Ranking the 10 Best Active MLB Managers After Dusty Baker's Retirement
Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker officially retired on Thursday, calling it a career after a three-decade run in which he won 2,183 games with five different franchises—as well as the 2022 World Series.
He was, unequivocally, one of the best (and most well-liked) in the business, and his departure leaves Houston with a sizable question mark heading into the offseason.
Baker joins Terry Francona (retired) and Buck Showalter (relieved of his duties with the Mets) on the list of big-name managers no longer employed by a Major League Baseball franchise.
This begs the question: Who are the best active managers now?
We've ranked the top 10 based on a combination of regular-season success, postseason prowess and, at least to some extent, how much they have exceeded (or underachieved) their team's typical payroll.
For an example on that latter point, New York's Aaron Boone has a better record than Tampa Bay's Kevin Cash, but Boone also has two players combining to make more money per season than Cash's entire roster. That's a pretty noteworthy difference which definitely factors into the rankings.
Honorable Mentions
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Rocco Baldelli, Minnesota Twins (375-333)
Baldelli was named AL Manager of the Year as a "rookie" in 2019, and just led the Twins to a postseason victory that ended a drought of nearly two decades. There's not a specific ding on his resume that keeps him out of the top 10, but there's also not a particularly compelling reason to put him ahead of anyone ranked higher. He's in a solid 11th place and could jump up to 7th or 8th with another AL Central title in 2024.
Bud Black, Colorado Rockies (1,125-1,269)
Black's career winning percentage (.470) is rough. However, only Bruce Bochy and Bob Melvin have more wins among the 25 active managers. And in his 16 years, Black has never been blessed with a top-10 Opening Day payroll. He did turn lemons into lemonade a few times, earning NL Manager of the Year in 2010 with the San Diego Padres and making the playoffs in both 2017 and 2018 with the Rockies.
Aaron Boone, New York Yankees (509-361)
Boone was born into managerial life with a silver spoon in his mouth as the leader of one of the deepest-pocketed franchises, but he is thus far 0-for-6 in the AL pennant department with the Yankees. He does have a .585 regular-season winning percentage, second only to Dave Roberts among active managers. But until New York actually gets back to the World Series again, he can't be considered a top-10 manager.
A.J. Hinch, Detroit Tigers (791-717)
Hinch got the Houston job in 2015, right as they began their climb out of the AL basement. But he also got suspended for a year for allowing the trash can scandal to happen under his watch, so how much credit should he get? He has a .444 winning percentage in his other five years as a manager and has yet to get Detroit over the hump in his three years there.
Alex Cora, Boston Red Sox (440-370)
See: Hinch, A.J.
Cora won a World Series as the Red Sox manager in 2018 and was the bench coach when the Astros won it all in 2017, but he also played a key part in the sign-stealing scandal, for which he was suspended for the entirety of the 2020 season. And after back-to-back fifth-place finishes in the AL East, we'd like to see him win an untainted title before we call him one of the 10 best currently in the business.
Brandon Hyde, Baltimore Orioles (315-394)
Hyde got the O's job when they were ankles deep in a total rebuild, and they still haven't shown any sort of willingness to spend money. Nevertheless, he took a team that lost 110 games two years ago and won 101 this year. He's the no-brainer choice for 2023 AL MOY, and this might just be the beginning of an impressive managerial career.
Dave Martinez, Washington Nationals (392-478)
We've got to at least mention Martinez since he won a World Series in 2019. But take out the the incredible five-month run after the woeful 19-31 start to that season and Martinez has a .420 winning percentage and no other postseason appearances. Granted, it's not his fault that ownership handcuffed the franchise with the Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin contracts and fumbled away a possible generational superstar in Juan Soto.
John Schneider, Toronto Blue Jays (135-101)
Schneider took over Toronto's dugout in the middle of last season and got the Jays to the postseason in both of his years as manager. He has the third-highest winning percentage (.572) among active managers. But he's 0-4 in the playoffs, including the epic collapse in Game 2 against Seattle last year and the infamous José Berríos quick hook in Game 2 against Minnesota this year.
Buck Showalter, Unemployed (1,727-1,665)
He's technically not a current MLB manager after the Mets gave him a pink slip, so we technically can't rank him. But if and when he takes one of those AL West openings in Houston or Los Angeles, go ahead and pencil the four-time Manager of the Year into the top five.
10. Scott Servais, Seattle Mariners
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Career Record: 616-578 (.516), 2-3 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: N/A
Rocco Baldelli ended Minnesota's 19-year drought of postseason victories, but Scott Servais ended Seattle's 21-year drought of postseason appearances.
That's a tiebreaker in the Mariners manager's favor.
Servais has also been doing the job for a few years longer than Baldelli and has won at least 53 percent of games in five of his eight seasons. It just hasn't been quite enough for October baseball aside from in 2022.
Seattle has also had an Opening Day payroll below that of Minnesota in each of the past four years, just recently starting to show an interest in spending money with the Robbie Ray and Luis Castillo acquisitions and the massive Julio Rodríguez extension.
Now that they are more invested in winning, Servais has them in a place to be a serious contender for at least the next three years.
9. Skip Schumaker, Miami Marlins
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Career Record: 84-78 (.519), 0-2 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: N/A
Skip Schumaker has only been a manager for one season, but he did get the Miami Marlins—who lost 93-plus games in each of the previous two seasons—to the postseason in his managerial debut.
Save for going 31-29 in 2020, Miami hadn't posted a winning record since 2009. (Every other MLB team had won at least 82 games in a season at least once in the 2015-22 timeframe.)
Don Mattingly won just 43.0 percent of his games while manager of Miami over the previous seven seasons.
But in spite of a negative-57 run differential this season, Schumaker waltzed in and immediately took them to the playoffs.
Reigning NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara struggled to defend his crown with a 4.14 ERA and missed the stretch run with an injury that necessitated Tommy John surgery.
Aside from Luis Arraez and the occasional Jorge Soler moonshot, seemingly no one could hit the ball.
Jean Segura was Miami's most noteworthy offseason acquisition (aside from the Arraez trade), and he was one of the least valuable players in all of baseball this season.
And still, Schumaker got them to the postseason.
Respect.
It will be fun to see what he can do if Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Eury Pérez are both able to give the Marlins a full season in 2024.
8. Torey Lovullo, Arizona Diamondbacks
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Career Record: 495-537 (.480), 10-6 (and counting) in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2017 NL Manager of the Year, 2023 NL Pennant
Would Torey Lovullo have ranked top-10 a month ago?
Absolutely not.
But now that his squad has gone on an incredible run to get him on the relatively short list of active managers with at least 10 career postseason wins, it's hard to deny the 2017 NL MOY a spot in the top 10.
What's perhaps most impressive about Lovullo's seven-year run with the Diamondbacks is the up, down and up again trajectory of his tenure.
After going half a decade without a winning season, they peaked as soon as he arrived. They then went through a serious valley because of some combination of A) COVID, B) losing Paul Goldschmidt and C) investing a ton of money in Madison Bumgarner. But Lovullo has led them through to the other side of the tunnel in relatively short order.
He won 93 games in his first season, lost 110 games in his fifth season and is now in the World Series in his seventh season with a bunch of rookies leading the charge.
7. Rob Thomson, Philadelphia Phillies
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Career Record: 155-118 (.568), 19-11 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2022 NL Pennant
Before you lose your mind over Rob Thomson ranking one spot ahead of the manager he just lost to in the 2023 NLCS, please note the drastic difference in winning percentage, as well as the drastic in-season turnarounds that Thomson has orchestrated in each of his first two seasons as a manager.
Last year, he took over for the fired Joe Girardi when the Phillies were 22-29. They went 65-46 the rest of the way, sneaking into the postseason as the No. 6 seed before making it all the way to the World Series.
This year, the slow start came with Thomson already at the helm, but they rallied from a disastrous 25-32 record to go 65-40 over the final four months of the regular season. And though the ending against Arizona was a letdown, he again led a wild-card team to an NLDS upset of the mighty Atlanta Braves.
In, 17 months as an MLB manager, Thomson already has 19 postseason wins. Among active managers, only Atlanta's Brian Snitker, Los Angeles' Dave Roberts and Texas' Bruce Bochy can claim more than that.
At the same time, it has only been 17 months, and he did inherit quite the stable of stars with Philadelphia putting together the fourth-highest opening day payroll in each of the past two seasons. It would be premature to call him a top-five manager after this small a sample size.
6. Craig Counsell, Milwaukee Brewers
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Career Record: 707-625 (.531), 7-12 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: N/A
Did you know the only franchises to win at least 86 games in each of the past six 162-game seasons are the Houston Astros, the Los Angeles Dodgers...and the Milwaukee Brewers?
Craig Counsell's contract with the Brew Crew runs out in a few days, at which point he is expected to be one of the top candidates for the New York Mets opening.
If he doesn't get that job, expect him to then immediately become one of the top candidates to replace Dusty Baker in Houston.
And why the heck wouldn't he be coveted for those roles?
If he could consistently win—at least during the regular season—with a club so stingy that it would deliberately anger the ace of its staff over a $749,000 difference in arbitration proposals this past winter, what couldn't Counsell do with Steve Cohen or Jim Crane money?
Few new managers inherit a great situation, but when Counsell got his start with the Brewers in 2015, they were quite the mess. By his third full season, though, they had become a consistent contender.
He hasn't been named Manager of the Year and has gone just 1-8 in his past four trips to the postseason. But it's going to feel like a home run of a hire for whoever gets him for 2024 and beyond.
5. Bob Melvin, San Francisco Giants
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Career Record: 1,517-1,425 (.516), 16-23 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2007 NL MOY, 2012 AL MOY, 2018 AL MOY
San Diego, or more specifically GM and president of baseball operations AJ Preller, wasn't thrilled by the job Bob Melvin did with their atypically large payroll over the past two years. They allowed him to interview for the Giants opening while still under contract with the Padres. Now one of the top active managers will be leading a new NL West team in 2024.
With Dusty Baker and Terry Francona retiring and Buck Showalter presently unemployed, there are only two active managers who have been named Manager of the Year multiple times: Bob Melvin (three) and Kevin Cash (two).
Melvin is also the only active manager with at least 800 wins and a winning record. (Bud Black and Bruce Bochy also have well over 800 wins, but with losing records.)
But in his 20 seasons of managing, Melvin has never been to the World Series and has only twice made it to MLB's semifinals, getting swept out of the 2007 NLCS with the Diamondbacks and losing last year's NLCS in five games with the Padres.
Even though playoff baseball is inherently somewhat of a crapshoot, that makes it hard to argue he should rank any higher than this.
4. Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays
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Career Record: 739-617 (.545), 15-19 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2020 AL Pennant, 2020 AL MOY, 2021 AL MOY
It was Joe Maddon who originally put Tampa Bay on the map with a strong run from 2008-13. But when Maddon left St. Pete to manage the Cubs, Kevin Cash pretty much had to rebuild the Rays from scratch—and he did so better than Maddon, winning 99 games this season and 100 games in 2021.
What's particularly impressive is that Cash has done so at a place where cash is always tight.
Since Cash started the job in 2015, Tampa Bay's average opening day payroll has been $66.8 million. That's in a division where Boston's average is $188.0 million and New York's average is $204.4 million. But you wouldn't know it from the fact that the Rays have won more games (739) than the Red Sox (728) and the AL East as many times as the Yankees (twice each).
Cash has yet to win a World Series, but he did get there in 2020 and has guided Tampa Bay to the postseason in five consecutive years—though they have hopelessly forgotten how to score over the past two Octobers.
3. Brian Snitker, Atlanta Braves
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Career Record: 646-509 (.559), 24-21 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2021 World Series, 2018 NL MOY
Brian Snitker has a long way to go to match Bobby Cox's 14 consecutive NL East titles, but six straight is pretty darn impressive.
As was the case for Cox back in 1990, Atlanta was a hot mess when Snitker got the job a little over a month into the 2016 campaign. It was their second of three consecutive seasons with at least 90 losses as they searched for anyone other than Freddie Freeman who could actually produce.
But as Dansby Swanson, Ozzie Albies and eventually Ronald Acuña Jr. began to bubble up as young stars, so, too, did the Braves rise from the ashes, re-emerging as a perennial World Series contender.
They came painstakingly close to the World Series in 2020, blowing a 3-1 NLCS lead over the Dodgers. They won it all the following year, and they've eclipsed 100 wins in each of the past two seasons.
Sure, general manager Alex Anthopoulos gets a lot of the credit for savvily keeping most of the nucleus together from one year to the next with his affinity for signing guys to long-term extensions before they become too expensive. But Snitker has done a phenomenal job of playing the good hand he has been dealt.
(He just needs to figure out how to beat the Phillies in the NLDS.)
2. Dave Roberts, Los Angeles Dodgers
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Career Record: 753-443 (.630), 45-39 in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2020 World Series, 2017 and 2018 NL Pennants, 2016 NL MOY
Dodgers fans may well revolt at the idea of Dave Roberts ranking this high on the list, given the recent immediate exits from the postseason.
But did you know that Roberts has by far the highest winning percentage in MLB history among people who have managed at least 1,000 games? He is presently at .630, and the next-closest is Hall of Famer and seven-time World Series winner Joe McCarthy at .615. The only others north of .600 are Jim Mutrie and Charles Comiskey, both of whom retired in the 1890s.
And for a manager who suddenly has a bad reputation for not being able to finish the job in October, we're still talking about someone who has a winning record in the postseason and who is averaging 5.6 playoff wins per season managed.
At the very least, Roberts is doing a whole heck of a lot better than Aaron Boone is with a similarly gigantic payroll.
And it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for Roberts, who has had to deal with multiple major injuries and/or suspensions in basically every season. Just this year alone, he won 100 games with a right fielder as his primary second baseman and with 17 different pitchers making at least one start.
1. Bruce Bochy, Texas Rangers
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Career Record: 2,093-2,101 (.499), 53-36 (and counting) in postseason
Pennants / Manager of the Year Awards: 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series, 1998 NL Pennant, 2023 AL Pennant, 1996 NL MOY
Suffice it to say, there's a reason Texas wanted Bruce Bochy to come out of retirement to lead this team.
Bochy is the only active manager with multiple World Series titles, and he could be just a week away from securing his fourth ring. Doing so would move him into a tie with Joe Torre and Walter Alston for the fourth-most titles in managerial history.
Kind of makes him the no-brainer No. 1 for this list.
Sure, he has a losing record in his regular season career, but he has made the most of it when he does have a contender, now making it to the World Series in five of his nine postseason appearances.
Bochy's run with the "Even-Year Giants" in the early 2010s is the closest thing to a dynasty that we've seen in Major League Baseball since the 1996-2000 New York Yankees. And if the 68-year-old wants to do this for a few more seasons, he could have another special run on his hands, as the Rangers are here somewhat ahead of schedule and built to be a contender for possibly the next half-decade.
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