If I asked you who the longest tenured, active, manager in major league baseball is you may know it is Bruce Bochy with 22 seasons. If I asked you which active manager has the most World Series rings, you would probably know it’s again Bruce Bochy. Now here is the one you may have to think about. Which active manger has the most games won over .500?
Did you answer Bochy, Mike Matheny, Dusty Baker or Buck Showalter? If you did you would be wrong. It is none other than Mike Scioscia. Scioscia has been managing the Angels for 17 seasons. In that time he has taken the Angels to seven playoff appearances. That is the same amount as Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy, tied for the most amongst active managers. He has won one World Series as a manager and one pennant.
Why am I bringing this up? Well mainly because many have asked is this the year the Angels part ways with Scioscia? And that question simply reminds me that we as the general public have short memories when it comes to our sports teams. We don’t care if Scioscia took the Angels to the World Series, it was too long ago. We don’t care how many American League West titles he has won, they weren’t last year.
We praise Ned Yost, we love Terry Francon and we swoon over Bruce Bochy, but none of them have a better winning percentage than Scioscia. Yes, Bochy has won three championships but all of them have come after his 15th year as a manager, was he a bad manager before that? No, he just had the wrong teams. The Angels under Scioscia are 220 games over .500 that is 188 more games than Bochy, but again I ask does that mean Bochy is a worse manager? Of course not, he won 3 World Series Championships.
I’m sure this came across as a I love Scioscia blog, but that is not my point. My real point is to always look further. We look deep at the stats of players these days to see if they are good or bad, but we overlook the stats of managers unless they have done something for us recently.
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