Let us begin with the question of "How many Hall of Fame managers should there be?", or, if you prefer, "How many managers should be in the Hall of Fame?"

                Of position players who played in the 1920s (1920 to 1929), 11.0% are in the Hall of Fame, unless the Hall of Fame has recently elected some yahoo for whom I failed to account; from the 1950s, 7.3%.   Those are numbers based on seasons, rather than at bats or careers; in other words, Hall of Fame players account for 7.3% of all player/seasons in the 1950s.   Those numbers, however, include players with only a few at bats.   Since a manager is the most regular of the regular "players", the more relevant percentage would probably be for regulars.   For players with 400 plate appearances, the percentages are 24% from the 1920s and 17% from the 1950s.

                So we could begin, then, with the assumption that Hall of Fame managers should account for no more than 25% of teams managed; you can argue for less, but can we agree that it shouldn’t be over 25%.?    Through 2013 there will have been 2,696 major league team/seasons, depending on what you count; I’d tell you what the number is for 2012, but I don’t like to use that number.   Hall of Fame recognition lags behind performance, however, so let’s back that up about ten years, and the number would be 2,396.

                Hall of Fame managers, then, should account for no more than about 600 team/seasons.   A couple of qualifications here.    I’m not going to count Hall of Fame players who also managed, like Walter Johnson and Ted Williams.   A few guys, like Cap Anson and Fred Clarke, we’ll count them half as players and half as managers, and, by the same logic, we’ll count Connie Mack half as a manager and half as an owner.

                Let’s look at the guys who are in the Hall of Fame.

                Hall of Fame managers managed 500 seasons or partial seasons, and managed 71,518 games.     But we are treating Cap Anson and Cap Clarke half as players (Fred Clarke was in fact called "Cap"), and Connie Mack half as an owner, which adjusts their numbers, and would make the totals 453 seasons and 65,083 games.  If we treat each 150 games as a season, that’s 434 seasons worth of Hall of Fame managing.

                We can reach, then, this early if somewhat unpersuasive conclusion:   The number of managers in the Hall of Fame is consistent with the number of Hall of Fame players, and is not unreasonable.

                Unpersuasive, for this reason.   Through baseball history a very large number of teams have been managed by people who are in the Hall of Fame, but not on our list of Hall of Fame managers.   Branch Rickey, for example, managed 1,277 major league games and is in the Hall of Fame, but not as a manager.   Edward Barrow managed 639 games and is in the Hall of Fame, but not as a manager.

                More troubling than those are, for example, Charlie Comiskey and Clark Griffith, who were not only managers but very, very good managers with fairly long careers, but who are listed on the Hall of Fame rosters as "Pioneers" and "Executives", when they might equally well be listed as managers.     The percentage of all teams which are managed by Hall of Fame managers turns out to be surprisingly difficult to establish, but moving on.

                What accomplishments are relevant to Hall of Fame standing?   With exceptions and limitations that will be discussed in a moment, there would appear to be only five:

                a)  Winning games,

                b)  Winning a high percentage of your games,

                c)  Winning championships,

                d)  Winning the World Series, and

                e)  Having teams that exceed reasonable expectations.

                Exceptions and limitations.    A manager could also be historically significant as an innovator, as a personality, a leader, a path-finder, or as a developer of talent.

                It is however, difficult to see that any of those things has ever led to the selection of anyone as a Hall of Fame manager, with the exceptions of Rube Foster and Harry Wright, and it is difficult to see that these things should make a Hall of Fame manager.    As a personality. . .well, you can’t have any more personality than Casey Stengel, but if he hadn’t won big with the Yankees, would that make him a Hall of Famer?    Doug Rader had a HUGE personality, but he didn’t win.

                As a developer of talent. ..let us say that Davey Johnson deserves some of the credit for the early-career success of Doc Gooden.   What Johnson did with Gooden was unusual.   At the age of 18, Gooden in the minors was 19-4 with 300 strikeouts in 191 innings.   Most people, however, were cautioning against moving Gooden too fast, talking about giving him at least 15 or 20 starts at Double A and some time in the bullpen before he went into the major league rotation.   Johnson said "No way in hell; he is better than my other pitchers, and he’s going into my rotation.  Now."   Not a direct quote; a characterization of his statements and actions at that time.

                Johnson deserves credit for that decision, without which Dwight Gooden would probably have wasted his best seasons in the minor leagues, as some young pitchers do.  But is this separate and distinct credit for Davey Johnson, or is it an element of his other credentials?   Because Johnson did this, the Mets won 90 games in 1984, 98 games in 1985, and 108 games and a World Championship in 1986.  That is what Johnson accomplished.

                Look at it this way:  Who was Walter Johnson’s first major league manager?   Who was Bob Gibson’s first major league manager?   Who was Bob Feller’s first major league manager?   Who was Cy Young’s first major league manager?

                Joe Cantillon, Solly Hemus, Steve O’Neill, Gus Schmelz.    Are any of this men in the Hall of Fame, or should they be?

                We should leave the door open a crack here.   If there was a manager who consistently, over a period of time, played a key role in the development of superstar players one after another, then we should respect that and consider its weight.   Perhaps the best example of that ever is Ed Barrow, who played key roles in the development of Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Pie Traynor, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.   But in the normal course of a career, having a 19-year-old superstar dropped into your lap is more in the nature of "extreme good fortune" than "Hall of Fame credential."

                An innovator, a leader and a path-finder. . .obviously these definitions overlap, and in this case we should leave the door open more than a crack.  

                But at the same time, it’s a dangerous concept.   Innovation is everywhere in baseball.   Innovation is what drives all changes in baseball, and every successful manager is an innovator in different ways.    Herman Franks, more than any one other manager, defined the role of the modern reliever, when he announced that he would protect Bruce Sutter’s overworked arm by using him only to protect leads at the end of the game.  Prior to Franks, relief aces (like Gossage and Fingers) were brought into games when the team was behind but close, and were routinely brought in when the score was tied. It’s an extremely important innovation.

                But does it make Franks a Hall of Famer, given his modest managerial record?   Of course it does not.   EVERYBODY is an innovator.   Nobody thinks of Walter Alston as a big innovator, but he played a major role in at least three changes in the game.   First, before Walter, managers would publicly criticize their players.   Walter felt that it was improper for a manager to criticize his players in the newspaper, and this practice essentially spread from Walter to all other managers, becoming the accepted standard in the industry.

                Second, while the usage patterns of pitchers have become steadily more regular over the entire history of baseball, they became radically more regular in the years 1959 to 1964.    Walter was one of the leading managers who "regularized" pitcher usage patterns by ending the practice of flipping pitchers back and forth between starting and relieving, and keeping pitchers religiously to a starting schedule.

                Third, Walter was one of the first managers to go to a five-man pitching rotation.    The Dodgers were using a five-man pitching rotation by 1972, well ahead of most of baseball.

                Would these things make Walter a Hall of Fame manager, had he not been successful?   No.   Innovation is everywhere in baseball; the game changes all the time in ways that are too subtle to be documented at the time the changes are occurring, and every change results from an innovation.    Innovation does not make a great manager unless it is accompanied by success.

                The first manager to platoon players in a systematic, organized fashion was George Stallings, with the Miracle Braves in 1914.    But does that make Stallings a Hall of Fame manager?

                Should we put Tony La Russa in the Hall of Fame, because he pushed the limits on the use of left-handed relievers?    Hell, to me, that’s a reason to keep him out.  A key concern:  Did he change the game for the better?   The constant and annoying use of more and more left-handed one-out relievers has not made the game of baseball better.

                I guess my real point is this.   If I let you start arguing that Birdie Tebbetts or Fred Hutchinson or John McNamara or Gene Mauch or Alvin Dark should be in the Hall of Fame because of his role as an innovator

                a)  There is going to be no end to it, ever, because innovation is everywhere in baseball, and

                b)  What this inevitably will lead to is paying a lot of attention to some innovations because they are connected to somebody’s Hall of Fame brief, while ignoring other innovations which are actually more important.

                Again, keep the door open a crack.   If a manager really does play a key role in making baseball a better game, I’m open to considering that.   But as a rule. . . innovation has nothing at all to do with whether a manager belongs in the Hall of Fame.

                OK, let’s get back to the five things that do make a Hall of Fame manager:

a)  Winning games,

                b)  Winning a high percentage of your games,

                c)  Winning championships,

                d)  Having teams that exceed reasonable expectations.                

                That’s four; I decided to consolidate "winning championships" and "winning the World Series" into one category, since the World Series is a championship.

                Let us say that, as a starting point, we give the manager one point for each 40 games that he won in his career.   Why 40?

                Don’t make me explain everything; we’ll be here forever.   I’m trying to make 100 points a line that sort of generally separates the Hall of Famers from the lesser geniuses.   One point for 40 wins is one of the decisions that makes that work.

                Winning percentage. .. we can look at that as Wins Minus Losses.  The Hall of Fame managers had 6,326 more wins than losses in their careers, this number discounting (ignoring) the negative contributions of Connie Mack and Bucky Harris, who were under .500, and also I’m ignoring Harry Wright’s record in the National Association, 1871-1875, since the National Association is a bona fide major league in the same sense that Bobby Parnell is a bona fide superstar.   Since there are 22 Hall of Fame Managers and we want to award around 600 points in this category, that would be one point for each 10 more Wins than Losses. 

                Earl Weaver won 1,480 games in his managerial career, which is 37 points.   He was 420 games over .500 in his career, which 42 points.    So at this point, Earl Weaver is at 79 points, which places him in a tie for seventh among the Hall of Fame managers:

The strongest Hall of Fame cases, so far in our analysis, would be for John McGraw and Joe McCarthy, and the weakest Hall of Fame managers would be Wilbert Robinson, Harry Wright, Ned Hanlon and Jersey Whitehog.    It is early, but I will alert you in advance that Whitey is not going to move up very much as we study the credentials in more depth.   I’m not anti-Herzog; I always liked the guy, and I’m glad they elected him.  Facts are facts; records are records.

                OK, next we look at winning championships.   Suppose that we give 5 points for winning a division championship, 10 for a league championship, 15 for a World Championship.

                Way too many points.   If we did that, the 22 Hall of Fame managers would earn a total of 1,400 points, or about 64 apiece.   It works on a different level, though.   From 1903 to 1960 there would be 25 points each year (except 1904), with 16 teams each year, or 1.56 points per team.    Now, there would be 45 points each year with 30 teams, or 1.50 points per year—about the same ratio.  So the proportions are fine; it’s just the numbers that are too high.

                Let’s go with three points for a Division Championship, six for a League Championship, nine for a World Championship (no doubling up; it’s not nine ADDITIONAL points for the World Championship.)   

                By that scale, the most qualified managers among the ‘famers are Casey Stengel, Joe McCarthy, Connie Mack and John McGraw:

                When we add these points to those we had before, we get the following:

And finally, we have Performance Against Expectation.    The Baltimore Orioles didn’t win their league last year, or their division, or the World Series—but they certainly won a great many more games than anyone expected them to win.   We have to give Buck Showalter some credit for that.  How do we do that?

                I have a formula, and a file that has the relevant information in it.   The formula is for "Expected Wins in a Season"—expected wins by a team, given their won-lost record in recent seasons.  A team’s expected winning percentage in 2013 is:

                One times their won-lost record in 2011, plus

                Two times their won-lost record in 2012, plus

                162 wins and 162 losses. 

                For example, for the Baltimore Orioles in 2012. . .their won-lost record in 2010 was 66-96.

                Their won-lost record in 2011 was 69-93.   Two times that is 138-186:

                To this we add 162 wins and 162 losses, giving them an expected winning percentage in 2012 of .452, so their expected won-lost record in 2012 was 73-89:

                The formula works, on average; teams that are expected to finish 73-89, on average, will finish 73-89.    The 2012 Orioles did twenty games better than that; they finished 93-69.   That makes Buck Showalter +20 games in 2012.    +20 is a good year.   There are 68 teams in baseball history that are +20 or better.

                (For expansion teams, we assume they are coming off two consecutive seasons with records of 54-108, which makes the expectation for a first-year expansion team 65-97, and then of course you have to adjust expectations for everybody else in the league.    For teams before 1961 we use 154-154 rather than 162-162, for obvious reasons.)

                Anyway, I have a file which has these expectations and plusses and minuses for everybody.     These numbers are kind of interesting, so let’s dwell on them a little bit.    Billy Martin had nine seasons in his career in which his team exceeded expectations by at least five games.    His 1974 Texas Rangers (83-76) exceeded expectations by 18 games; they had lost 105 games the previous season.   His 1980 Oakland A’s (83-79) exceeded expectations by 15 games, as did his 1969 Minnesota Twins (97-65) and his 1976 New York Yankees (97-62).    The 1981 Oakland A’s were +13, the 1985 Yankees +12, the 1977 Yankees +11, the 1983 Yankees +10, and the 1971 Detroit Tigers +9.

                That’s a very impressive record; those nine teams exceeded expectations by a total of 117 games (it adds up to 118, but I’m using an extra decimal behind the scenes.)   That’s a very impressive total, but is nowhere near a record.  Bill McKechnie had thirteen overperforming teams which exceeded expectations by 139 games.   Bobby Cox had 16 overperforming teams that exceeded expectations by 185 games.   Connie Mack, while he also had many desultory seasons, had 18 teams that exceeded expectations by a total of 234 games, which is the record.   Davey Johnson is +129 games with ten teams.    Fred Clarke was +121 games with 9 teams. Joe McCarthy was +187 games with 16 teams.   John McGraw was +227 games with 18 overperforming teams.   Leo Durocher was +164 with 12 teams.  Miller Huggins was +131 with 9 teams.  Sparky Anderson was +133 with 12 teams.

                Billy Martin’s teams added more wins than some of these other managers, but in looking at it that way, Martin is taking advantage of the low expectations for those teams.     He had several teams that were coming off of dreadful seasons and did well. 

                That’s impressive—but is it more impressive than sustaining excellence?    Not by this method.    By this method, if you’ve been losing 100 games a year, you’re expected to lose 92, but if you’ve been winning 100 games a year, you’re expected to win 92.   If you can continue to win 100 games a year, you’re outperforming expectations.   

                Anyway. . ..accounting.   Here’s what I did.    First, I ignored any seasons in which teams outperformed expectations by less than 5 games.    Then I gave each manager:

                1 point for a season in which his team outperformed expectations by 5 to 9 games,

                2 points for a season in which his team exceeded expectations by 10 to 14 games,

                3 points for 15 to 19 games,

                4 points for 20 to 24 games,

                5 points for 25 to 29 games,

                Etc. 

                Billy Martin earned 21 points in his career because his teams in 9 different seasons did substantially better than expected.   This is the tenth highest total of all time. 

                OK, let’s add these points to the totals we had before for the Hall of Fame managers, and see what we’ve got:

                Wilbert Robinson’s election to the Hall of Fame, I think it may be said, was a capricious selection not justified by his record as a manager.

                Harry Wright. . .well, we can give him a little extra credit for inventing professional baseball.

                Whitey Herzog, as much as I like him, may not fully meet the standards of a Hall of Fame manager, based solely on the record of his accomplishments.

                The real purpose of this, of course, is to allow us to compare the records of other managers, Hall of Fame candidates, to those of the managers who have been selected to the Hall of Fame.

                I get questions all the time:  What do you think of the Hall of Fame candidacy of Bruce Bochy, of Gene Mauch, of Davey Johnson, of Charlie Manuel?   A week ago, I didn’t have any method to address those questions.   Now I do.

                Tommorrow, we’ll look at the Hall of Fame credentials of some recently retired managers who might be considered Hall of Fame candidates—Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa, as well as some long-retired managers.   On Wednesday, we’ll look at the active managers.  Thanks for reading.