050109

Why Manny Must Go
May 1, 2009

Last year, Manny Ramirez was shipped from the Red Sox to the Dodgers ostensibly because he was portrayed as a guy who wasn't helping his team. There may have been some clubhouse discord at the center of this, but from the stats it looked like he was doing a pretty decent job all year. Still just because one guy is performing doesn't mean he's not affecting other people's game so there may be some truth to the notion that the Red Sox were better without him. They still managed to make it to Game 7 of the ALCS so clearly they were a still a pretty good team with his replacements.

But along those lines, I am going to suggest that the Nationals would be better off without their current Manny, Manny Acta. Before I say anything more I want to say that as a person, Manny Acta is beyond reproach. He is a thoughtful and caring person and that is abundantly clear from any interview and the way he interacts with his players when they are on the field. However, just because he is a good man does not mean he is a good manager. So here are the ways I think he is making the Nationals artificially woeful.

1) He doesn't let his starters pitch
It's still early in the season so I can understand not wanting to extend his starting pitchers, especially the youngsters like Lannan, Martis and Zimmerman, at least until the weather warms up. But Manny has taken this to a manic extreme. Only one starter, Scott Olsen, has topped 100 pitches in a start and he did that once: 103 versus the Marlins. Lannan has hit 95, 97 and 99 pitches, Cabrera has thrown 94, 94 and 92 pitches in his starts and Jordan Zimmerman was only allowed to throw 72 in his lone start. Shairon Martis has yet to top 90 pitches in any of his starts. I understand taking it easy on young guys, but Martis and Zimmerman are 22 (JZ will be 23 in a month), Lannan is 24 and Olsen is 25, the latter two at ages when workload concerns should be beginning to taper off. It's not as if any of their arms are going to blow out if they throw 105-110 pitches in an outing. That'd one more inning from guys who are pitching well and one less inning from guys who generally are not. Which brings me to my second point...

2) He manages the resources in the bullpen poorly
Some might suggest that the Nats didn't have a lot of talent in the pen to work with but Manny does have input into who the team brings north and he is the only guy who puts them into games. Knowing full well that some of his guys are destined for Triple-A, why on earth would he use some of the better relievers to get one out when he needs three innings of relief after taking the starters out so early?   He's done that with his supposed "8th inning guy" Joe Beimel, as well as with statistically the Nat's most effective reliever this year, Julian Tavarez (something he has done 5 times with Tavarez already). By doing so, he was forced to use the teams least effective relievers - Mike Hinkley and Saul Rivera - for multiple inning outings. That's just begging to lose the game. Which brings me to my next point...

3) He didn't do the necessary due diligence in spring to understand who he should bring north.
Maybe some of the guys were brought north because they lacked minor league options; I get that. But clearly Mike Hinkley wasn't ready so they should have left him in Florida for extended spring training if he needed to work on his mechanics if they didn't think he would pass through waivers. Saul Rivera did have options but they took him north anyway. This is an especially egregious mistake this year because spring training was two weeks longer than most years because of the World Baseball Classic. If Manny didn't know who was going to be ready and who wasn't by the end of this spring, he simply wasn't paying attention.   Still none of this might have mattered had the offense been a little more productive, but...

4) He still hasn't figured out the line-up.
Manny still thinks Ryan Zimmerman is a #3 hitter. Despite his new contract, Zimmerman most certainly is not, at least not yet. He doesn't get on base enough and gets himself out far too often. Zimmerman should be in the #5 or #6 spot behind Dunn. Nick Johnson should be the #3 guy, but if one is to be a stickler about the lefty-righty orientation of the line-up, then put Johnson at #2, Elijah Dukes at #3 followed by Dunn. Both Dukes and Johnson get on base far more than Zimmerman ever has, they both have as much power and Dukes offers the added bonus of a some speed near the top of the line-up. Manny also still thinks that speed is the most important characteristic of a lead-off hitter. I don't mind Cristian Guzman leading off. He's not ideal, but if he continues to hit like he has the last 2 years, he's a .360 on base guy at the top with a modicum of speed. I can live with that. I also think that if Anderson Hernandez can dink his way to hitting .260, he'll be a .350-.360 on base guy too because he has a pretty decent eye. But Manny needs to put Zimmernan where he can be less destructive to the run-scoring potential of the line-up and make better use of his ability to make contact and hit for power. Maybe he could figure this out if he put a few guys in the same place for more than a couple days but...

5) He hasn't stopped changing the line-up everyday
I think Zimmerman and Adam Dunn are the only guys on the team who have hit in the same spot in the line-up every game they've played. This is ridiculous. Good managers find a place where their guys are comfortable and productive and let them stay there. Again, with as long a spring training as there was, Manny should have had a very clear idea where the guys should hit and stuck with it. Among other things he hasn't stuck with...

6) He doesn't abide by his own teams's rules
Elijah Dukes got fined $500, benched for a game and threatened with a demotion to Triple-A for violating team rules when he showed up five minutes late from signing autographs for a little league. Meanwhile, Lastings Milledge completely blew off a team meeting the day before Opening Day and didn't get so much as a finger wag. I don't even want to get into how absurd this is. But I wouldn't be surprised if that played some factor in...

7) The Nats have begun three consecitive seasons with awful Aprils
In 2007 they opened 9-17. Last year they opened 9-17. This year they are already 3-11. And in none of these years did the Nats have the worst April pitching. They did have the second worst April hitting in 2007 but that might be more evidence that Manny isn't so good at getting the right everyday line-up very quickly.   Of course, injuries and talent had something to do with that, but this kind of consistency is not the kind of thing you build a winning resume with. Other things that don't help to build winning resumes is...

8) Managing the team out of run scoring opportunities...
such as using one-run strategies like sacrifice bunting and the hit-and-run in the early innings of games, giving inexperienced baserunners the green light to steal when they are already in scoring position, again, in the early innings. These kinds of things kill an offense that is built to score runs in bunches. A number of the Nats power hitters haven't found their stroke yet, but concievably this team could have five hitters in the line-up every day that are capable of hitting 25 homers apiece this year - Dunn, Dukes, Johnson, Zimmerman, Willingham/Kearns - and if Jesus Flores gets his head on straight, another capable of 20. With a few guys getting on base in front of that power, this team could have a very good offense. So unless the pitcher is at the plate or there's a runner on first in the bottom of the ninth with no outs, this is just squandering opportunity. But then again...

8) Manny concerns himself with stuff that doesn't help anyone
Like how Adam Dunn should be a .300 hitter. Adam Dunn is a - and I say this with the greatest respect and well-meaning - a mule of a man who wallops 40+ balls over the wall every year and draws more walks than Claude Monet. He gets on base 38% of the time and slugs almost .520 for his career. Who cares if he hits .300?! If he hits .260, he's an All Star with all the other things he does. This is like Don Baylor complaining that Sammy Sosa didn't steal enough bases during those years when he was hitting .320 and 60 homers a season. The guy is already the most productive hitter on your team and you are complaining he doesn't do enough already, especially considering what you are asking him to do only marginally increases his value and if he fails to do it or alters his game in order to satisfy this insipid request, he could actually hurt his value. What's the point?

At the end of last year, the entire Nationals coaching staff and their medical staff got sacked with the exceptions of pitching coach Randy St. Clair and Acta. St. Claire has proven to be solid if not very good pitching coach. Consider that Daniel Cabrera has allowed only 3 earned runs combined in his last two starts. The last time he put two starts together and allowed 3 earned runs or less between them was last April. Before that, one has to go back to the middle of 2006. If he allows 2 runs or less in his next start, that will mark only the third time in the last five years he has gone three consecutive starts without allowing more than 2 earned runs. It will be a challenge, facing the Mets at their new field and Cabrera has never faced them so it should be interesting. But I digress...

Manny might be the right caretaker for a young starting staff, especially considering how much potential they have - and this is not even including the probabilty of adding Stephen Strasburg and possibly Mike Leake to their future rotation. He is extremely careful not to overwork them or in any way jeopardize their futures. I would take that a step further to suggest that he is being far too careful but that's not really the point. The point is that the Nationals have the kind of offense that can contend and that the only thing that has kept them from a winning record so far is bullpen meltdowns, sloppy defense and bad decisions, on which all a manager has significant influence.

If the big problem is not the team talent - and you'd be hard pressed to show that the Pirates, Rockies, Astros, Orioles, Royals, Mariners and Padres have demonstrably better talent than the Nats do - then the source of the Nationals' woeful start becomes increasingly obvious. It would be great to keep Manny Acta on as a coach or in some capacity because he is a really good guy, but perhaps his usefulness as the manager has come to an end.