A lot of the talk at SGB lately has been focused on coaches. The Ty Willingham Death Watch. The imaginary Jim Zorn dynasty. We even spent some time shitting on Jim Riggelman, a manager, not a coach. But here's the truth. SGB is just like every other sports fan; it's harder to turn on your team than your coach. The easy fix is always to can Holmgren and hire Norm Chow. That way, you don't have to admit what a disgrace your situation really amounts to. You just have to cycle in a new old white guy. But I've never been certain. How much do coaches really matter? Does a good one win you an extra football game? Five extra football games? Five baseball games, or 20? It gets more confusing. Is Bobby Cox a good manager or a turd? On the one hand, his teams make the playoffs every year. On the other, they can't win the big one. Is Joe Torre a genius, or did he have the horses and merely not stand in their way?
I can't answer these questions, but I can offer a few thoughts about what a coach or a manager might do for a team. I invite readers to comment away.
A good coach:
1. Is a brilliant tactician, calling the right plays from minute to minute. Put on the hit and run. Call V-54 Right (hut hut).
2. Is a strategic savant, pointing his team in the right general direction, given the personnel. We rely on the bullpen and the top of the order. We can use our special teams to great advantage.
3. Is a cheerleader extraordinaire who knows how to manipulate his players' psyches and make a winner. Reggie Jackson is Mr. October, but Billy Martin is Mr. October's puppet master.
4. (In college) is a wizard at recruiting, getting the best guys to sign on to the program. Adrian Peterson is Adrian Peterson. Bob Stoopes could be Bozo the Clown and it wouldn't matter.
5. Is a solid manager of a staff, hiring and nurturing the right underlings who can design defenses and offenses. Mike Martz is the reason SF isn't winless. (OK, that's weak, but this list is exhaustive, theoretically).
6. Is a great teacher who maximizes the talent he has access to by making each player learn how to maximize his own talent. It's spring training. Joe Torre makes sure Furcal knows how to manage a rundown.
Those are six I've come up with. But what do you think? Why is a good coach good? And, given a good coach, what difference does it make? Terry Francona is a bad manager. Everybody knows it. But his teams win. So is he actually a good manager, or is he lucky? Phil Jackson has won in two cities. But he's had the best players. Does he get credit for keeping the Lakers together, or does he get the blame for letting them fall apart?
Sound off.
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4 comments:
Good post, Yuni.
Here's my suggestion: A good coach makes his team better than it has a right to be.
That's less subjective than it sounds. In my day job, I've been reading up on how you can tell a good schoolteacher from a bad one. Basically, with some fancy statistical analysis that I don't quite understand, you can calculate for a given class the improvement on test scores that you would expect if they had an average teacher. If they do better than that, they've got a good teacher. If they do worse, they've got a bad one.
Theoretically, at least, you should be able to do the same for coaching. With all the stats they keep on individual players these days, you ought to be able to come up with an expected win total for a given team if they had an average coach. If you win more than that, you've got a good coach. If not, you've got Art Shell.
I think the guys over at The Wages of Wins are doing something like this. Maybe someone who's more dedicated than I am can figure out if they've looked specifically at coaching.
Interesting question.
I think the place where "coaching" makes the biggest and most obvious impact is in college sports. Regardless of sport, if you constantly bring in the most talented players, you are going to be more successful than the teams that do not. I know it's an obvious statement, but it's just about the only definitive way to ensure success. In pro sports, it's about drafting well, but in college, it's about recruiting well.
More than anything, a good college coach has to recruit well. The difference between Pete Carroll and Ty is less about schemes and in-game adjustments and more about Taylor Mays. USC's stud safety hails from Mercer Island. He didn't go to UW, the school in his neighborhood and the one where his father starred at. He went 1,000 miles south to Los Angeles. That's a recruiting coup. Mays, who at 6'3", 235 lbs. runs a 4.3 40, will be drafted in the first round whenever he declares for the NFL draft. That's even more ammunition for USC coaches to take with them on the recruiting trail.
Even though I root for USC, the fact is Pete Carroll is not a great game coach. His teams are undisciplined (look at all the penalties) and they are often not prepared for inferior teams like Stanford and Oregon State. But the man is a hell of a recruiter, probably the best in the country. His recruiting classes always rank in the top 3. There are plenty of other examples of coaches whose recruiting skills trump all else. (See: Brown, Mack)
Imagine an NFL team always getting to pick in the top 5 of the draft every year. That will make even Jim Zorn look like Bill Belichick.
In college football, on top of recruiting, it helps to be a charismatic huckster, which helps make them successful as soon as they arrive somewhere. Guys like Nick Saban, Jimmy Johnson and Rick Neuheisel seem to create an aura about them through smoke and mirrors. Recruits and leftover players buy into that. By the time they've been at a school long enough to judge them on all of their qualities, they take off for a new job.
Phil Jackson was lucky, and he was good. I don't buy that he only won in Chicago because he had the best players. Doug Collins, coaching basically the same lineup as Jackson, won precisely as many NBA Finals as I did. Ditto Del Harris in L.A.
Jackson won because he had a good system and could make great players' egos work for him.
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