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…