Pic of the Week

Tony LaRussa, the chief baseball officer
of the Arizona Diamondbacks, poses
with Internet sensation Grumpy Cat
before Monday's game.

What happens when Tony LaRussa encounters an online celebrity?

This.

Grumpy cat, grumpy former manager.

The photo, incidentally, moved on the AP service with a mandatory credit. Rob Schmacher of the Arizona Republic was the photographer.

On 30 start pitchers

The great Joe Posnanski this week grappled with this question: Do great managers keep their starting rotations healthy, or do healthy starting rotations make managers great?

It's a chicken or the egg question. There's no question: Teams that can keep their top starters going all season tend to do well, and teams that have to cycle numerous arms through the rotation tend not to do well.

The standard Posnanski sets up -- four pitchers making 30 or more starts in a season -- is debatable as a standard for keeping pitchers healthy. His position: Managers keep their jobs by winning games and, especially, championships. They don't get credit because pitcher Z was a rotation fixture for five years.

There's a lot in this piece for me to chew on. Tony LaRussa, for example, had a heavy number of seasons with four (or more) 30-start guys, more than anybody else since 1960. But there was a lot of turnover in those rotations.

I am relatively certain of this: Were I an up-and-coming starter, a potential star -- Alex Meyer, for example -- I would be wary of LaRussa. LaRussa's long and successful managerial history featured relatively few young pitchers who lasted  On the other hand, LaRussa (and his longtime pitching coach Dave Duncan) was exactly what Kyle Lohse needed. Be it in Chicago, Oakland or St. Louis, LaRussa and Duncan specialized in turning around veterans who washed out elsewhere.

Was LaRussa just lucky that he put together so many rotations that held together for full seasons? I've been inclined to hold it against him that so few rookie pitchers laid the foundation for real careers under LaRussa -- but I also think he deserves credit for being able to identify four pitchers who could get him through a season, and for getting them through the season. And often they would be four guys who hadn't done much at their previous job.

So I incline to the first side of the question. LaRussa had so many durable rotations because he (and, again, Duncan and others in the organization) a knack for picking the right guys, and a willingness to discard them when that time came.

----

I checked Ron Gardenhire's career by the four starters/30 starts yardstick. He has had one such season, 2004 (Johan Santana, Brad Radke, Lohse and Carlos Silva).

Two things struck me about that season as I looked at the Baseball Reference page:

• It is probably the only season in which Gardenhire did much skipping of the fifth starter. Santana, Radke and Lohse each made 34 starts, Silva 33; in a straight five-man rotation, nobody would get more than 33 starts, and only two would get that many. 
• Seth Greisinger got nine starts in the first half of the season before being bounced in favor of Terry Mulholland (15 starts).  

Seth Greisinger? I remember Mulholland. I vaguely remember Greisinger as a spring training invitee or something, but I would have said he didn't make the team. That he got nine starts has been purged from my memory bank.

He was, in a sense, the first of a string of "disposable starters" -- followed in future seasons by the likes of Sidney Ponson, Ramon Ortiz and Livan Hernandez. But the other three all had had some good seasons in the past. Greisinger was a former first-round pick (sixth overall) who'd gotten hurt before establishing himself, and he never did pan out.

A big part of what the Twins sought to do this offseason was bring in some 30-start, 200-inning guys. I'm going to assume that Mike Pelfrey isn't going to make 30 starts. Obviously, it's too soon to say that Ricky Nolasco or Phil Hughes (or Kevin Correia or Kyle Gibson) will. But that's the goal.

Tracing some managerial trees

Walt Weiss played for four managers, two of them
Tony LaRussa and Bobby Cox. The other two were
connected to LaRussa.

Three sure-fire Hall of Fame managers, and one with a pretty good case, abandoned the dugout the past couple of years, and some of the managerial hirings this offseasons led me to ponder how the careers of Bobby Cox, Tony LaRussa, Lou Piniella and Joe Torre have affected the current crop of managers.

Cox: His managerial progeny includes Ned Yost of the Kansas City Royals and Fredi Gonzalez, who succeeded him with the Atlanta Braves. Walt Weiss, just named to the Rockies job, also played a couple of seasons for Cox, but I'm putting him in LaRussa's group, for reasons I'll detail later.

Torre: Joe Girardi (Yankees) played for and coached under Torre. Don Mattingly (Dodgers) coached for Torre in New York amid speculation that he was being groomed to succeed Torre; when the Steinbrenners replaced Torre with Girardi and Torre went to the Dodgers, Mattingly followed and eventually inherited the job.

Lou Piniella managed for 23 years,
but spawned few managers.

Piniella: This is odd for a guy who managed for 23 years with five different franchises, won a World Series, had a 116-win season: I can't identify any manager, current or past, whose career trajectory was clearly affected by Sweet Lou. Mattingly and Willie Randolph played for him in the early years of his managerial career, but Donnie Baseball belongs in the Torre family and Randolph had so many skippers it's hard to identify a mentor.

In an odd way, Piniella may have been indirectly influential on Ozzie Guillen, who never played for or worked with Piniella; Joey Cora spent the bulk of his career with Piniella, and Guillen leaned as heavily on Cora as any manager has relied on a coach in recent memory.

LaRussa: He's got literally generations of managerial progeny — too many, probably, to accurately recount. Consider this this: Jim Leyland was LaRussa's right-hand man during LaRussa's first job, with the White Sox in the early 1980s; Leyland's been managing pretty much forever himself. Heck, Gene Lamont spent eight seasons with managerial jobs in between coaching stints with Leyland.

Mike Matheny led the Cardinals
back to the NLCS in his first
year as manager.

Besides Leyland, current managers in the LaRussa tree would include:

• Mike Redmond, new Miami manager; he clearly regards Leyland as a crucial figure in his career;
• Weiss broke in under LaRussa in Oakland, then played one season for Rene Lachemann in Florida (Lachemann is to LaRussa what Lamont is to Leyland — a coach who left periodically for managing jobs only to return after losing those jobs). Then Weiss moved on to Colorado, where he played for Don Baylor, who had played for LaRussa himself, although it would be difficult to claim LaRussa as a primary influence on Baylor. (More likely influences on Baylor would be Earl Weaver and Gene Mauch.)
• Mike Matheny, who succeeded LaRussa in St. Louis.
• Robin Ventura of the White Sox played three-plus seasons for Lamont, the longest period for which he had a specific manager. Ventura also played for shorter periods for Torre, Bobby Valentine and others. I'm not sure which of them was most influential on him.

There are 30 big-league managerial jobs; at least eight of them are now held by the managerial descendants of LaRussa, Cox and Torre.

Tony LaRussa and the Boston Red Sox

Is Tony LaRussa eyeing the Red Sox managerial job?
Tom Kelly suggested Saturday that his old buddy and rival
wants to return to the dugout, and Boston might be his
preferred destination.

Bobby Valentine is widely viewed as a dead man walking with the Boston Red Sox; indeed, he might well have been fired already had the now-notorious players-ownership meeting remained secret. Once that cat got out of the bag, it started having kittens all over the Boston media. Canning Bobby V. at that point would have suggested that the inmates were running the asylum.

Still, it's almost impossible to imagine Valentine back at the helm next season, which raises the question: Who should step into this pressure cooker of a job?

It's a bear. The Red Sox manager, whoever he is, must deal with

• an overbearing media with a penchant for putting everything under a melodramatic microscope;
• an ownership group with a demonstrated willingness to undermine underlings;
• a clubhouse of highly paid egos; and
• a fan base that believes it is entitled to championships.

Keeping all four groups happy is next to impossible, which is why Terry Francona is in the broadcast booth these days. Valentine has worked a clean sweep; all four groups appear to be in agreement about him.

I had figured that the Sox would look for someone along the lines of Francona, and likely one of his former coaches who have gone on to manage other teams. Maybe Brad Mills, fired this summer in Houston; perhaps John Farrell, who is still the manager in Toronto.

Tom Kelly offered another notion Saturday during a visit to the Twins TV booth on his number-retirement day.  Somebody raised the topic of Tony LaRussa, TK's great buddy and long-ago rival — from 1987 through 1992, the Twins and A's never played a series without one of the teams being in first place in the old AL West.

LaRussa, of course, stepped down as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals after winning the World Series last year. But Kelly, implying strongly that he had this from the horse's mouth, said LaRussa is itching to get back into managing. And when Dick Bremer mentioned Boston, Kelly essentially said, yeah, that's the idea.

It's a fascinating proposition, LaRussa in Boston. This is one of the most accomplished managers in the game's history; if there's anybody who can impose his will on the chaos that seems to accompany the Red Sox, LaRussa's probably the man.

On the other hand, LaRussa's constant belligerence is rather antithetical to the approach that worked for Francona. Playing in Boston is tough enough without a manager who's constantly looking to create conflict. Francona's genius was in removing friction; LaRussa seems addicted to it.

So does Valentine, and we've seen this year what that style leads to in Boston. LaRussa's better at that style than Valentine, and maybe he could pull it off in Beantown, but he seems an ill fit for that environment.

Notes, quotes and comment

The Twins on Friday tweeted this photo of  Tom Kelly,
Jim Leyland and Tony LaRussa standing around
the batting cage talking golf. The three managers
account for six World Series titles among them. (The
fourth, No. 22, is Tigers coach Gene Lamont, himself a
former manager for eight years.)

Lots of baseball heavyweights at Target Field on Friday, and I'm not just talking about the rotund Prince Fielder.

Scott Boras, uberagent, was seen in Terry Ryan's suite with the Twins general manager; the assumption is that they were discussing the No. 2 pick in the draft. The new rules about bonuses installed by the labor deal have sharply decreased the importance of "advisors," but Boras is doubtless still a figure to be reckoned with.

Tony LaRussa put in an appearance. He's delivering World Series rings to players from last year's Cardinals team who aren't still with the Redbirds, and one such is P.J. Walters. Walters got into four games for St. Louis last year, and was long gone before the postseason, but his four innings (all in June) is enough to get a ring.

Walters isn't about to turn it down, of course, but I doubt he views it with as much pride as, let us say, Nick Punto does his. Punto was part of the team all year and played a lot (and well) during the postseason.

---

I mentioned the draft earlier. Baseball America's Jim Callis on Friday issued his second mock draft. He continues to have the Houston Astros taking Stanford RHP Mark Appel 1/1, with the Twins tabbing high school outfielder Bryon Buxton.

From Callis' subscription-only text:

As much as Minnesota needs pitching, it isn't expected to pass up the opportunity to take Buxton, who has the best all-around package of tools in the draft. If the Astros take Buxton, the Twins might take (San Francisco RHP Kyle) Zimmer over Appel or go with (Florida catcher Mike) Zunino and move Joe Mauer to another position.
Projected Pick: Byron Buxton.

The draft begins a week from Monday.

---

Anthony Swarzak, Friday's starter, worked despite flu-like symptoms, so his difficult outing might be forgiven. Francisco Liriano, on the other hand ... just not good.

It was being pointed out on Twitter that Swarzak's ERA as a starter this year is 8.34, as a reliever 3.06. We're only talking 18 innings or so in either catagory, but that's the kind of split that can get a guy pigeonholed.

Especially since he came into the game with a career ERA as a starter of 5.50 and as a reliever of 3.70.

I don't know of a specific reason he'd be better out of the bullpen, but the pattern is evident.

A history lesson: Collusion and 12-man pitching staffs

The Twins Geek, John Bonnes, on Sunday had a post puzzling over who the 25th man on the 1987 Twins postseason roster was.

The answer, which I am old enough to know, is: Nobody. In 1987 -- and in a handful of surrounding seasons -- there was a "gentleman's agreement" among the teams to go with just 24 players on the active roster. Officially, they could have 25; nobody did.

It was part of the sorry collusion episode, in which the owners, led by then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, sought to undermine the collective bargaining agreement with the players union. Most prominent was the agreement not to pursue other team's free agents.

The collusion attempt proved costly in a variety of ways. The players union won massive damages in three grievance hearings. The stiff penalties prompted two rounds of expansion, as the owners sought to recoup the losses by dunning outsiders. The episode also further poisoned the waters for future labor talks, helping set up the strike of 1994.

Now the teams are required to have 25 players on their active roster.

But the effects are still evident on rosters. Follow me here: For years teams typically carried 10 pitchers and 15 hitters. Managers in the late 1980s, forced to trim a player, universally opted to keep 10 pitchers and 14 position players.

After four years of that, they'd become accustomed to that size bench. They had gotten used to the limitations of five (in the American League) bench options, had become used to making sure they had at least one Swiss Army knife of a multi-position player on hand.

And when the de facto rosters expanded, Tony LaRussa -- of course -- used the 25th spot for an extra pitcher. Memory tells me he initially used the slot to carry a Rule V selection; eventually he used to add somebody he actually wanted to use. He won. Other teams followed his example.

Tony LaRussa: Father of the expanded pitching staff

Perhaps the expansion of pitching staffs would have happened anyway. There were other influences, in particular the rise of pitch counts, and certainly the expansion didn't stop at 11. But LaRussa's realization in 1990 that he didn't need that 15th position player got the ball rolling.

Now there are managers suggesting that rosters should be expanded to 26 players -- which, if it should happen, would probably mean 13-man pitching staffs.

Notes, quotes and comments

Tony La Russa, flanked by Cardinals
owner Bill DeWitt Jr. (foreground) and
general manager John Mozelak,
walked away from the St. Louis
managerial job Monday.

Just about everyone was surprised Monday when Tony LaRussa announced his retirement. In retrospect, I'm not sure why.

Look at the photo to the left. TLR looks like an old and weary man. He's 67, he's been sick all season, he's been managing for 33 years, he just won a third World Series ...

Had LaRussa quit after last season — when Bobby Cox and Lou Piniella and Joe Torre walked away — I wouldn't have been surprised. So why should it be a shocker that he's decided he's done  now? Because he's 35 wins away from passing John McGraw on the all-times wins list?

He and Tom Kelly were mutual admirers, and I suspect he will, like  TK, have no trouble resisting efforts to coax him back into the dugout.

But then, I expected him back with the Cardinals in 2012.

---

The Cardinals have been one of the premier teams in the National League over the decades. The Senior Circuit has no Yankee monolith, but the Cards have an imposing record of titles since Branch Rickey invented the farm system in the 1920s and turned around their on-field fortunes.

There's been no shortage of Hall-of-Fame managers in the Cardinal uni over the decades — even leaving out player-managers Rogers Hornsby and Frankie Frisch (each of whom skippered the Redbirds to a World Series title), there are Billy Southworth, Bill McKechnie, Red Schoendienst (who made Cooperstown at least as much as a player as as manager), Whitey Herzog, Torre (who isn't in yet but will be) — and of course, LaRussa.

LaRussa worked 16 years in St. Louis, winning 1,408 games — almost 400 more than the next best, Schoendienst.

The greatest Cardinal manager? Absolutely LaRussa.

---

The Twins on Monday claimed a pair of marginal pitchers, Matt Maloney and Jeff Gray, off waivers. Both men have bounced between the majors and Triple A for three or four years, and neither is particularly promising; if they were, they wouldn't have been on waivers.

I will regard both as roster filler destined for Rochester until given reason to believe otherwise. That reason is probably more likely to come from Maloney than Gray, if only because Maloney is left-handed and has been a starter in the minors (with impressive walk/strikeout ratios but unimpressive K rates), while Gray is a righty reliever.

Contemplating Tony LaRussa

A World Series trophy? For me? 

The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series Friday night, winning the most routine game of what had been an intriguingly dramatic series.

This makes three World Series titles for Tony LaRussa, who is increasingly making a case for the title of greatest manager ever.

There's no clear and obvious way to determine such a title, but but he's a serious contender. As I've said before, I don't like his persona, but I can't argue with his results.

One intriguing aspect of his career: He has had, by my reckoning, six teams that could legitimately be said to be the best team in baseball that year -- the 1993 White Sox, the A's of 1988-90, the Cardinals of 2004-05. Only one of those teams (the 1989 Athletics) won the World Series. Two of his titles, including this one, came with squads that were less than the best.

Of course, the wider net cast for postseason teams in the current set up makes it almost inevitable that the best team doesn't win. John McGraw, Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel -- those men had to have the best record in the league to get to the World Series. LaRussa doesn't.

In both 2006 and 2011, LaRussa -- the father of the modern bullpen of specialists and rigid closers -- had to get resourceful with the relief crew. The Cardinals this year went through five different closers, and eight different pitchers picked up saves. Three of the men in his postseason 'pen were midseason acquisitions (Octavio Dotel, Arthur Rhodes and Marc Rzepczynski); another (Jake Westbrook) was a transplanted starter.  All through the postseason, as Jason Motte continued to get the ball for the final outs, LaRussa kept insisting that Motte wasn't the closer, that there was no closer.

That was just one of the challenges for LaRussa this season. Remember:

• Adam Wainwright, arguably his best starter (and the man who he turned into his October closer in 2006) went down for the year during spring training, opening a giant hole in the rotation. 
• LaRussa was troubled by a severe case of shingles from practically the start of the year and was forced by his bosses to take a leave of absence in May. He is still on medication for the ailment.
• Dave Duncan, his long-time pitching coach and confidant, had a long leave himself to tend to his severely ill wife.

The Cardinals were not the best team in baseball in 2011. But LaRussa led them to the title anyway. It was, perhaps, the most impressive accomplishment of an impressive managerial career.

The raging genius that is Tony LaRussa

Tony LaRussa: Even great managers can make
decisions that make no sense at all.

I'm about to mock Tony LaRussa. I will do so with all the respect his incredible managerial record deserves. Thirty-three seasons in the dugout, 2,728-2,365 regular season record, two World Series titles (and four other trips to the Series, including this year) ... the only managers with more lifetime wins are Connie Mack and John McGraw, and LaRussa is going to catch Muggsy.

Tony LaRussa is a great manager. I don't much care for him, but that's my problem, not his.

I know a few people who have a particular problem: They feel constantly compelled to prove that they are the smartest guy in the room. (Sometimes it's me doing that.) LaRussa sometimes manages that way— as if he's just got to prove that he's smarter than anybody else.  His record allows him to get away, in the court of public (or media) opinion, with nontraditional moves for which others would be criticized, if not crucified. Hitting the pitcher eighth, for example.

He had one of those moments in the eighth inning Monday night. It didn't affect the outcome, but it was still weird — he took a left turn at inexplicable and parked at illogical.

I refer to his decision to being in Lance Lynn to issue an intentional walk to Ian Kinsler, then immediately relieve Lynn with Jason Motte.

Deploying a reliever solely to walk someone intentionally sometimes serves a purpose. Let's say the Twins are playing the White Sox, and Paul Konerko is up against Scott Baker with two outs, a man on second and Adam Dunn on deck. Ron Gardenhire wants to walk Konerko and bring in Jose Mijares to  face Dunn, but he expects the Sox to pinch hit for Dunn, which would force Mijares to face a righty. Instead, Gardy can have Mijares come in and issue the walk to Konerko. Now if the Sox pinch hit for Dunn, he can counter with a right-handed reliever.

But that wasn't the case here. It was right-handed pitcher for right-handed pitcher, and there was no way Texas was going to pinch hit for Elvis Andrus anyway.

I'm sure LaRussa had reasons for burning Lynn, but I can't imagine what they were.

I don't fully buy the manager's post-game explanation — that the bullpen coach misheard (twice) the instructions phoned to him. Even if the root of the problem was that LaRussa wanted Motte warming up, not Lynn, he still could have had Marc Rzepczynski issue the walk to Kinsler.

This is a different issue than letting Rzepczynski face Mike Napoli. At the time, I figured LaRussa was sticking with the left-hander because Mitch Moreland was on deck. Apparently, had Motte started warming up in time, he would have pitched to Napoli. That makes sense, and I credit LaRussa's version of events there.

Pic of the Week

The wind in St. Louis  gave Tony LaRussa
an ad hoc Mohawk during the national anthem
before Game 1 on Wednesday.

Even for a veteran manager like Tony LaRussa, the World Series is a truly hair-raising experience.

Managerial musical chairs

This morning's USA Today had a story on the likelihood of a mass of managerial changes, which ties in to a recent post here about Scott Ullger and his ambitions.

Bobby Cox is retiring after
29 years as a major league
manager -- 25 with Atlanta,
four with Toronto.

Dave Nightengale's piece conveys the false impression that managers used to have greater job security than they do now. In reality, managers today who have any real success get far more rope than in the past. A big part of the coming upheaval comes from a group of 20-year managers who are leaving on their own behest --Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, Lou Piniella, maybe Tony LaRussa, possibly Dusty Baker.

Some other comments:

*Nightengale mentions Joe Girardi's contract status with the New York Yankees -- signed only through this season. I don't think he's going anywhere. George Steinbrenner is dead, and his infantile emotionalism was buried with him. The people running the Yankees now are not going to dump Girardi on a whim. And for his part, Girardi knows that, so long as the rest of MLB allows the Yankees to hold such a massive financial advantage over everybody else, whoever manages the Yankees has one foot in the Hall of Fame.

If Ozzie Guillen leaves the White Sox
for Florida, will bench coach Joey Cora
go with him, or get a managerial job
of his very own?

* According to Nightengale, Ozzie Guillen in recent weeks told people in the White Sox organization that he would resign after the the season, then changed his mind.

Nightengale, in an on-line only piece, predicts Guillen will decamp for the Florida Marlins job. I'm pretty sure that would be a mistake on both sides, and I think Ozzie is too smart for that (I won't say the same for Marlins owner Jeffery Loria, who is apparently set on getting Guillen).

And Nightengale figures Guillen's successor on the south side will be Tony LaRussa. Jerry Reinsdorf loves LaRussa, but I don't think a one-and-fly guy is a good idea.

---

Fascinating stuff in the Dodgers divorce trial: On Monday. Jamie McCourt (a lawyer herself) testified that she never read the postnuptual agreement in which the Dodgers franchise was declared to be husband Frank's sole property. Bad for her, right?

On Tuesday, the lawyer who drew up the agreement said he changed it AFTER it was signed, switching the Dodgers from community property to sole property. Incredible. Equally incredible: he told the court he saw no reason to tell Jamie McCourt of the change.

The words unethical and incompetent come to mind -- for Jamie McCourt, for Frank McCourt, for their lawyer ... for pretty much everybody involved in this unseemly mess.

The Dodger divorce is working for at least one guy: A law student at the University of Minnesota from L.A. who has chronicled the entire travesty on his blog.

A piece of the Acta, and other odds and ends

It's good to see a long-suffering team like the Yankees finally reach the World Series.

Surrre it is.

* The Cleveland Indians, with a choice of a win-now manager from the outside (Bobby Valentine) and a veteran of their farm system to supervise a rebuilding project (Torey Lovullo), split the difference to hire Manny Acta.

Acta (above) is a more sensible choice than Valentine, who told the Cleveland media after his interview that he and the Tribe may not be a good fit. But the reality for the Indians is that they are rebuilding and they're going to take their lumps in 2010. Lovullo would have made more sense.

Of course, it's possible that general manager Mark Shapiro doesn't have enough security to write off 2010 — in which case he'll make more, and worse, mistakes in the offseason that's just beginning.

* The current issue of Baseball America names Joe Mauer its Major League Player of the Year. Mauer is the first player to be BA's High School Player of the year, Minor League Player of the Year, and Major League Player of the Year.

*Tony LaRussa will return as St. Louis manager. Just as important: pitching coach Dave Duncan, who was vocally on the outs with the front office during the season, will return also. Less important, but certain to make headlines: Mark McGwire will be the hitting coach.

LaRussa was, at best, a passive encourager of the rise of steroids in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. Even after the backlash, he vocally sought to bring Barry Bonds to the Cardinals and defended Rick Ankiel's use of human growth hormone. And now he's trying to rehabilitate McGwire's image.

Good luck with that.