How to Beat a Broken Game by Pedro Moura

Author:Pedro Moura [Moura, Pedro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

WHEN DON MATTINGLY DEPARTED AS THE Dodgers’ manager in October 2015, Gabe Kapler became the favorite to take over. He had played in the major leagues, he had managed in the minor leagues, and now he had worked with the next generation of the organization’s talent. His communication skills and eccentricities brought to mind the last manager Andrew Friedman had hired, Joe Maddon, a decade earlier. “Maybe the only guy I can think of like that,” Maddon once told Philadelphia magazine of Kapler, “is me.”

But Kapler’s aggressiveness alienated some team members. He recognized later that he made people uncomfortable. “I had the dials up a little too high,” Kapler said. He continued in his role while the Dodgers chose an underdog: Dave Roberts, a lifelong connector, who, a decade earlier, had enjoyed a three-year run as the team’s center fielder. Roberts was best known for stealing one of the biggest bases in baseball history for the Boston Red Sox. Everyone watching knew what he was trying to do, and he succeeded anyway.

It is probable no job description in baseball has changed as much in recent years as the manager’s. At the turn of the century, managers did not consult nightly with executives about lineup formulation. Nor was it immediate nationwide news if they misspoke on any of the 350-plus occasions each year they spoke to reporters. Executives and players must adapt to continually novel information, but managers are tasked with a fundamentally different assignment. It is not a coincidence that only two men on the job in 2021, Tony LaRussa and Terry Francona, predate the Moneyball era. As Sam Fuld said when he was hired as the Phillies general manager weeks after becoming a finalist for the Red Sox managerial position, the lines have blurred between the two jobs.

Roberts was an inspired selection, able to navigate through the haze. He had managed only one game in his life, as the interim manager during another interim manager’s absence, but he met the demands of the modern role. He is willing to heed the front office’s information-based advice in most game situations. He is convincingly optimistic. And he is skilled at staying on message, in his conversations with unhappy players petitioning for more playing time and in twice-daily scrums with inquiring reporters. Most managers are running the same route, but Roberts executes the cuts with consistent precision.

He reliably laughs at the questions intended to inflame. He makes media members feel important with timely taps on the shoulder, unyielding eye contact, and frequent first-name recitations, earning him and his team the benefit of the doubt. He uses similar, pertinent technique on team employees, greeting the team’s social-media manager by her Instagram handle, and on players. “He literally says hi to every single guy every single day,” Justin Turner said. If Roberts’s run of positivity halted periodically, even once a month, players would start to doubt him, according to Turner. “He doesn’t do that,” Turner said. “It’s 100-percent genuine how he is every single day, how he treats everyone.

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