Thoughts on Joe Maddon and SABR's Behaving Badly

A somewhat bizarre chain of events culminated yesterday in the announcement that the Chicago Cubs had fired their Manager, Rick Renteria, and hired Joe Maddon, who recently had exercised an opt out clause in his contract with the Tampa Bay Rays.  Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay's manager since 2006, is the current darling of the sabermetric crowd on the internets for reasons that are not completely clear.  The news that he had opted out of his contract in Tampa Bay ignited a firestorm of speculation as to where he might end up with at least 10 teams believed to be at least kicking the tires on him.

The whole saga started about 2 weeks ago when the Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman away from Tampa Bay.  The reason why the Dodgers were able to hire Friedman away from TB for essentially the same position was that he was working with a handshake agreement with the TB owner and had no written contract.  At the time of the Friedman hiring, there was speculation that Maddon might come west with him.  After all, Maddon had spend most of his career in the Angels' organization.  There were quick denials from both organizations that there was any connection between Maddon and Friedman and that Friedman would not raid the Rays organization.

Needless to say, eyebrows went way up a few days later when it was suddenly announced that Maddon had opted out of his contract with the Rays.  There was a story put out that it was the Rays that brought the opt out clause to Maddon's attention along with denials that they were trying to tell him to leave.  The Dodges rushed to announce that Don Mattingly would indeed be their manager next year.  Most analysts quickly pinpointed the Cubs as his most likely destination, but Theo Epstein had just said at his postseason presser that Renteria and the coaching staff had done a good job and deserved to come back next year.  Of course, that all went out the window in a hurry when within a 24 hour period that Cubs fired Renteria and hired Maddon.  Tampa Bay management is now reported to believe that the Cubs may have been behind Maddon's opt out.  They may file formal tampering charges with MLB.

So, just what is it about Maddon that makes Major League Baseball executives react to him like he's the femme fatale at the luxury hotel bar?  That is another bit of a head-scratcher.  Maddon is no newcomer to baseball, spending most of is career and life as a minor league manager and major league coach in the Angels organization.  He was hired to manage the Tampa Bay Rays in 2006, and managed them to an AL pennant in 2008 and 3 other postseason appearances.  Maddon was hailed as a forward thinking,  analytical manager and seemed to take delight in doing unorthodox things in the field.  He was one of the first managers to make obvious consistent use of defensive shifts. On the other hand, a Fangraphs article by August Fagerstrom dated 8/25/2014 pointed out that Maddon had ordered non-pitchers to sacrifice bunt more times and with a lower success rate than any other manager in MLB up to that point and it wasn't close.  Fast forward to the 2014 postseason and the guffawing from places like Fangraphs over Ned Yost's liberal use of the sac bunt in the postseason, which by the way, Joe Maddon was not part of.

Of course, Maddon's run of success with Tampa Bay coincided with the maturation of several high first round draft picks acquired during TB's run as one of the worst teams in baseball.  That pipeline of talent has almost completely dried up as TB's success rate in drafts, starting in 2008 when they took Tim Beckham over Buster Posey, has been pretty much zero.  6 years of bad drafting will tend to take a toll on any team's MLB talent level, let alone one that is in a small market and has a limited budget.

Amid all the ecstasy and euphoria about what Saber darlings Andrew Friedman and Joe Maddon may accomplish in organizations with deeper pockets, several analysts have quietly pointed out that they may be getting out of Dodge before the posse takes them away.  Certainly the behavior of Tampa Bay's ownership in all this might suggest that they did not try very hard to get either Friedman or Maddon to stay.

As for what this means for the future success of the Dodgers and Cubs, I'm going to say, probably not much.  Longtime and widely respected Dodger scout Logan White seemed to sense that a Pharaoh had arisen in Egypt who knew not Joseph and took a similar job with the Padres.  If the Dodgers are planning to build and maintain their team from the farm system, letting Logan White go and hiring the guy who has overseen the Rays drafting for the last 6 years would not seem to be the way to go.

As for the Cubs, the sudden departures of Friedman and Maddon from Tampa Bay conjures up memories of when Theo Epstein bailed out of the smoldering ruins of what was left of the Boston Red Sox he built.  The Cubs do have an impressive collection of prospects who should be coming online over the next 2 seasons.  On the other hand, two of their best, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant, sell out for power while carrying frightening strikeout rates, which is exactly the opposite of the approach of most postseason participants this year.  They also have virtually nothing coming on the pitching side which may eventually force them to trade some of their offensive talent for pitching.  Meanwhile, in addition to Tampa Bay's concerns about possible tampering, many baseball executives around the league are reportedly angry over the way the Cubs treated Rick Renteria, who certainly deserved better.