Torre Finally Loves Matt Kemp, Maybe Because Last Year, He Was Better Than Jeter

Today, former manager and MLB executive Joe Torre identified his former outfielder, Matt Kemp, “The best player in the game at this point.”

This was a generous thing for Torre to do given that, as he admits in the linked interview, he and Kemp didn’t always get along; Kemp’s rise to near-MVP status would seem to be directly linked to having gotten out from under old Joe.

Torre may feel that way because, by the standards of Baseball-Reference wins above replacement (WAR), Kemp’s 2011, which was worth an even 10 wins, would have been, by a very slight margin, the best season Torre ever managed.

In his 1997 book, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, Bill James created career All-Star teams for several prominent managers. Torre was not among them, and for good reason—his career’s second act had just begun, and it was too soon to think of him as a future Hall of Famer. He was close as a hitter and not yet there as a manager. Now that the jowly one’s career has wrapped, I decided to pick up where James left off and make a best-of for Torre’s 30-year career.

I kept the statistics simple so as not to overwhelm you; normally, I wouldn’t make a big deal of hitter runs or RBIs or pitcher won-lost records, but in this case, they somehow seemed to be called for.

Pos	Player	G	R	HR	RBI	BB	AVG/OBP/SLG	WAR
C	Jorge Posada, 2003	142	83	30	101	93	.281/.405/.518	6.1
1B	Tino Martinez, 1997	158	96	44	96	75	.296/.371/.577	5.2
2B	Robinson Cano, 2007	160	93	19	97	38	.306/.353/.488	5.6
3B	Alex Rodriguez, 2007	158	143	54	156	95	.314/.422/.645	9.9
SS	Derek Jeter, 1999	158	134	24	102	91	.349/.438/.552	8.0
LF	Bernie Williams, 1998	128	101	26	97	74	.339/.422/.575	6.1
CF	Dale Murphy, 1983	162	131	36	121	90	.302/.393/.540	7.2
RF	Paul O’Neill, 1998	152	95	24	116	57	.317/.372/.510	6.0
DH	Jason Giambi, 2002	155	120	41	122	109	.314/.435/.598	7.3

Note that I pushed Bernie Baseball to left field so he wouldn’t be bumped by Dale Murphy. Torre never had a really strong left fielder (Hideki Matsui’s 2007 was probably the closest), so this seemed like a reasonable solution.

Now the pitchers:

Pitcher	W-L	SV	IP	H	BB	SO	ERA	WAR
SP Andy Pettitte, 1997	18-7	0	240.1	233	65	166	2.88	7.6
SP David Cone, 1997	12-6	0	195.0	155	86	222	2.82	6.7
SP Mike Mussina, 2001	17-11	0	228.2	202	42	214	3.15	6.5
SP Bob Tewksbury, 1992	16-5	0	233.0	217	20	91	2.16	6.0
SP Craig Swan, 1978	9-6	0	207.1	164	58	125	2.43	5.7
RP Mariano Rivera, 1996	8-3	5	107.2	73	34	130	2.09	5.4

Note that Mariano shows up in his set-up man incarnation here; 107.2 great innings, even if they’re eighth innings, are more valuable than 80 great innings, even if they’re ninth innings.