Article: The Stat that Craig Counsell has on his Side

[Caleb Miller]

Managers are a big part of a team's success. Since the Brewers would miss the postseason if it ended today, it is fair to question whether the Brewers Manager Craig Counsell has fallen short during the 2022 season. One old-school sabermetric stat suggests that, overall, he continues to squeeze extra wins out of his teams. 

 

The charts below show Craig Counsell's winning percentage and expected winning percentage throughout his years as manager. As you can see, his actual winning percentage is consistently higher than the expected winning percentage. 

The expected winning percentage is another term for Pythagorean Winning Percentage. The Pythagorean Winning Percentage was made by Bill James, author of The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, and is used to determine the expected winning percentage based on the amount of runs scored and the amount of runs allowed. This metric is determined independent of the manager, but managerial moves can be one factor that accounts for underperformance or over performance of the expected result. 

Craig Counsell has consistently had a higher winning percentage than what was expected, with only his first and second years as a manager being the two outliers. During that time, he has also become the “winningest” manager for the Milwaukee Brewers, winning 579 games and passing Phil Garner's 563 wins. Furthermore, Garner, after a 7-year career, finished with a win percent of .477 while Counsell finished his first seven years with a win percent of .527. 

Comparing expected wins and actual wins  is not the be-all and end-all of evaluating a manager. However, a manager's job is to win games, and this data shows that Craig Counsell has been doing that.   

 

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[UpandIn]

This tracks with my opinion of Counsell. He's a great manager, however this year in particular though...I haven't been as big of fan of some of his moves.

I've seen people suggesting he should and or would get fired if this team fails to make it to the post-season. Not just trolls, I've seen it on here and by actual Baseball people speculating. I say speculating because I can't imagine they have a source that would back up such utter nonsense. 

Counsell to me has this job for as long as he wants it. I full expect him to be the manager in Milwaukee for another 10-15 years. He's Bobby Cox, he's Tom Kelly, I'd say Sparky Anderson, but he was fired in Cincy, but Sparky in Det. 

The Brewers are having one of the most frustrating years in the last decade when you look at expected performance vs actual performance. I thought this was another ~100 win team that could compete for a WS. Things happen. Adames has struggled. We've played poorly. As mentioned, I've disagreed with some of CC's moves and what should be a reliable BP(despite the loss of Hader) has been disappointing with someone blowing the lead seemingly every night.

And we're 68-60 the last day of August and in a playoff race.

That is how David Stearns...who's also made the occasional bad deadline deal, Matt Arnold, Tom Flanagan, Tod Johnson, among others...have given Counsel varying levels of talent and they've always played up to it. And I say always as this year is not yet over. 

 

Remember the names Sal Bando, Ron Roenicke, Ken Macha, etc...

This also doesn't mean you can't question why he's not starting Keston Hiura vs RH'ed pitchers just to be clear.  Just appreciate we have one of the best in baseball and a manager can do but so much. 

 

[UpandIn]

This tracks with my opinion of Counsell. He's a great manager, however this year in particular though...I haven't been as big of fan of some of his moves.

I've seen people suggesting he should and or would get fired if this team fails to make it to the post-season. Not just trolls, I've seen it on here and by actual Baseball people speculating. I say speculating because I can't imagine they have a source that would back up such utter nonsense. 

Counsell to me has this job for as long as he wants it. I full expect him to be the manager in Milwaukee for another 10-15 years. He's Bobby Cox, he's Tom Kelly, I'd say Sparky Anderson, but he was fired in Cincy, but Sparky in Det. 

The Brewers are having one of the most frustrating years in the last decade when you look at expected performance vs actual performance. I thought this was another ~100 win team that could compete for a WS. Things happen. Adames has struggled. We've played poorly. As mentioned, I've disagreed with some of CC's moves and what should be a reliable BP(despite the loss of Hader) has been disappointing with someone blowing the lead seemingly every night.

And we're 68-60 the last day of August and in a playoff race.

That is how David Stearns...who's also made the occasional bad deadline deal, Matt Arnold, Tom Flanagan, Tod Johnson, among others...have given Counsel varying levels of talent and they've always played up to it. And I say always as this year is not yet over. 

 

Remember the names Sal Bando, Ron Roenicke, Ken Macha, etc...

This also doesn't mean you can't question why he's not starting Keston Hiura vs RH'ed pitchers just to be clear.  Just appreciate we have one of the best in baseball and a manager can do but so much. 

 

[clancyphile]

I'd agree. I had my concerns as well (not using Peralta in the 2018 NLCS, no Braun at 3B against lefties, the seeming lack of some basic fundamentals and skills among players), but he's been an excellent manager.

I'll say it: Counsell is probably the best manager in Brewers history.

The last managers I saw who could get more from teams were Ned Yost (look at the 12-game improvement from 2002 to 2003, among other things) and Tom Trebelhorn (whose teams dealt with lots of injuries).

[clancyphile]

I'd agree. I had my concerns as well (not using Peralta in the 2018 NLCS, no Braun at 3B against lefties, the seeming lack of some basic fundamentals and skills among players), but he's been an excellent manager.

I'll say it: Counsell is probably the best manager in Brewers history.

The last managers I saw who could get more from teams were Ned Yost (look at the 12-game improvement from 2002 to 2003, among other things) and Tom Trebelhorn (whose teams dealt with lots of injuries).

[Brock Beauchamp]

One thing EVERY fanbase needs to keep in mind over 162 games: you're going to disagree with literally every manager ever on a pretty regular basis. That's the nature of a game that involves a bunch of 55/45 decisions, sometimes all the way down to a 51/49 decision.

Too much fan focus looks at on-field action, probably because it's the only thing we can even begin to evaluate when it comes to a manager. In the case of baseball, more than any other sport, so much work is done behind closed doors or in places we simply can't see as fans.

Which is why I tend to give managers quite a bit of slack unless their behavior and decisions are particularly egregious (eg. Tony LaRussa this season).

[Brock Beauchamp]

One thing EVERY fanbase needs to keep in mind over 162 games: you're going to disagree with literally every manager ever on a pretty regular basis. That's the nature of a game that involves a bunch of 55/45 decisions, sometimes all the way down to a 51/49 decision.

Too much fan focus looks at on-field action, probably because it's the only thing we can even begin to evaluate when it comes to a manager. In the case of baseball, more than any other sport, so much work is done behind closed doors or in places we simply can't see as fans.

Which is why I tend to give managers quite a bit of slack unless their behavior and decisions are particularly egregious (eg. Tony LaRussa this season).

[NBBrewFan]

3 hours ago, Caleb Miller said:

Comparing expected wins and actual wins  is not the be-all and end-all of evaluating a manager.

It is likely to be nothing-at-all.  I've looked at it for about a hundred managers and the above pattern could be seen with many with no correlation to overall record or even current season records. It was far short of exhaustive. but I didn't see any correlation to the point I just gave up as I didn't want to look at more data and waste more time to "prove" it was random. 

 

3 hours ago, Caleb Miller said:

This metric is determined independent of the manager, but managerial moves can be one factor that accounts for underperformance or over performance of the expected result. 

I'm guessing this would lead back to the discussion of what impact a manager has on the overall team performance.