Ned Yost's midseason grade

[Bruce Ciskie]

I understand both sides of the Yost argument, although I guess I tend to be easier on him than others just because I look at the relationship between the talent on a team and the team's performance. I think the Brewers are talented, but they are not as good of a team as the Cubs. Therefore, I think (assume) we are right where we are supposed to be.

I think the Brewers are pretty close to being where they should be. I would still like to see more progress by young hitters at the major-league level. Braun and Fielder seem to have struggled (at times) with the way they're being pitched this year. Hall and Weeks have spent much of the season looking lost at the plate. To me, this isn't just about the players, and it has to fall on the coaches when young hitters struggle to improve. I don't want even Braun and Fielder to plateau when they're this young. Weeks needs to get better, or he can't be considered a serious every day player for us before too long.

 

Like I have said, I think Ned's getting better. But like our young hitters, he still has some work to do.

[datrain711]

I think the Brewers are pretty close to being where they should be. I would still like to see more progress by young hitters at the major-league level. Braun and Fielder seem to have struggled (at times) with the way they're being pitched this year. Hall and Weeks have spent much of the season looking lost at the plate. To me, this isn't just about the players, and it has to fall on the coaches when young hitters struggle to improve. I don't want even Braun and Fielder to plateau when they're this young. Weeks needs to get better, or he can't be considered a serious every day player for us before too long.

 

Like I have said, I think Ned's getting better. But like our young hitters, he still has some work to do.

very good post, and not just because I have most of the same feeling as you do.

 

one last question for those still in this debate: Do you give Yost any managerial "points" for basically sealing off his players from criticism? Or is the consensus that this has nothing to do with his actual job?

 

I myself haven't decided whether to "raise" ned's grade due to this

[logan82]

TheCrew07 wrote:

I hate defined roles (with the exception of the closer), but I do think he's very slowly learning how to manage the pen better.

Many people hate defined roles in the bullpen.. The problem is that the it isn't a Ned Yost thing. It is a MLB manager thing.

[TooLiveBrew]

I understand both sides of the Yost argument, although I guess I tend to be easier on him than others just because I look at the relationship between the talent on a team and the team's performance.

 

I think the rapport on this team does speak to something (at least a little something) that Ned contributes. The players genuinely enjoy being together (check out the Mets' drama this season, ugh), and that can't be ignored when evaluating the job a manager does. In the MLB world, imo a lot of the manager's job is to balance the egos... luckily the Brewers don't seem to have many (if any) bad apples, but still -- Ned's team's clubhouse gets along extremely well, and he certainly should get some credit there.

 

Of course, everyone's happier when the team's winning, but even after losses the players have notoriously short memories, so to speak. I think Yost has done a great job sticking with the young players as they've developed over the past 3 or 4 seasons, and their resiliency at this point in their careers reflects that, I think.

 

To break down my "C-" a bit (I will use 'at worst' descriptions to avoid overstating, not to paint a poor picture):

 

I think Yost is above average in terms of clubhouse/player management, average to above-avg. in terms of gameplanning (the 'Sunday' lineups suck, & sometimes -- as mentioned -- he rests guys on the 'wrong' days), and well below-average in terms of in-game adjustments/creating matchups.

 

Ironically, what I find his biggest strength (confidence in players) can also be his biggest weakness.

[Bruce Ciskie]

one last question for those still in this debate: Do you give Yost any managerial "points" for basically sealing off his players from criticism? Or is the consensus that this has nothing to do with his actual job?

 

I have said before that I admire how he tends to protect his players, even at the expense of his own reputation. That doesn't give him a pass for being snippy with reporters, but it does mean that he's keeping his players from having to deal with the occasional overblown BS that comes from the media.

 

I don't know that it has much to do with his actual job, but I have to think that it gives him additional cred in the clubhouse and probably helps the overall atmosphere of the place.

[Bruce Ciskie]

One thing that I tend to think Ned's pretty terrible at is being aggressive with his in-game adjustments.

 

The good managers will - at least every now and then - make changes pro-actively to force the hand of the opponent. Maybe it's not this way for real, but it does seem like we're waiting around for the opponent to make the first move, and then reacting to it.

 

Ned also will occasionally make moves as if he thinks it's the ninth inning when it's not, or he'll do the opposite and make moves based on an assumption that the game is going 14 innings, instead of being aggressive and trying to make things happen right now.

[datrain711]

I don't know that it has much to do with his actual job, but I have to think that it gives him additional cred in the clubhouse and probably helps the overall atmosphere of the place.

Would it be giving Ned too much credit to say that he acts pompously on purpose so that a lot of the attention is on Ned's behavior instead of the psyche of slumping players?

 

I for one am baffled that the major media seems to have completely backed off on Rickie Weeks although he has been bad for basically the entire year. That is just one example I can think of.

 

 

(fixed code http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif --1992)

[datrain711]

One thing I am anti-Ned on big time is his pitcher abuse. has anyone seen the PAP points on Sheets? Now with Sabathia we have 2 of the top 5 abused pitchers, and others are heading up the list.

 

I wonder if this is going to cost us down the road.

[TooLiveBrew]

The good managers will - at least every now and then - make changes pro-actively to force the hand of the opponent. Maybe it's not this way for real, but it does seem like we're waiting around for the opponent to make the first move, and then reacting to it.

 

No, I think this is real. Yost does not tend to do well when it comes to creating matchups imo (as I mentioned). He also tends to manage for what he hopes will happen, as opposed to what is happening... or what is most likely to happen ('saving players for the later innings' makes me want to scream sometimes).

 

 

Would it be giving Ned too much credit to say that he acts pompously on purpose so that a lot of the attention is on Ned's behavior instead of the psyche of slumping players?

 

Probably. He does do a good job -- in general -- of protecting his players, but certainly has thrown a few under the bus in recent seasons. I think that Yost has a very hard time admitting mistakes, and that leads to the surliness.

[Thurston Fluff]

Does he think he's infallible? Is he that unsure of his decisions? Does he think his position is that precarious that anyone pointing out mistakes is going to cause problems for him? Or is he just a "not nice" person? What is is that makes him think that he's above being questioned?

 

I think any leader has to have an air of infallibility. He's the one who has to make the decisions and those decisions cannot be second guessed by those who need to carry out those orders. Right or wrong they have to be followed exactly and to the best of the players ability to have any chance of success. Second guessing is not conducive to that end. Thus acting like he's perfect may not be as bad an approach as you might think IMO. Admitting mistakes may make fans feel good but I don't know if it's the best approach to keeping the team working it's hardest to implement said strategies. I think he could d o a better job of explaining why he made certain moves than he does but I'm not overly worried about him refusing to admit he made a mistake. I think he does that to himself but admitting it to anyone else is not going to help anything and may, in fact, hurt.

 

It's interesting to see how many people vote based on his talent.

 

If we had the 2003 roster, and were way out of the playoff chase -- with crappy players -- would Yost get a D?

 

I can't speak for anyone else but I have always liked Yost because he always gets his teams to play hard and won games that others before him couldn't with similar or better talent. The grade I gave him had always been about the same. He's always been a B student IMO. He has done some things better this year, in game, but I've always felt that type of stuff was secondary to the main job of getting his players to play the proverbial right way. It would be hypocritical of me to all of a sudden boost his grade for what I consider minor improvements. An A would be garnered if, and only if, he did everything well. There are very few managers who do that IMO.

 

When people give him a D or F personally I think they are overrating our talent. This team has flaws. Yet here they sit second best record in the league in position once again for a playoff berth. I don't think this team has the second best talent in the NL but they are playing that way. Some may say it's luck. I think it's preparation. That starts from the manager and works it's way down.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

The Brewers are three games ahead of Pythagorean. Does that count for anything?

 

I always found this to be an interesting idea -- that we might be able to measure manager quality by looking at win-loss record relative to Pythagorean expectation. I'm not convinced it's a good way to try to assess managerial competence. In order to be responsible for his team outperforming Pythagoras, the manager would have to be able to affect how runs scored and runs allowed are distributed from one game to the next. He might be able to a little bit -- for example, by using the best relievers in close games and the worst relievers in blowouts, you might win more than your fair share of the close ones and make your blowouts more extreme (then again, don't all managers do that?) -- but it seems to me that the lion's share of the credit has to go to the gods of random variation.

 

A more interesting avenue, and one that to my knowledge hasn't been researched thoroughly (if at all), is whether you can pick up any sign of managerial competence by comparing a team's expected runs scored and runs allowed given its individual offensive events to its actual runs scored and runs allowed. In other words, look at BaseRuns and BaseRuns allowed, or EQR and EQRA, vs. actual runs and runs allowed. I think that most of the managerial decisions we evaluate -- when to sacrifice, when to steal, when to hit and run, when to pinch hit or not, lineup order, etc. -- would have a much greater chance of causing noticable effects here than in pythagorean record. BaseRuns and EQR tell you very accurately how many runs a team should have scored if all of the offensive events had happened in a vacuum. But they don't happen in a vacuum, and a manager is responsible for a lot of stuff that, if done well, might allow a team to squeeze extra runs out of it's component offensive stats.

 

I still think that it's mostly the gods of random distribution -- you're going to score a lot more runs if you have 9 hits in one inning than if you have 1 hit an inning for 9 consecutive innings, and the manager can't do much to control that -- but I'm less sceptical that a good manager's skills could show up, given a large enough sample, using this kind of analysis.

 

Half a season isn't such a sample, but for what it's worth, we're only the slightest bit short of target: 437 EQR vs. 430 actual, 410 EQRA vs. 411 actual. A grand total of 8 runs shortfall, or maybe 1 win.

 

.................................................................................

 

Oh yeah, a grade for Yost...I'll give him a D. Practically every hitter on the team is underperforming this year (even the ones that made the AS team are doing worse than last year). It's not totally fair to lay that all at the manager's feet, but I do think that the "kids" have found the going much tougher once the pressure was on, and I blame Yost for failing to keep them loose and confident. In fact, given his personality and method of leadership ("It's my first time in a pennant race too"), I can't imagine anyone staying loose and confident under that guy.

 

And what did he do when he felt like the team needed to blow off some steam? Oh yeah, he brought in Larry the Cable Guy to take batting practice and amuse the guys with his hilarious brand of revoltingly insipid dreck. Every 20-something I know that likes hip hop enough to pick the walk-up songs these guys picked just LOVES Larry the Cable Guy.

[DougJones43]

As far as his answers towards the media go, I really don't care how rude he is. That's not the point, as far as I'm concerned. I think that many of the times he dodges questions or gives lame answers that don't even make sense, it's indicative of the fact that often times he doesn't have a good logical answer for things that happened, or the decisions he made.

 

He can act like as big of a jerk as he wants in my book, but at least do so while showing there was some kind of decent rationale behind your decision making. He can smile and hand out lollipops while he tells reporters that he "used Mota because he's the 8th inning guy" or "thinks Kapler is a fine defender." I wouldn't feel any better about it.

[TooLiveBrew]

look at BaseRuns and BaseRuns allowed, or EQR and EQRA, vs. actual runs and runs allowed. I think that most of the managerial decisions we evaluate -- when to sacrifice, when to steal, when to hit and run, when to pinch hit or not, lineup order, etc. -- would have a much greater chance of causing noticeable effects here than in Pythagorean record.

 

That's a good observation, and probably is much, much more accurate than looking at the Pythag. Hopefully this offseason will yield some more interesting studies on managers' impacts on outcomes, runs, wins/losses, etc. The studies I've seen on managers to this point leave a lot to be desired, but 'did their job' in the sense that they've helped advance the discussion.

[Thurston Fluff]

I think that many of the times he dodges questions or gives lame answers that don't even make sense, it's indicative of the fact that often times he doesn't have a good logical answer for things that happened, or the decisions he made.

 

To assume someone who has been around baseball this long doesn't really have a logical reason for something is less likely IMO than he doesn't want to give the real reason. As a hypothetical example he used Mota in a close game and Mota predictably blew up.

 

When asked Ned says Mota is my eight inning guy.

 

That may not be the reason at all. His real reason may be Mota has several players who really like him and would feel a few bad outings cost him his role on the team. The quick hook on a friend of theirs gets them grumbling about unfair treatment. (See the Mets and Randolph as an example) So he gave Mota enough rope to hang himself. Sure it cost us this game but now he can be replaced and no one complains. We keep the team all working together for the greater good. That in turn wins a few more games than the one that was lost. That is not something he is going to tell anyone. But that doesn't make the decision a bad one simply because he didn't share it with us.

 

Not trying to say that's what happened by any means. Just saying it's more likely that he does have valid reason for doing something and not wanting to tell us what it is than him simply not having any logical reasoning behind why he did what he did.

[RightFieldCoder]

Since I'm a stat nerd, talking to other stat nerds (not everyone, but in a general), and I'm an ex teacher, let me use math to calculate his grade.

 

10% Pitch hitting/resting guys. I think he's doing a good job this year. He doesn't get a perfect 10 because of his fear of using good pitch hitters early in a game. 8 points.

 

10% Double switching. He seems to be doing a good job this year. 9 points

 

10% Pulling starters. He leaves guys in the game for a while, but that is ok in my book. He was grilled last year for being quick with the hook and burning out the bullpen in the beginning of the year. He's trying to coax every least pitch out of his pitchers. So far, none have gone down for overwork, that I know of. 9 points

 

10% Bullpen use. Not a strong point for Ned. He puts guys into a set inning schedule and refuses to deviate until forced to. Using Gagne 5 days in a row? Keep throwing Mota out there in the 8th no matter the score? 5 points

 

10% Media relations. This is part of his job. It is not the sole focus of his job, but it is still something he needs to do correctly. There are tons of things that have no point in my work, but my boss still makes me do it correctly. Ned, just answer the questions. If you bring up the fact that pitcher X has a great record against player y and that was why he was brought in, just say so. It's hard to refute decisions like this and the media will probably defend you. Simply giving a smart alec answer and/or claiming you are the manager and must know best does not win you any friends. 1 point

 

50% Record. It may not be fair to judge a manager because of the team record (how much is the manager and how much is talent?) but everyone knows it happens. It's kind of like a grade for a group project. The class nerd might be in your group and give you a nice A without you doing work, or you could have the class clown in your group who drags down all of your hard work to a C. Right now the Brewers are in the playoffs, but 4 games out of first behinid our most hated opponent. 40 points

 

72 total points, giving Ned a C. No absences, not tardies, but Ned needs to stop drinking so much coffee in my class.

[homer]

Anything other than an A is just wrong.

I grade on a Platonic scale where this is no such thing as perfection.

[olliegjw]

Robin19, you are saying that media relations is as important as bullpen use, and other in-game decisions? Instead of media relations, it should be player relations/clubhouse management. That has a lot more effect on W/L's than anything he says to the media.

[olliegjw]

One thing I am anti-Ned on big time is his pitcher abuse. has anyone seen the PAP points on Sheets? Now with Sabathia we have 2 of the top 5 abused pitchers, and others are heading up the list.

 

I wonder if this is going to cost us down the road.

I am all for abusing Sheets and Sabathia this year. High PAP points usually effects pitchers the following year, or two years later (i.e. Wood and Prior). By most accounts, neither Sheets nor CC will be Brewers next year, so they better get everything out of them that they can this year.

[Bucky Rules]

I think the rapport on this team does speak to something (at least a little something) that Ned contributes. The players genuinely enjoy being together (check out the Mets' drama this season, ugh), and that can't be ignored when evaluating the job a manager does....

 

I think Yost is above average in terms of clubhouse/player management, average to above-avg. in terms of gameplanning (the 'Sunday' lineups suck, & sometimes -- as mentioned -- he rests guys on the 'wrong' days), and well below-average in terms of in-game adjustments/creating matchups.

 

Ironically, what I find his biggest strength (confidence in players) can also be his biggest weakness.

This might be one of the fairest critiques that I've seen of Yost. I would only differ from it significantly in your assessment that he is well-below average in terms of in-game adjustments. Not that it's not fair to criticize that he makes in-game mistakes. Just that he's "well-below average". My exposure to ALL managers is limited (as is almost everybody else's), but from what I see, I don't think he's any worse than average (possibly better than average). He doesn't do things like bunt a runner over (with a non-pitcher) in the 1st 3 innings (Cecil Cooper) or remove your #3 hitter in a double switch in the 4th inning (Bob Melvin) that I've seen elsewhere in the last couple of weeks. Keep in mind that my definition of "average" here is grading on a curve with other current managers, not as a flat rate grade against perfection.

 

I'd give him a solid B+. Public relations is certainly not his strong point (probably D to D-) -- and it is to at least some degree, part of the job. Other than that, I think he is performing anywhere from average to excellent in every other aspect (that I can think of).

 

Also note my criteria includes much more weight on things that I would consider leadership qualities rather than any in-game management issues.

 

 

(pared back quoted material --1992)

[datrain711]

I am all for abusing Sheets and Sabathia this year. High PAP points usually effects pitchers the following year, or two years later (i.e. Wood and Prior). By most accounts, neither Sheets nor CC will be Brewers next year, so they better get everything out of them that they can this year.

I'm going to agree with you halfway here. CC wore down last year, and if "next year" equates to late september and the playoffs we could be in trouble.

 

then again, we probably will be without both of them, and we have to pretty much ride them hard if we want to get into the playoffs anyway.

 

so i guess it can go both ways. i just don't like seeing 120 pitches every start for both of them.

 

 

(pared back nested quote --1992)

[TooLiveBrew]

He doesn't do things like bunt a runner over (with a non-pitcher) in the 1st 3 innings (Cecil Cooper)

 

But he does ask his hottest batter (Hardy) to bunt multiple times when it's very clear J.J. is raking, not to mention asking Hart to try to bunt for hits from time to time.

 

In general, and especially when compared to his peers, Yost is quite good at avoiding small-ball -- probably my favorite element he brings to the table. However, he will revert back to it in situations where you have to 'bunt the runner over' (think '8th Inning Guy').

[logan82]

Yost explained that he only goes to high pitch counts when a guy has an extra day of rest before or after a start. I don't agree with Yost in this case.

[Thurston Fluff]

so i guess it can go both ways. i just don't like seeing 120 pitches every start for both of them.

 

CC was under 100 and only six inning last time out so your wish is Ned's command. I also read a quote from Ned in the paper today about how Ned is really nervous letting pitchers go more than 120 pitches. So your fears are shared by Ned.

[tristarscoop]

What I think is weird is that no one within the organization seems to have helped Ned with PR. Some positive PR would go a long way with him and I don't think it would require much. He's on tab to do the Block Party tomorrow, which I think is a good step.

 

I think most of your general fans don't have a favorable view of Ned and his personality. The general public "knows" very little about him and they have a very limited chance to "view" him: standing silently at the top of the stairs, occasionally yelling at umps and the sound bites on the nightly news of his snarky press conferences.

 

Twice this week I saw/heard things about Ned that I found rather shocking: 1. The article on Sunday about announcing the All-Stars in the clubhouse had Ned admitting he gets choked up. I have an extremely difficult time picturing this. 2. The CC press conferences had him smiling and laughing and joking.

 

No, it doesn't affect how he manages, but the fanbase has to have faith in/like/be comfortable with the leadership of the team and while it would cost little in time/money/pride I think a few well placed Ned pressers/appearances would make big steps for his image in Milwaukee.

[Bucky Rules]

But he does ask his hottest batter (Hardy) to bunt multiple times when it's very clear J.J. is raking, not to mention asking Hart to try to bunt for hits from time to time.

Late in the game, he has done that. That's true. I'm not convinced that in certain situations that this is such a terrible idea. At least with JJ (with boppers to follow).

And i think Hart bunts a lot on his own. So, it's hard to tell (unless you've seen something that I haven't) if those situations are Ned's call or Hart's. Ned could certainly tell him not to if the situation arose.