The Columnist Manifesto

Why didn't I take Brock 20s advice and quit watching the boneheaded broadcast of ESPN's "Baseball Tonight"?

I figured that with a two-hour broadcast supposedly giving a rundown on the 8 teams in the post-season, the Mets would get at least, I don't know, 5 minutes of coverage? I don't think they hit the five minute threshold, but what was much worse was this incredible display of conscious disrespect for my beloved team:

The four ESPN pundits unanimously picked Joe Girardi of the Florida Marlins as their choice for National League Manager of the Year.

Let's gather the facts.

What are the criteria for the "Manager of the Year Award"? I don't know what they are officially, but it seems to me that it can be boiled down to three questions:

1. Was the team successful?
2. Did the team exceed expectations?
3. Did the team overcome adversity?

It seems to me that the answer has to be yes to at least two of these questions, and you can play around with the weight to be given the answers.

The Marlins finished the year at 78-84, meaning that they lost six more games than they won, and finished fourth. This isn't success. Nor did they exceed expectations -- they were uniformly picked to finish in fourth place out of five teams in the NL East, and that's what they did. They seemed to be flirting with a shot at the Wild Card spot for a while, but that was an illusion -- they ended up 10 games behind the wild card winning Dodgers.

The most you can say about the Marlins is that they suffered the "adversity" of playing like crap for two months and then "overcame" that by playing halfway decently afterwards to finish with a losing season but not a horribly losing season. But if Girardi was such a good manager, why did they start the season losing something like 70% of their games in April and May?

I'm sorry, but "adversity" can't mean your own team playing poorly. It has to mean things like injuries and other outside factors that would hinder the team's ability to win. That wasn't the Marlins' problem -- they just stunk at the beginning, and stunk less the rest of the way. What kind of basis is that for identifying mangerial excellence?*

Now let's look at the Mets and their manager Willie Randolph.

The Mets were obviously successful. And they exceeded expectations. Of the 19 "analysts" listed on ESPN's website only 7 picked them to win the NL East. (Just about everyone else picked the Braves, who also had their first losing season in 15 years.) While 9 others picked them to win the wild card, only 3 picked them to win the pennant.

The Mets were expected to succeed, but no one expected them to dominate. Yet they finished with the best record in baseball (tied with the Yankees), dominated their division, which they essentially wrapped up by early September, and won 9 more games than the next best NL team.

This alone might be enough for Manager of the Year, but the Mets Willie Randolph led the team to a dominating season without a single dominating starting pitcher. Only one starting pitcher, Steve Trachsel, who is no one's definition of an "ace," was injury-free, and no starting pitcher on the team could or can consistently go past the 6th inning. The Mets had 12 different pitchers starting at least four games on the mound, which has to be a record for a division-winning club.

And the team also had significant injuries in the bullpen, and to starting position players at second base and at all three outfield positions.

Much is made of the strong seasons from fill-in players like Jose Valentin (2d base) and Endy Chavez (outfield), and the great bullpen. But these occurrences, while lucky, are the kinds of things for which a manager deserves some credit. Valentin and Chavez blossomed because Randolph as manager perceived their ability to contribute and gave them big opportunities to play. And the bullpen? Every season, some team's talented bullpen breaks down due to mis-handling by a manager. Handling the bullpen and the bench are two of the manager's most important functions, and these were keys to the Mets success this year.

So Willie Randolph is my easy choice for Manager of the Year.

The only other NL manager even worth discussing is Bruce Bochy, whose Padres won the division after being universally picked to finish fourth or fifth. But they had a set pitching staff the whole season, and no major injuries to contend with. And of course, they won their division last year (albeit with a mediocre 82-80 record).

Grady Little of the Dodgers gets an honorable mention for his team's impressive comeback, but they didn't particularly exceed preseason expectations. They had a couple of major injuries, but did not play well through them, bouncing back when their injured players returned and when they acquired pitching ace Greg Maddux in a mid-season deal.

In any event, the choice of Joe Girardi is just idiotic. ESPN clearly has some "thing" against the Mets, which makes it all the more irritating that they have broadcast rights over the playoffs.

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*Girardi managed a team with the lowest payroll in baseball. While there is a very rough correlation between payroll and success, there is no evidence that 78 wins on a low payroll is an unusually over par performance. The ESPN guys may also have been tweaking the Marlins management for firing Girardi as a scapegoat for the team's disappointing season.