Mike Hargrove
Hargrove walks out on the team when it is finally turning things around. On the one hand I have some sympathy, because something weird is obviously going on with Hargrove personally (though he said it was nothing big). On the other hand, this team -- which is not tremendously talented -- is finally playing good baseball, and he drops out in the middle of the season.
Even Jose Guillen liked him.
Jerry Narron
Jerry Narron gets fired by the Reds. How did he get that job anyway? I guess if you spend enough time as a backup catcher, you've got a shot at managing bad ballclubs.
He was just a placeholder. There was nothing notable about his tenure, except that he was set up to be the scapegoat for bad front office decisions the last couple of years.
I remember a Narron baseball card from when I was a kid. Back when Topps had a monopoly. He had a pitiful pose. A kind of half-assed batting stance. Hmmmm.
Hargrove vs. Narron
I don't think Baseball Reference.com should first show Hargrove's managerial stats when you search for his name, before showing his playing stats. He was a better player than a manager. Career OPS+ of 121 isn't half bad, with two years in the 140s. He could also pick it at first.
I have no advice for Baseball Reference.com about whether Narron's managerial or playing record should appear first when you search for him. Theoretically, the answer is neither, but that's not practical.
Narron's best OPS+ was a 74 (63 for his career). He only had as many as 200 AB in one season. A miserable hitter. He accumulated a WARP3 of 0.9. That's right: 0.9 is his career total! Five of his 8 seasons were negative WARP3.
Did he make up for it with defense behind the plate? Defense alone would have given him about 2 WARP, so his hitting wiped out 1.1 of that. But that's if you use his fielding above replacement. Most people agree that fielding ought to be judged against average, and there he would have a -2.7 WARP. So if you use that figure, his career would be about 3.6 wins below replacement. The catching position must have been real thin in the early 80s.
