Managing in the bigs

[topper09er]

In case anyone missed it here is the play on 5/17 that got Hanley Ramirez benched:

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=8077975

Ramirez fouled a ball off his leg earlier in the game and said he was running as fast as he could (although he seemed to run after the ball in the air fine). "I wasn't trying to give up. That was the hardest I could go after the ball....That's OK. He doesn't understand that. He never played in the big leagues," he said referring to manager Fredi Gonzalez. When asked if he lost respect for Fredi he responded, "a little bit".

My point is that some people claim that they could do a better job of managing based on their advanced knowledge of stats instead of "baseball people" who seem to make some decisions based on the traditional ways of doing things. Some people ignore the whole pyscological aspect of dealing with players because it cant be measured by a stat and assume that if they just make the best on paper decisions for the lineup and playing time everyone will be fine with it and they will get the most out of the team. Ideally it would be nice to say you would just sit Ramirez on the bench until he learned his lesson and grew up, but based on his reaction with the maturity level of a 10 year old it seems like the only way to keep him happy is to cater to his every need. He is the best player on the team and the best SS in the league, he needs to be on the field and it would not be in the Marlin's best interest to trade him. I think if Dusty Baker, a 19 year MLB vet, would have benched Ramirez this story would not exist, it is easy to pick on Dusty for making questionable in game decisions, but he does have a .540 career winning % without always having the best teams in the league. I'm not defending Ramirez but this story shows that when you have to deal with these adults playing a game for millions of dollars "baseball people" are sometimes needed to gain the respect of the team needed for leadership which shouldn't be required but often is. These clubhouse type issues cannot just be overlooked and one aspect of being a manager is keeping your players happy so they give maximum effort because it is not something you can always just expect to occur on its own.