Change: For Better or For Worse?
Everybody wants to know if replacing Willie Randolph with Jerry Manuel will be a successful story. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait it out. But who wants to wait it out in New York? The media has written a bunch of articles about changing managers in the middle of the season during the past week.
Anthony McCarron of the New York Daily News provided some statistics that I found interesting, “There’s no guarantee of success just because a team has made a managerial change - from 2002-07 there were 20 skippers replaced in-season; only three of those teams made the playoffs and six finished in last place. The fired managers had a combined winning percentage of .426, the replacements .451.” That’s not too shabby. McCarron provided this reason, “Managers who have been replacements say they have had to convince a team, wounded by the uproar surrounding the previous skipper’s failure, that it can still compete. They must immediately open lines of communication and deal with potential lingering issues concerning playing time or how the players felt about their deposed leader.”
John Harper of the New York Daily News wrote another article about the managerial change, and he pointed out that, “Perhaps no less significant, Manuel isn’t afraid to address internal issues, even the sensitive issue of a racial divide that may or may not exist in the Mets’ clubhouse. If nothing else, the perception seems to exist, and that was enough for Manuel to make a point of talking about it already with his players.” The description written by Harper seems to cover some of the reasons noted by McCarron on why replacement managers tend to fail more often than not. If perception is reality then it seems like Manuel can overcome what the other replacement managers weren’t able to. One week into Manuel’s Mets, they look like they have a little bit more life in them.
