Mike Maddux of Texas Rangers Hopes To Buck Historical Bias Against Pitchers

There are certain things in baseball that are just accepted to be truths.

One of those is that pitchers make lousy managers. A quick scan of the 27 managers currently employed in Major League Baseball finds just two of them—Toronto's John Farrell and San Diego's Bud Black—who made a living by pitching the ball instead of hitting and fielding it.

So when I heard the news that Texas Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux had emerged as a candidate for the vacant managerial posts for the Red Sox and Cubs, my initial reaction was one of surprise.

Greg Maddux's older brother was a journeyman pitcher in the major leagues for all or part of 15 seasons, winding his way through Philadelphia, Los Angeles (twice), San Diego, New York (Mets), Pittsburgh, Boston, Seattle, Montreal and Houston while recording a 39-37 career record.

Since then, he spent six seasons as pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers, and for the last three years has been the pitching coach for the two-time American League champion Rangers.

But history is not exactly replete with successful managers who were pitchers. The most successful of this small group is former Los Angeles Dodgers skipper Tommy Lasorda, who won 1,599 games over a 20-plus-year career and led the Dodgers to a pair of World Series titles in 1981 and 1988.

Since World War II, the next winningest former pitcher in the managerial ranks was Fred Hutchinson, who was 830-827 over 12 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds in the 1950s and early '60s and led Cincinnati to the National League pennant in 1961.

Roger Craig is another former pitcher who found at least some success as a manager, leading the Padres and Giants for nine-plus seasons and taking San Francisco to the World Series in 1989.

So why is it that former pitchers are so often overlooked for managerial gigs?

John Perrotto of Baseball Prospectus did a piece on this topic last winter, after Farrell was hired by the Blue Jays after four seasons as Terry Francona's pitching coach in Boston. Conventional wisdom states that pitchers are one-dimensional; pitching is their thing, not hitting or defense or base running.

Position players, on the other hand, are believed to be better able to involve themselves in all aspects of the game because as players they had to play both offense and defense.

So what position produces the most managers? Among the 27 current managers, besides our two former pitchers, we find:

• One outfielder/first baseman (Baltimore's Buck Showalter).
• One first baseman (Don Mattingly of the Dodgers).
• Two third basemen (Robin Ventura of the White Sox and Houston's Brad Mills).
• Three second basemen (Cleveland's Manny Acta, Terry Collins of the Mets and Washington's Davey Johnson).
• Three shortstops (Texas' Ron Washington, Miami's Ozzie Guillen and Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire).
• Six outfielders (Philadelphia's Charlie Manuel, Cincinnati's Dusty Baker, Milwaukee's Ron Roenicke, Pittsburgh's Clint Hurdle, Arizona's Kirk Gibson and Colorado's Jim Tracy).

The rest of the managerial jobs—nine in all—are held by former catchers. So if pitchers are thought to have the wrong stuff to manage, it's fairly clear that catchers are thought to be as good as gold.

Those nine current managers who once donned the so-called "tools of ignorance" include Joe Girardi of the Yankees, Joe Maddon of Tampa Bay, Jim Leyland of Detroit, Ned Yost of Kansas City, Mike Scioscia of the Angels, Bob Melvin of Oakland, Eric Wedge of Seattle, Fredi Gonzalez of Atlanta and Bruce Bochy of San Francisco.

Historically, catchers have also fared well. Connie Mack, the winningest manager of all time, was a catcher. So too were Joe Torre, Ralph Houk and Al Lopez, all among the most successful managers of all time.

So good luck to Mike Maddux in his quest—just don't be too surprised if Cleveland Indians bench coach Sandy Alomar ends up with one of the jobs.

Alomar was a catcher, after all.