2009 anti-award winners (Cont.)

The McCloskey Awards

Honest John McCloskey had quite a baseball career. He barnstormed with numerous baseball teams in Old Hoss Radbourn's wild 1880s, and it is said that he played literally every position, including pitcher and catcher. He founded the Texas League (for this, he's in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame) and he managed countless teams around the Southwest and managed Army teams during World War I. He was, by the accounts I could find, a successful manager on the minor league level and a Solomon-like sage who, for instance, when faced with the drunken talents of pitcher Bugs Raymond, proclaimed wisely that Bugs had to stop drinking... on days he pitched. Bugs did not always follow this wise proclamation -- and he lost 25 games in 1908 -- but, hey, Honest John gave it his best shot.

Honest John McCloskey also went 190-417 in his five seasons as a manager in the major leagues. That's a .313 winning percentage... the worst for any manager with at least 500 games. He lost 98, 101 and 105 in his three seasons (1906-08) managing the Cardinals, which is somewhat telling because the Cardinals have not lost 100 games in a season since.*

*This really is kind of incredible: The Cardinals have not lost 95 games in a seasons since 1913, and have not even lost 90 in a season since 1990. They don't always win in St. Louis, but they never really lose -- not much baseball suffering in St. Louis. The Kansas City Royals have had more 100-loss seasons this decade than the Cardinals have had since 1900.

So, it seems perfect to name our Struggling Manager of the Year Award after John McCloskey... because McCloskey was clearly a good baseball man. He was, in fact, a baseball pioneer. Heck, they called him "Honest John." But through a combination of bad luck, bad players, bad choices, drunken pitching performances and so on, Honest John's teams were dreadful. A manager cannot lose on his own. To win the McCloskey truly takes a team effort.

AL JOHN McCLOSKEY AWARD: Trey Hillman, Kansas City

I feel bad being so obvious with the first McCloskey Award -- I really wanted to give it to Dave Trembley because I have spent way too much time pondering the various quirks and whims of Trey Hillman. But, in the end, I could not justify giving it to anyone else. When you have the American League Cy Young Award winner, a fairly dominant closer, a young hitter who bangs 50 doubles and 20 homers, and a second baseman who stuns everyone by posting a 114 OPS+, you probably should not lose 97 games. I'm not saying that's enough to contend -- it's not, the Royals are a bad baseball team. But you probably should not lose 97 games.

The Royals did the little things terribly. They also did big things terribly. In the end, you can blame or excuse baseball managers for anything you like... this gets at the heart of what it means to be a manager. They don't play. They don't draw up plays. There are no chalkboards. There's no time management, really. There are no meaningful timeouts to be called -- baseball, after all, is a game with CONSTANT timeouts. There is no halftime speech. So in baseball, no matter WHAT happens, you can say "Nothing is the manager's fault." Or you can say, "Everything is the manager's fault." And nobody knows for sure.

What we do know for sure about the Royals is this: They were awful as a base running team. They were awful defensively. They manufactured the fewest runs in the American League (according to Bill James' sensible definition of manufactured runs -- where two of the bases are not attributable to hits or walks) and they gave up THE MOST manufactured runs in the American League. They gave Mike Jacobs 101 at-bats against left-handed pitching, which is like setting fire to them. They wildly mistreated the most expensive pitcher in Royals history, Gil Meche, and predictably he wound up on the DL. Their bullpen was tragic -- 5.02 ERA despite Joakim Soria -- and the Royals actually went into the year thinking that the bullpen was a team strength. No, it just wasn't a great year.

How much of that is the manager's fault... everyone decides that on their own. The Royals decided that Trey Hillman did the absolute best he could with what he was given and brought him and most of his staff back. Maybe they are right.

NL JOHN McCLOSKEY AWARD: Manny Acta, Washington

He didn't survive the season -- and he's so well thought of in baseball circles that he has already been hired by the Cleveland Indians to be manager. But for more than a half season, Acta had the Nationals playing more or less like the expansion Mets. I mean, they were 26-61 -- they were playing .299 baseball.

Now, we're back to the premise: How much of a difference can a manager make, anyway? Well, you know what? I'm looking over this roster and though this will sound ludicrous, I just don't think the Nationals are THAT bad. There is some actual talent on that Washington team. Ryan Zimmerman is a major stud, Adam Dunn can swat for my team anytime (though, I admit, yes, I'd like him as a DH), Nick Johnson* -- who got 400-plus at-bats with the Nationals -- was an on-base-machine monster, Josh Willingham had a good year, and there are some young pitchers there I like, including Jordan Zimmermann. John Lannan's not bad either. I'm probably insane, but I'm getting a kind of Tampa Bay vibe from the Nationals, especially if Stephen Strasburg comes in and lights things up. We'll see how it looks in the spring.

*You know how there are certain things in life that you feel like you should have known but somehow didn't? I don't think I knew that Nick Johnson is the nephew of Larry Bowa. How could I have missed that?

But to the point: Yes, the Nationals were a bad baseball team, but they should have been just that... a bad baseball team, not a team on pace to be legendarily bad. Jim Riggleman came in, and the team played a lot better, and that's not exactly a glowing endorsement. Like I say, I've heard nothing but great things about the kind of guy and the kind of baseball man that Manny Acta is... and there's no doubt that things were dysfunctional in Washington. Still. That was a bad year.