: ‘84 & ’85 White Sox; ’87, ’91, & ’93 A’s; ’97, ’98, ’99, ’06, ’07, ’08 Cardinals and here are the results:

LaRussa: 1 WAP, .09 WAP/year, highest 7, lowest (6)

I think these numbers were about what I expected, I dont really have any base for comparing them but adding 1 win over 10 awful teams would tell me that even when he has bad teams they still play up to there potential. BTW he only had one year awful WAP year, and that was the 1997 Cardinals who finished -6. He has had two great years in 1991 with the A’s (5) & in 2007 (7). [What a job LaRussa did with the ’07 team]

I also looked at Lou and Maddon’s 3 years each with the Rays:

Lou: -1 WAP, -.333 WAP/Year, Highest 2, Lowest (4)
Maddon: 1 WAP, .333 WAP/Year, Highest 5, Lowest (4)

I think these numbers might be even more interesting. Lou’s numbers are right in line with the rest of his career numbers, even managing some really bad teams. And Maddon seems to have wild swings in his WAP, although he only has a 3 year reference point.

“it’s not foolproof either. After all, projection systems are entirely subjective. They also don’t take mid season call ups, trades, or injuries into account.”

Pythagorean wins may have a little say on their own (not in comparison to actual wins), but that’s about it. And of course a manager won’t bat a pitcher first. It was an example meant to point out the fact that managerial decisions made every day affect both the real and pythagorean wins simultaneously.

I honestly don’t like either way to evaluate a manager, but if I had to choose, I would compare actual wins to the average preseason predicted wins (making adjustments for major injuries and/or trades).

and posted it earlier. The only manager in the last dozen years who has consistently outperformed Pyth is Joe Torre. Make whatever you want out of that.

Do you not understand that a 1.4 or 2 WAP manager is an utterly meaningless term? It is within the margin of error of the calculation, there is absolutely no basis to say a 2 WAP manager did a better job than a -2 WAP manager. It is just not a useful concept. If it means anything then it probably means the +2 WAP manager had a better closer.

If you want to draw any conclusions about TLR from the data posted above it would that he was a hell of a lot better manager for OAK and CHW than STL, because if that data is right he was +22 for the seven seasons prior to coming to STL and only +6 in the 13 seasons since.

I went back and checked the pre-STL numbers. In 15 full seasons (‘86 doesn’t count) he was a cumulative +21. From 88-92 with Oakland he was +22. I don’t want to base my opinion on a manager’s consistency on a good run he had that ended 16 years ago. In the 16 seasons since he is a cumulative +5.

The Cardinals improved more from 1995 to 1996 than the Yankees did. Torre inherited a much better situation with the Yankees than LaRussa did in St. Louis. Torre deserves a lot of credit for the job he did with the Yankees, but Buck Showalter had gotten that club to the playoffs the year before. The Cardinals were horrible right before LaRussa took over.