So…. Joe Maddon
Earlier this season I wrote here about the comical extent to which MLB owners lack self-awareness. On June 7th, former Los Angeles Angels manager Joe Maddon, with his post firing comments, did his best to show us that trait isn’t exclusive to baseball’s owners.
After being relieved of his duties as the Angels’ manager, Maddon had plenty to say, particularly about how the role of “analytics” was at play in his dismissal. We’ll come back to that in a minute, but to truly appreciate the unintentionally funny aspect of his commentary, let’s have a quick review of how Joe Maddon got to where he is.
After the 2005 season, the then “Devil Rays” moved on from Chuck LaMar, at that point the only General Manager in the team’s eight year history. Under LaMar and managers Larry Rothschild, Hal McRae and Lou Piniella, Tampa Bay averaged 64 wins per season.
To replace LaMar, Andrew Friedman was given the reins to the moribund franchise as the new GM. It must be noted that prior to meeting Tampa Bay’s owner Stuart Sternburg, Friedman had more work experience as an analyst for Bear Stearns and later MidMark Capital than he did with a baseball team. Friedman made many moves in the offseason of ’05-’06 in order to turn things around – hiring Joe Maddon to manage the team was one of the first.
By 2008, the now “Rays” would win 97 games and be in the World Series – and there was nothing fluky about it. Over the next six seasons the Rays averaged 92 wins per season and reached the postseason four times, all while playing in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox.
The organization did this in large part by identifying talented young players and committing to them (three Rays won the Rookie of the Year award over those six years) and finding stars that weren’t viewed as such by other teams, like Carlos Peña and Fernando Rodney as two examples among several.
Just as importantly, the Rays also became known as a team to embrace strategies that were considered outside the box to gain a competitive advantage. That is to say, strategies based on analytics (again, Friedman was a literal analyst by trade) rather than old school gut feelings. There are too many examples to comprehensively cover all of them today, but the Rays of that era were the first team to systematically deploy defensive shifts. Shifts pre-date integration in baseball, but the Rays were the first to use it regularly and to base the usage on numbers.
The success of the Rays made Joe Maddon a star, as he won two AL Manager of the Year awards over those six seasons. The problem was that he wasn’t the only one, as Andrew Friedman caught the eye of the smart folks who were now running the Los Angeles Dodgers. When Friedman left for the West Coast shortly after the 2014 season ended, Maddon handed his resignation papers to the Rays as well.
Meanwhile, Theo Epstein was three years into his Herculean task of turning the Cubs into winners. You likely know who Theo Epstein is, but for the purposes of this discussion, we need to be clear about a few things: Epstein is a Yale graduate with a degree in American Studies*, who then later earned a law degree. After a short stint in the player development department of the Padres, he was hired to run the Red Sox front office in 2003. At age 29, his hiring was largely due to the fact that his baseball thinking was more in lockstep with Bill James than with Tony Cloninger – i.e., he was far from a baseball insider. After winning two World Series rings as the Red Sox’ GM, Epstein took on the challenge of running the Cubs in 2012.
(*If you’re curious like I was, the answer is no – American Studies does not cover baseball in its curriculum. Yes, I checked.)
After a 61 win season in 2012 and a 66 win season in 2013, under Epstein and manager Rick Renteria, Chicago won 73 games in 2014. After simultaneously ridding the roster of dead weight and adding the likes of Anthony Rizzo, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks through heists of trades, it was obvious the Cubs were pointed in the right direction.
Then after Joe Maddon resigned from the Rays after Friedman’s departure, Epstein replaced Renteria with Maddon to be the Cubs’ field manager headed into 2015. It must also be noted that in addition to adding Maddon, Epstein also added Kris Bryant, Jon Lester, Dexter Fowler, Kyle Schwarber, Ben Zobrist, John Lackey and Aroldis Chapman to the already improved Cubs over the next two seasons. All of this culminated in an historic curse breaking World Series win in 2016 for all involved.
After winning 92 and 95 games in 2017 and 2018 respectively with two disappointing postseason exits, the Cubs were only two games out of first place in the NL Central entering action on September 17th of 2019. In what some respects might be considered foreshadowing, the Cubs lost nine games in a row and were eight games out by September 26th. After 84 wins and a third place finish in an unimpressive NL Central, Epstein informed Maddon his contract would not be renewed after the 2019 season.
Maddon wasn’t unemployed for long however, as the Angles hired him in October of 2019 to manage their club starting in 2020. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well for the Angels or Maddon as the team went a combined 103 – 119 over his first two seasons at the helm. Then after a promising start to the 2022 campaign, the Angels lost an almost unfathomable 12 games in a row, dropping their record to 27-29 on the season. That was enough for Angels GM Perry Minasian, who after speaking with Angels owner Arte Moreno, fired Maddon on Tuesday.
Most of us have been told we’re no longer needed at some point, so we can agree it’s certainly not a fun situation in which to find yourself. It can be handled by politely saying “I thank you for the opportunity”, and moving on, or by simply saying nothing until you’re in a clearer state of mind. The 68 year old Maddon, he of 47 years’ experience in professional baseball, chose neither or those responses. Instead, he gave an interview to Ken Rosenthal of “The Athletic” to air his grievances.
After taking zero responsibility for going 130 and 148 with a flawed, but very talented roster, Maddon explained why he was in a “difficult” situation.
“I’m into analytics, but not to the point where everybody wants to shove it down your throat,” Maddon started. “Real baseball people have felt somewhat impacted by all of this. You’re unable to just go to the ballpark and have fun and play baseball. It’s too much controlled by front offices these days.”
He continued by adding “I told (Perry Minasian) that. Just try to reduce the information you’re giving, try to be aware of who’s giving the information and really be aware of when it’s time to stay out of the way.”
There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s start with the obvious. All of Maddon’s successes – his World Series ring, his Manager of the Year Trophies, managing postseason games – came when he worked under two of best front offices in MLB this century. The fact that both front offices were run by people who Maddon would surely characterize as not “real baseball people” is apparently lost on him. One was a financial analyst and one was a lawyer with a background in American Studies and both turned really bad teams into forces to be reckoned with. I would bet a very large sum of money that Hal McRae – a “real baseball” guy if there ever was one – would have loved the opportunity to stick around for the analytically run Rays.
The not so veiled criticism of Minasian is just as odd. Minasian’s entrance into MLB came as a bat boy for the Rangers. That led into the role of clubhouse attendant, then eventually he became a scout for the Rangers before moving on to Toronto in the same role. After a stint in Atlanta as Assistant GM, he was hired in Los Angeles as the Angels GM. I’m not an MLB manager but that sounds a lot more like a “real baseball person” than a financial analyst or a lawyer to me. (The fact that Maddon needed to add “It’s his first time through it – I was trying to be as helpful as I could” after telling Minasian to know when to stay out of the way, also comes across as more than a little condescending.)
Maddon also mentioned that analytics are “…part of the reason people aren’t into our game as much as they’ve been”. I’ve written about this before so there’s no need to completely rehash it here, but when this conversation arises, people often conflate what wins and loses baseball games with what’s aesthetically pleasing baseball – but those are two very different conversations. Maddon, based on his vast experience with Friedman and Epstein, should know this. As a result, his commentary sounds like what we’d expect from an angry and misinformed sports radio caller, not a MLB manager and ambassador of the game. It’s even more ironic when you consider that very topic of making the game more aesthetically pleasing, is exactly what Epstein is addressing in his new role as a consultant to MLB.
Joe Maddon has been the beneficiary of very analytically run front offices as much as, if not more than any manager in history. By characterizing the problem with his stint in Los Angeles as an issue of too much information shows either an extreme lack of self-awareness, or hypocrisy depending on what his intentions were. Joe Maddon complaining about analytics from his front office is similar to if Joe Torre had complained about the Yankees spending too much money on players’ salaries upon parting ways with the Yankees in 2007.
Maddon finished his interview with Rosenthal by proclaiming, “Of course I want to manage. I’m really good at it.” That may be true Joe, but it seems it’s only the case when the folks who aren’t “real baseball people” are your boss.
