Baseball Managers

The recent hot stove uproar over Joe Torre's new book has made me wonder: how important is a baseball manager anyway? Traditional sports media types love to talk about baseball managers (four letter network, I'm looking at you), but how should baseball managers be judged? It appears that the manager's value is yet another front of the "sabermetrics vs. intangibles" war - sabermetrically inclined teams/organizations don't care about their team's manager whereas less sabermetrically inclined teams care a great deal (Oakland's Bob Geren makes the league minimum, Lou Pinella makes 3.5mil).

Let's first examine what a manager actually controls:
- Playing time - specifically who to play and where to play them (obviously, this must be judged based on the players available for the manager to use)
- Stolen base success rates
- Bullpen usage
- Other game theory related issues (shifts, hit-and-runs, bunts, etc)
- Motivational ploys
- Day-to-day public relations of the team's 40 man roster

If we assume that the decision to call up prospects from the minors is an organizational rather than managerial decision, then a manager's control is extremely limited. However, a manager can do good things, or, more often, bad things (like, say giving Corey Patterson 366ABs). As for Torre, how many tough decisions has he had to make over the years? Penciling in the likes of A-Rod, Jeter, Giambi, etc makes the job much easier, however, allowing Jeter to take two steps and let balls roll by while he blows bubbles for a decade when a better fielder is 10ft to his right seems like a bad call. Torre has shown an ability to learn as he goes along - notice the Yankees SB% doesnt drop below 70% after '01 (however, such a drastic change could be attributed to baseball as a whole rather than Torre as an individual). Clearly Torre handled the New York media well but his motivational ability (especially in the playoffs) lacks any sort of distinction; Torre has always seemed content to not cause any waves while other managers (Bobby Cox's foul-mouthed trots out of the dugout are an especially poignant example) seem to at least try to motivate their players by getting thrown out of games. Perhaps it is telling that one a manager's best options to motivate his players is to get thrown out.

Obviously, only some of the manager's responsibilities are quantifiable, most of the job's success or failure falls under the scope of opinion - but in the humble opinion of this baseball fan some managers are clearly good, bad, and downright terrible.