I live in Florida, so I often see Tampa Bay Devil Ray games on television. I watch probably 30-35 Devil Rays games a year. I have never once seen Lou Piniella make a move that seemed significant, good or bad. He appears to do absolutely nothing.
His personal appearance lends credence to that. He has, shall we say, let himself go. During his playing days he was roughly 6'2" and 198 pounds. My own recollection was that it was never distributed on his frame in a way that screamed "work ethic." I don't know how tall he is now, but he's probably a couple of inches shorter with his gut bending him over. I'd put his weight at no less than 250, and probably more. He still does not wear it well. He has given up trying to wear a baseball jersey and just wears a warmup pullover, which either accentuates his belly or holds it in, or both. Many days he does not bother to shave. He couldn't be more different than Tony LaRussa or Terry Francona.
All of this got me to wondering what kind of manager is he. Is he really any good? In his book on managers, Bill James described two different methods of measuring a manager's performance. The first awards one point each for a winning season, winning the division, winning the league championship, winning the World Series, winning 100 or more games, and finishing 20 games over .500 (Method 1). The second predicts a team's record based on a team's tendency to finish .500, weighted by the team's record in the prior three years. If the team finishes with more wins than expected, we can attribute those wins to the manager (Method 2). James noted the flaws in Method 2 and said he preferred Method 1.
I tested Piniella on both Under Method 1, Piniella receives a very respectable 22 points. That's no Bobby Cox (58), Joe Torre (45) or Tony LaRussa (44), but it is better than Dusty Baker (17), Jack McKeon (13), Buck Showalter (11) and other current managers, and similar to Tom Kelly (19) who did a nice job managing the Twins over the years.
Under Method 2, Piniella comes out 67 runs ahead of expected, which is quite an achievement, except that nearly half that came through the 2001 Seattle club's performance. He still lags Cox (176) and LaRussa (72) but is ahead of Torre (33), who was in the negative until reaching the Yanks.
So I guess Piniella is as good as anyone else. Maybe managing a ballclub is like managing your investments. Studies have shown that investing in a manner that tracks a market index (essentially a do-nothing approach) is much more successful over the long run than actually managing your portfolio.
