Now there's an idea, Lou back in Seattle.

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1.  I'm not especially pro-Lou.  I think he's really good at his job, but think the same of Tony LaRussa, and could take him or leave him.

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2.  I think Don Wakamatsu is the guy to run with in Seattle.

I don't think that Don Wakamatsu looks over at a starting pitcher, picks up his tell, and relays it to the runner on 1B the way that Lou does, but on the other hand, I imagine that Don is a lot more comfortable looking at hard data and using them to drive his decisions.

I suspect that Wakamatsu picked Fister because he liked (1) Fister's makeup and (2) Fister's movement, location, and downward plane as documented by F/X charts.  I think Fister and Vargas would have been Lou's choices also, based on (1) makeup alone, but Lou probably would have Sean White setting up.  :- )

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3.  Amazing that a cyber-community that lives for normalizing park effects, HR/F ratio, BABIP and everything else on this green earth ... would build its recommendations off of a manager's W/L percentage without any normalization of the rosters he started with.  Especially in Tampa Bay.

Would you even consider saying, hey, Eppa Rixey was only 266-251, so you know he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame!

3a.  The Tampa Bay Devil Rays lost 106 games the year before Lou got there.  It then averaged almost 70 wins under him, times three years.  What's the WAR on that?

3b.  The Chicago Cubs lost 96 games the year before Lou got there, and won 85 and then 97 the two years after.   That's a delta of 50 games over two years ... 66 vs 85 and 97 ...  

3c.  Yet those previous two lines are offered as the proof that Lou Piniella has performed mediocrely since he left Seattle! 

I take it in the future, we well ever-after refrain from scoffing at sportswriters who forget to normalize Rainiers pitchers for Cheney Stadium?  :- )

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C'mon, guys.  Get off that "managers lose with bad rosters and win with good ones."  It's the laziest thinking you could ever hope to see.

Remember 80-90% of rookie ML managers wash out because they lose with all teams.

James wrote a great book on this.  With a Capital G.  Probably five bucks on Amazon.com. 

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4.  What you do with managers, is go back and check the man's + - = count as to preseason expectations.  Check Mike Hargrove's sometime.  But of course, in the middle of a spirited debate, you'll need Silentpadna or Taro or somebody to perform this count.  No FIFA refs on SSI :- )

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Part 2