Managers Have Lashed Out at Dan Jennings Move to the Bench, Should They be Worried Going Forward?

The blog pageview economy is driven, in part, by swings at easy targets and last week — like most of the Internet — I reared back and tried to throw a fastball at Jeffrey Loria and the Marlins for moving general manager Dan Jennings to the dugout despite having zero experience for that job.

Loria is an easy, warranted target. The Internet strives on mean-spirited comments directed at people you’ll never encounter face-to-face. We move on and find someone else to squash. What a time to be alive and such.

Crushing Jennings? I’m not so sure that was fair. After reading this worthwhile profile from USA Today’s Bob Nightengale I tend to sympathize with him — and not only because it includes little details like Jenning slamming his Bud Light can down in frustration after a loss or that he twisted his knee running in the outfield last week. More interesting is that both Buck Showalter and Chip Hale, managers of the Orioles and Diamondbacks respectively, went out of their way to bash Jennings for his managerial decisions that led to Marlins’ losses, something that is almost unprecedented for opposing managers to do.

Here’s Jennings’ opinion via USAT:

"“The thing I couldn’t figure is that I’ve known Buck a long time, we beat them two out of three games,” Jennings said, “and then he’s all angry and pissy. Come on, I’ve always given Buck respect. And I never met Chip Hale until I took the lineup card out one day. “I respect every manager and what they’ve done to get here, but the bottom line is I’m not here to kiss anyone’s ass and take them to dinner. “I’m trying to beat their ass.”"

The human element and sympathizing with Jennings, a well-respected scout and baseball lifer is one thing. Managers taking shots at him if only for a lack of “paying dues” is something else worth thinking about. Bear in mind, everything that goes on with the Marlins is hard to get a legitimate read upon, especially when Loria himself justified firing Mike Redmond saying the team isn’t supposed to be “flounders.” Yes, we have an owner making fish puns with a straight face.

We still don’t quite know if Jennings played the role of company man so that the team wouldn’t have to continue to pay another manager, while owing money to both Redmond and Ozzie Guillen — the USAT story quotes a senior baseball source saying Miami considered bringing him back before settling on Jennings! –or if this had wider ramifications.

Late last season, the Astros fired Bo Porter. The decision was chalked up to GM Jeff Luhnow wanting the field manager to follow the organization’s long-term plans, which caused tension with Porter. In that case you could see the unofficial fraternity of managers being upset. Increasingly we’ve seen managers take their cues from management, with the massive influx of data-driven defensive shifts as the most-obvious example.

I’d imagine there are plenty upper-management types in baseball who see who the field manager as, at best, a button-pusher. In the American League, pitching changes aside, once the game starts its mostly rote. Call this another one of baseball’s unending battles between data and “gut feelings.”

Ideally, yes, it makes sense for the field manager to apply whatever information and data the front office might have at its disposal. There is no sense being old school for old school’s sake. Information is useful. Sometimes it’s easy to gloss over the parts of the manager’s job that occur outside the nine innings.

Let’s go back to Jennings. He’s a scout by trade and this is another fun quote from the USAT piece:

"“Hey, I don’t disagree with some of the things people are saying,” Jennings said. “I get it. But I’m going to tell you what, I was in that (expletive) car and driving 50,000 and 60,000 miles a year, and grinding out three to four games a day as a scout. So I paid my dues as well.”"

So it’s a bit of a leap to think the Marlins made the change for the application of more sabermetric decisions in the dugout. Those changes are likely coming sooner rather than later. The managers who don’t adjust and adapt are going to be left hitting fungoes on the backfields of some dimly lit field in Florida otherwise.