Managing From the Couch
Why second-guessing the manager is part of the fun
I knew the Mariners were down five runs in the ninth and the odds of coming back were slim, especially given how they’d been playing. But after a leadoff double by Josh Naylor, Luke Raley came to the plate against a left-handed pitcher.
“Why the hell aren’t we pinch hitting here?”
We had right-handed options sitting on the bench. Dan Wilson, the Mariners manager, pinch hits for people as early as the sixth inning, a strategy I almost always hate. I can’t tell you how many times he has pinch hit for Luke Raley against a lefty pitcher in the sixth inning, only to have that same right-handed hitter come up against a hard-throwing right-handed closer in the ninth when the lineup turns over.
But for reasons I completely did not understand, he left Raley in the game. He very predictably struck out.
“Dammit, Dan,” I said out loud in my hotel room.
Dan Wilson drives me crazy. Multiple times a week I sit watching the game, questioning endless decisions that he makes. Actually, “questioning” is an understatement. Usually, I’m yelling at the television. Just ask my partner.
I recognize that in modern baseball, many of the decisions we see during games are shaped before the first pitch, with front offices, analysts, and coaching staffs all playing a role. But at the end of the day, Dan Wilson is the guy sitting on the bench. He’s the manager, so if I’m going to point fingers at anyone over mind-boggling in-game decisions, it’s going to be Dan.
But on occasion, I try to take a step back. Yes, my love of baseball might be labeled obsessive. I spend more time watching baseball than most people. But my professional life has nothing to do with the game itself. I’m a leadership trainer and coach who also spent a decade working in politics. And yet, I am completely convinced several times a week that I could manage a Major League Baseball team better than the guy who has the job.
I’ve never felt the same way about my electrician when they’ve come over to take care of something. When my partner and I had a plumbing nightmare several years ago, I didn’t watch them work and question anything.
My text messages are full of fellow Mariners fans who have grown pretty tired of Dan Wilson’s odd decisions. I’m usually not arguing with them. More often than not, I agree. But it’s also worth remembering that Major League managers have information we simply don’t.
Who’s actually available in the bullpen? Who’s dealing with a minor injury we haven’t been told about? What matchup data are they looking at? What’s the plan for the next three games? I’m sure they get it wrong sometimes. I know I make mistakes at work all the time. Decision making is always more complicated than it looks to an outsider.
All sports are at least to an extent built on making constant decisions, but baseball seems to be that way more than any game. Every fifteen or twenty seconds, another choice must be made. Pitches are called, hitters anticipate what pitch might be coming, and infielders make split-second decisions on where to go with the ball when the infield is in.
Most serious baseball fans are doing more than just watching the game. We manage the game in our minds, or verbally in shared company, while it’s happening. I know this happens in other sports. Football fans criticize play calling and soccer fans question substitutions. But somehow it feels different in baseball.
Maybe it’s because baseball gives the illusion that you don’t actually have to be a tremendous athlete to imagine yourself doing it. Maybe it’s because, as Bob Costas once said, the pace of the game allows for conversation and debate. Whatever the reason, baseball constantly invites us to play along.
In all honesty, I’m not sure I’d even want Dan Wilson’s job, or the job of any big-league manager. The pressure, the criticism, the barrage of daily questions. I’m sure it is all incredibly overwhelming. But I sure enjoy pretending I have the gig for three hours every day.
Honestly, it isn’t even that much fun when you prove your own manager wrong because that usually means something bad happened to your team. The joy isn’t in being right. The joy is getting to participate. It’s having those conversations with whoever you’re watching with or sending late night texts to friends watching the same game from, in the case of Mariners fans, their own chair of despair.
Baseball gives us that opportunity almost every night.
The Mariners started a three-game series with the Dodgers last night. I’m writing this before the first pitch, and I can almost guarantee Dan Wilson is going to do something tonight that I completely disagree with. Inevitably there will be a late-night text from a friend back on the West Coast explaining why he’s a fool and should be fired. Odds are I’ll agree with whatever they say.
Maybe we’ll be right, and maybe we will get it wrong. That’s beside the point.
It is safe to say that Dan Wilson probably knows a few things I don’t, even when it seldom feels like it. But I’ll still manage every inning from the couch, and I doubt that I’ll ever stop.