To anyone who’s had to endure watching a Baltimore Orioles game this year or really any of the last fourteen since their last season it is easy to see how truly terrible this team has been. Despite having a roster replete with young talented players like Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, and Brian Matsuz to name a few, it seemed that the team played with a sort of listlessness and hopelessness all season which has made many question why these young guys were considered so promising after all. Game after game, it seemed that the Orioles have done their best to lose ballgames every which way, whether it be bad pitching, bad fielding, or bad situational hitting, and in the process becoming the worst team in baseball. Sure, the odds were against this team playing in arguably the hardest division in baseball, but by all accounts the team has fallen short of even modest expectations of improvement or progression; it was clearly time for Baltimore management to make a change. That change came in the form of a new skipper, Buck Showalter, and it is clear early on that his presence has made a difference from the get-go. After never going better than 5-4 on a home stand the O’s have gone a surprising 6-1 since Buck’s arrival, and by all accounts have renewed the fight and the spirit of the formerly hopeless and hapless O’s. To be sure, no one is expecting this to be the beginning of a dramatic turnaround this season, but when considering Showalter’s history and philosophy all signs point to his signing to being a turning point for this franchise that will lead to bigger and better things.
When one looks at Showalter’s history as a manager it is clear from both his record and the later success his teams go onto that his presence has helped a few organizations in his time. Beginning with my Yankees in 1992, Showalter took a franchise that was floundering in doldrums of the AL East to quickly a team in the playoffs, making the wild card in 1995 with a 79-65 record. Of course, the next year Joe Torre would lead the team to its first World Series since 1978, but this was clearly Buck’s team. In the absence of Steinbrenner who was banned from the game, along with General Manager Gene Michael Buck put the pieces in place for a team that could winning immediately because of his eye on statistics;
We were looking at hitter-pitcher match-ups way back when. I was keeping them in the minor leagues and when I first started managing the Yankees you had matchups against guys and where they hit the ball. It was an advance scout doing it. Now a lot of people are taking their advance scouts off the road and doing certain things off the TV screen and whatever, but the problem with that is certain things go on in a game that you can only get from being there and from watching off the ball. I challenge guys all the time to be involved in watching off the ball, in the dugout, during batting practice, during infield, and their interaction with teammates. It paints a story for you every night if you'll just watch things other than the game itself. The use of data has evolved, but there are very few things that have come in where people go, “Wow, I've never thought about that.” And you never confuse change with a lack of respect for tradition .
By trading for guys like Paul O’Neill and drafting guys like Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter, Buck helped build the dynasty that would go on to dominate the latter part of the 1990s. The same is true of his next team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, a new franchise that he took from winning 65 games to 100 in one season. Again, ultimately the team would part ways with Buck after the 2000 season and eventually win the World Series against the Yankees, but much like his former team it was his team who won that season and played his way with his players. Clearly, his career managerial record, nearly 900 wins and an above .500 winning percentage, as well as the success of his teams following speak for themselves. Buck has firmly established himself as the right manager to help turn around floundering franchises and give them an identity and a winning attitude; such traits are precisely what Baltimore needs right now.
Of course, Buck clearly has an impact on young players helping them develop and grow, but Showalter does not rely on the force of his personality alone. Indeed, as evidenced by the quote above, Buck has distinguished himself as a manager with a keen eye for knowing what makes a team better by embracing the “Moneyball” mantra of statistics. Recently, Hardball Times unearthed several interesting statistics about Buck’s managing style that shows displays his reliance on stats and his success from them, notably his ability to put high on-base guys at the top of his order, routinely being at the top of the league in OBP in the one and two lineup slots ;
Year Team No. 1 No. 2
1992 NYY 0.328 0.328 0.329
1993 NYY 0.353 0.354 0.345
1994 NYY 0.374 0.388 0.420
1995 NYY 0.357 0.359 0.409
1998 ARI 0.314 0.340 0.306
1999 ARI 0.347 0.326 0.382
2000 ARI 0.333 0.311 0.353
2003 TEX 0.330 0.324 0.347
2004 TEX 0.329 0.354 0.349
2005 TEX 0.329 0.321 0.385
2006 TEX 0.338 0.361 0.356
To the untrained eye, this may appear to be unimportant, but it reveals Buck’s awareness to need to get guys on base in front of run producers to score runs. By putting more guys on base in front of them, Buck’s teams score more runs and in turn win more games. This stress of the virtues of patience has in turn worn off on his players and resulted in producing fourteen players whose single season home run bests under Buck, including Jim Leyritz, Steve Finley and Jay Bell; hell even Gary Matthews Jr., hit under him (although steroids probably had more to do with that). To be sure, the proof is in the numbers, and the numbers show that players have responded to his leadership and improved significantly.
History suggests that Buck will succeed in Baltimore and in truth it appears to already be happening. With six wins in seven games, three of them of the walk-off variety, the team just looks so much better, pitching well, hitting well, and playing with a renewed vigor that Baltimore hasn’t seen in some time. Of course, this is an absurdly small sample size so far and the team could very easily regress right back to the team that has become the laughingstock of the junior circuit; after all its not like he’s gone and replaced all those stiffs with actual ballplayers. Nevertheless, through the force of his personality and his highly intelligent managerial style, it seems clear that Baltimore will only improve under his tutelage and quite possibly regain some respectability to a once proud franchise.
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