David Ross is not Mike Matheny

David Ross is not Mike Matheny.

Matheny is a former big-league catcher. Ross is a former MLB catcher. Both were highly regarded clubhouse leaders during their playing days. Matheny worked for the St. Louis Cardinals before being hired as manager and Ross worked for the Chicago Cubs (and ESPN) before throwing his hat in the ring for the Cubs’ manager job. Both former players had close relationships with the front office before pursuing the MLB manager job for the organization.

The 2011 Cardinals won the World Series and St. Louis was expected to compete for the division title in 2012 and beyond. While the 2019 Cubs failed to make the postseason, they are expected to compete for the division title in 2020 and beyond. The 2012 Cardinals had and the 2020 Cubs will have rosters deep in talent and postseason experience. Matheny inherited and Ross inherits expectations for postseason success from within their respective organizations and fans.

Managing adults I hard. Maintaining their respect while doing so is harder. Matheny was bad at managing people and this is one of the reasons the Cardinals fired him. It remains to be seen whether Ross will be good at managing people because, as best I can tell, he has never done it before.

Ross has never managed or coached at any level. Matheny coached a traveling children’s baseball team. So Matheny had more experience managing a baseball team on the day the St. Louis Cardinals hired him to manage their MLB club than Ross has on the day he becomes the Chicago Cubs manager.

Matheny wrote a manifesto while in the job of children’s ball coach. The Matheny Manifesto forbid questioning the manager. To Matheny, a probable fascist, the manager is right even when he was wrong. In other words, Matheny was never wrong in his own mind. As an anonymous Cardinals organization employee told once told Bernie Miklasz, Matheny only looks in the mirror to comb his hair.

Matheny made clear that being a so-called clubhouse leader as a player is a lot different than being the manager. Having the respect of your teammates requires a different skillset than maintaining their respect as the manager. It’s one thing to offer insight to the pitching coach or manager about how a pitcher is looking in the middle innings. It’s another thing entirely to make the decision to remove the pitcher from the game and communicate that decision to the pitcher.

Being a manager is completely different from being a player-leader. No player makes the decision about another player’s playing time. The manager makes the decisions about every player’s playing time. Those decisions impact a player’s salary and their career.

A good manager must be able to make sound strategic and tactical decisions. But that’s only part of what a good manager does. After arriving at a decision, the manager must be able to communicate the decision to the players it impacts in a way they understand and that respects them as adults and professionals. The best managers do this and maintain their players’ respect even after giving them potentially bad news. It’s fair to say that the most important parts of the managers job are those fans rarely, if ever, see.

No one knew how Matheny would perform in the area of leadership, though his history as a revered catcher was cited to as evidence that he would excel. And for several years, his leadership was trumpeted in the media as a strength. But the veneer slowly cracked and it became clear that Matheny wasn’t good at anything.

Matheny was bad at communicating with his players. He played favorites (remember “Mike guys”?). Matheny was loathe to delegate to his coaches. He couldn’t instill fundamentals in his players as a teacher. All of that came out toward or after the end of his tenure as Cardinals manager. It made fans wonder why Matheny, who proved himself over and over again a terrible strategist and tactician, kept his job as long as he did.

No one knows how Ross will perform as manager of the Cubs, especially when it comes to managing his former friends and current Cubs. Will there be Grandpa Rossy guys (Rossy grandchildren)? How will he handle strategic and tactical decisions? Will he delegate to the revolving door of Cubs coaches given him by the front office?

It’s likely the Chicago media will fawn over Ross the way St. Louis media did Matheny. Ross may get even more favorable treatment given his tenure as a member of the media with ESPN and his engaging personality. This will likely give Ross cover and time to learn how to manage while doing the job of manager, time that Matheny also had but failed to take advantage of due to personal shortcomings.

The reason no one knows how Ross will perform as Cubs manager is the same reason no one knew how Matheny would perform as Cardinals manager. Neither man had any experience managing big-leaguers at the time of hire. The Cubs’ decision to hire Ross is as big of a gambit as the Cards’ decision to hire Matheny.

Ross is not Matheny, and yet…

Mike Shildt's Mathenaging Set Adam Wainwright and the Cardinals Up to Fail

Adam Wainwright is an all-time great St. Louis Cardinals pitcher who needs adult supervision. This is especially true in high-stakes games. Manager Mike Shildt has shown he lacks the leadership chops to provide that adult supervision. And on Saturday at Busch Stadium, Shildt’s passivity cost the Cardinals dearly.

After putting together an average-ish cocktail of a season that was one part elite-at-home and one part awful-on-the-road, Shildt made the good decision to set Wainwright up to start NLDS Game 3 at Busch Stadium against the Braves. After staff ace Jack Flaherty shut down the Braves in a lopsided Game 5 victory, fortune smiled on the Redbirds when the Nationals knocked off the Dodgers, giving St. Louis the home-field field advantage in the NLCS and the ability to start Wainwright twice at home, if need be.

Game 2 at Busch pitted Wainwright again perhaps the best pitcher in the National League, Max Scherzer. And while Waino may not have matched Scherzer, who carried a no-hitter into the sixth, the former Cardinals ace more than held his own in the duel, allowing one run on a homer through seven innings. This is when Shildt engaged in the indefensible:  Mathenaging.

Former Cardinals manager Mike Matheny could not manage Wainwright either. Whether it’s a lack of smarts or over abundance of sentimentality, Matheny consistently left Waino in too long. He would do it when it was obvious Wainwright was injured, when it was obvious he was out of gas, or when basic managing tactics dictated removal. Shildt subscribes to the Matheny Manifesto chapter on (not) managing Wainwright. And Saturday at Busch was the third reminder of this fact since the season’s final weekend against Chicago.

The Cardinals bats had no solution for Scherzer. For the second consecutive game, the offense looked completely overmatched against Washington. They could barely muster a hit let alone a run. To say that runs were at a premium as Game 2 entered the late innings is an understatement.

The Cards trailed 1-0 entering the 8th inning. Even the feeble Cards offense might be able to scrape together one run against the Washington bullpen, which was a disaster during the season. Shildt should have been managing aggressively to keep any other Nats from crossing the plate. That was the Cards’ best shot at somehow coming back and stealing a victory.

Shildt stuck with Waino to face the strikeout-prone Micchael A. Taylor and it worked. Wainwright K’d the free swinger for the first out. Up next was Scherzer, who the Nats predictably removed for a pinch-hitter in the form of left-handed hitter Matt “Big May” Adams. Here is where Shildt went overboard with sentimentality.

Shildt did not use platoon splits to make his decision, as the following tables make clear.

2019 Platoon Splits for Adam Wainwright

Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	wOBA
RHB	.262	.310	.389	.699	.127	.297
LHB	.288	.380	.503	.883	.215	.368
Diff	+.026	+.070	+.114	+.184	+.088	+.071

There was a time when Wainwright was an ace who get batters out regardless of which batter’s box they dug into. That time is gone. Wainwright’s aging arm doesn’t allow him to pitch like he once did. And while he fades, pitchers across the league are emerging with nastier and nastier arsenals. Wainwright essentially has one above-average pitch and that’s his plus curve. And while it can be effective against a left-handed batsman, it’s undeniably more potent against righties.

Career Platoon Splits for Matt Adams

Split	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	ISO	wOBA
RHP	.273	.325	.491	.816	.218	.346
LHB	.208	.236	.371	.607	.163	.260
Diff	-.065	-.079	-.120	-.209	-.055	-.086

It’s rather remarkable how Adams and Wainwright’s platoon splits mirror one another. Waino is about as bad against left-handed hitters as Adams is against left-handed relievers. Put otherwise, letting the right-handed Wainwright face the left-handed Adams is about as favorable a matchup for the Nationals as possible. Yet that’s the matchup Shildt chose for the Cardinals.

The result of Shildt’s bad choice was as predictable as it gets in baseball. Adams reached base. Although the single was probably a best-case scenario given the amount of damage lefties have hit for against Waino this year.

It’s rather remarkable how Adams and Wainwright’s platoon splits mirror one another. Waino is about as bad against left-handed hitters as Adams is against left-handed relievers. Put otherwise, letting the right-handed Wainwright face the left-handed Adams is about as favorable a matchup for the Nationals as possible. Yet that’s the matchup Shildt chose for the Cardinals. It’s rather remarkable how Adams and Wainwright’s platoon splits mirror one another. Waino is about as bad against left-handed hitters as Adams is against left-handed relievers. Put otherwise, letting the right-handed Wainwright face the left-handed Adams is about as favorable a matchup for the Nationals as possible. Yet that’s the matchup Shildt chose for the Cardinals. 

Shildt did not relieve the fading veteran after he predictably allowed Adams to reach. Perhaps he was heartened by the fact that Adams only hit a single, even if the single was a sharply struck 101.8 mph off the bat. Shildt let Wainwright face Trea Turner, a righty, who singled weakly.

Adam Eaton, a left-handed hitter, was due up. Eaton hits righties about as well as lefties for his career, so the batter’s platoon splits did not dictate a change. But Shildt still had Waino’s platoon splits to consider and the situation. Shildt’s faith in the Matheny Manesto chapter on managing Wainwright remained unfazed. He stuck with the Proven Veteran. Eaton laced a 102.7 mph ball off the bat that shot past the diving Paul Goldschmidt and plated two runs, pushing the Nats’ lead to 3-0. 

Shildt ordered the intentional walk of Anthony Rendon. He then removed Wainwright. Presumably because the principles of Mathenaging dictate removal of Wainwright only after the team’s changes of winning have been kneecapped. 

There is no denying that Shildt is a marked upgrade over Matheny. The Cardinals won the division in no small part because of the improvements on defense and running bases due to Shildt’s approach to the game. But when it comes to in-game managing, the question of whether Shild is an improvement over Matheny is unanswered.

A manager’s job is to put his players in a chance to succeed, which helps the team’s chances to win. Shildt set Wainwright up to fail in Game 2, just as he did in NLDS Game 3 after doing the same thing in NLDS Game 3. Shildt put the opposition—not the Cardinals—in the best position to succeed. The Nationals took advantage of Shildt’s gift in a way the Braves couldn’t. 

The Cards managed to luck into a run in the bottom of the eighth. But it wasn’t enough. They lost 3-1. The Nats’ two-run 8th proved decisive. 

We’ll never know what might have happened if Shildt had pulled Wainwright earlier. And that’s the problem. Shildt’s adherence to the “let the starter lose the game” tenant of Mathenaging set up Wainwright, and by extension the Cardinals, to fail. By letting Wainwright give up two runs, Shildt cost the Cardinals a chance to win the game.