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<\/p>\nThere\u2019s a conceit among some around baseball that managers don\u2019t have much impact on winning and losing. Clearly, however, the Dodgers and especially the Cubs have taken the opposite position.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dave Roberts was toast.<\/p>\n
Out the window. Kicked to the curb. Yesterday\u2019s news.<\/p>\n
Well, almost.<\/p>\n
Had Robert\u2019s 98-win Dodgers lost one more game to the 93-win Padres in the National League Division Series last season, one of the most successful managers of his era almost certainly would have been fired.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Dodgers took the last two games of that series en route to their second World Series championship under Roberts, who was rewarded in the offseason with a four-year extension worth $8.1 million annually.<\/p>\n
That about doubled his salary and made him the highest-paid manager ever \u2014 by a skosh \u2014 besting the Cubs\u2019 Craig Counsell\u2019s $8 million per year.<\/p>\n
Talk about a fortunate turn.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the high-wire act that is managing the most talented baseball team on the planet.<\/p>\n
Roberts, in his 10th season, never has missed the playoffs. He has gotten to the World Series four times.<\/p>\n
The career winning percentage of .628 he brought to Wrigley Field for a two-game series starting Tuesday against Counsell\u2019s Cubs ranked fourth all-time and put him miles ahead of the Yankees\u2019 Aaron Boone, who\u2019s next among active managers at .585. Of the top 14 managers all-time in winning percentage, Roberts is the only one who has been active since \u2014 are you ready for this? \u2014 1951.<\/p>\n
But that hot seat, right?<\/p>\n
Anybody would win big with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, right?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a conceit among baseball writers and analytics nerds everywhere that baseball managers don\u2019t have much impact on winning and losing.<\/p>\n
That the best skippers are good for some extra \u2018\u2018W\u2019s,\u2019\u2019 sure, but you probably can count them on one hand over 162 games. That Roberts and Counsell are no different from Bruce Bochy, Terry Francona or anyone else held in high regard.<\/p>\n
Clearly, however, the Dodgers and especially the Cubs have taken the opposite position.<\/p>\n
By throwing $40 million at Counsell, Cubs president Jed Hoyer staked his very reputation on a managerial hire.<\/p>\n
Were they wrong?<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Baseball is a world where everything is quantified,\u2019\u2019 Counsell said. \u2018\u2018We want objective information. It\u2019s turned into that, right? And the manager\u2019s job is still a job that we haven\u2019t found a great way to do that with, with their decisions and everything else.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018\u2018It\u2019s also very much a people job, so how do you figure that part out? I think that\u2019s what baseball wants to do. It\u2019s a numbers game, and we want to put numbers to everything, and there\u2019s not for this.\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Roberts pushed back on this topic more directly.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018The most important people \u2014 the players \u2014 know the value of the manager,\u2019\u2019 he said, \u2018\u2018and I\u2019m just glad our guys value me, as well.\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Roberts has been NL Manager of the Year only once \u2014 in 2016, his first go-round \u2014 and at times has felt dismissed by some around the game.<\/p>\n It has a bit of a familiar ring to it: a winning Los Angeles coach who\u2019s taken by some as being more lucky than anything else.<\/p>\n It was easy for the Lakers\u2019 Phil Jackson to win titles with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O\u2019Neal, that conceit went, much as it had been in Chicago with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.<\/p>\n But Jackson won 11 rings. Roberts is winning games at a clip not seen since the Truman administration.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018I do feel [dismissed],\u2019\u2019 he said. \u2018\u2018I\u2019ve got one Manager of the Year award, where I felt last year I did my best job of managing. It kind of comes with the territory when you manage a club like the Dodgers.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018\u2018But it\u2019s like this: If you take Apple or Google or Microsoft, the great companies annually, they do excellent things to continue to maintain excellence. So I pride myself and our organization on being consistently great. If you don\u2019t win the world championship, then you\u2019ve had a failure of a season? It\u2019s not true. It doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re not still a great leader of people.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Craig Counsell<\/strong><\/p>\n Cubs manager Craig CounsellNam Y. Huh\/AP Photos<\/p>\n Roberts and Counsell are big fans of each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018Dave\u2019s job has been to take great expectations and not let the train get off the tracks,\u2019\u2019 Counsell said. \u2018\u2018You probably don\u2019t know about all the situations where the train almost came off the tracks and Dave kept them on the tracks. That\u2019s managing an organization, and I think he\u2019s done an incredible job of that.\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Said Roberts: \u2018\u2018I personally admire Craig and his consistency of mind and preparation and attitude and respect that he has in the game. He\u2019s a person I certainly look toward in how he goes about it. I think he\u2019s a great manager.\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Worth all that big bread, too?<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018I certainly hope so,\u2019\u2019 Roberts said.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018A baseball manager is hard to be quantified; it\u2019s hard to put a value on it. But when you\u2019re talking about how you manage player workload, pitcher usage, to potentially win one game and then another and to get through 162, that certainly has the manager\u2019s fingerprints all over it.\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a conceit among some around baseball that managers don\u2019t have much impact on winning and losing. Clearly, however, the Dodgers and especially the Cubs have taken… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n