UCB Roundtable: Let La Russa and Duncan walk?
[For the next few days, we'll be participating in the United Cardinal Bloggers fall roundtable discussion, in which a member blogger poses a question to the group each day. Our turn to pose a question is next Monday; today's question comes from Eugene Tierney of Inside Pulse Sports.]
Is it time to let Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan walk?
First, any discussion about the future of LaRuncan should be had in the context of a stat that Nick brought up on PH8 recently: Managers affect wins and losses by only +2.29 to -1.88 over 162 games (from The Hardball Times’s 2008 Baseball Annual). Now, two wins is an important margin, to be sure. But whether managers, and specifically, La Russa, exhibit some repeatable skill to affect wins and losses is debatable.
Second, it’s time for a comprehensive study of whether there is a “Duncan Effect” on pitchers, like the one that JC Bradbury did on Leo Mazzone. Until then, no one knows for certain what kind of an impact (if any) Duncan has on pitchers. Update: JC has actually already done this — he posted a reference on Sabernomics today.
While La Russa has been relunctant to respect young players, to the point of recalcitrancy, the fact is that the 2009 team was his second-youngest in the last eight years. His petulant remarks about Brendan Ryan and others notwithstanding, he relied on young players in 2009 (notably Ryan, Colby Rasmus and Blake Hawksworth). How much he was forced to do so is another question. Another ongoing complaint: Despite his reputation for progressive approaches, TLR has gone stale in recent years, turning away from the useful pitcher-hitting-eighth tactic to a painfully conventional use of his bullpen.
But La Russa doesn’t appear to impede the team’s chances of winning, and although very little can and should be read into the team’s failures in the postseason, one concern came up at the end of the season: The team’s lack of veteran leadership (and that’s putting it kindly). The team hasn’t had a strong clubhouse player-leader since Will Clark’s 51-game swan song in 2000. Does La Russa’s command and control approach preclude such leadership from coming forward, or is it simply a matter of the types of players the Cardinals have had?
Even with those provisos, the strain of thinking that the team shouldn’t upset the status quo makes sense, unless someone like Joe Maddon is available. Maddon’s not, obviously: The bad timing of his contract extension with the Rays and TLR’s relunctance to leave the Cardinals is like something out of When Harry Met Sally. Perhaps one day Maddon and the Cardinals will finally get together. Until then, unless their salary demands are exorbitant — and TLR had one of the highest salaries among managers in 2009 ($4 million+) — LaRuncan should stay, principally out of lack of alternatives.