Why La Russa knows he will win with White Sox
Tony La Russa knows his old tricks from 33 years as a big league manager will still work when he takes over as the new Chicago White Sox skipper next season.
And he believes they’ll work better than ever.
Because of the way today’s game is played, with a strict adherence to analytics and an overreliance on home runs, La Russa insists winning games can be easier than ever.
Months before Thursday’s surprising announcement the 76-year- old is returning to manage after nine years away from the bench, La Russa told this news organization he’d have an edge if he ever did come back.
“It’s actually easier to win now than ever if you’re allowed to use your powers of observation and experience. It really is,” the former A’s manager said when asked then about perhaps restarting his Hall of Fame managerial career.
In a long-ranging conversation, the Hall of Famer bemoaned the fact that managers either don’t or aren’t allowed to apply the proper mix of analytics with using logic their experience in the game provides them.
La Russa admitted he never really lost his desire to manage, even while working in the front office with Major League Baseball, the Diamondbacks, Red Sox and Angels the past nine years. While working as a consultant in Arizona, Boston and Los Angeles, La Russa agonized during each game as though he was still in the dugout.
In fact, his passion to manage only intensified when he saw “the game going in the wrong direction, like it has for a number of years.”
“So when I see this automatic, kind of scripted style of play where they’ve convinced themselves that strikeouts are OK, you’re always playing for a crooked number, it’s not important to move a runner around sometimes … that bothers me so much that I’d like to get back in there,” he said.
Don’t mistake La Russa’s criticism as a shot at the analytics side of the game. That couldn’t be further from the truth, he said.
“What happens down there is you take the preparation — and we were information- crazed, our the metrics people loved us because we always wanted that information — but once the game starts you need to match it with your head, your heart and your guts based on the human beings that are playing because they’re different day to day. They’re different sometimes in the same game,” La Russa said.
La Russa believes managing a game strictly by the book provided by the analytics’ department is a huge mistake, one that can provide he and the White Sox with an advantage.
“I’ve seen guys get the leadoff man on base three or four times a game, never get him over, always trying to hit a two-run homer, then lose the game by a run,” La Russa said. “Then, if a manager tries to play for a run, the metrics guys say, ‘Hey, the percentages are against that.’ But the percentages are the averages, that’s why I say the variability, the dynamics of what happens on an everyday basis, it’s actually easier to win now than ever.”
“And there are people who have decision-making authorities, they’re hamstringing their people downstairs, not understanding that the way to win close games against good teams with good pitching is to play small ball. Start a rally, get him around, get him in. And, by the way, that was part of why the A’s won three (world championships) in a row, and it was one of the
lessons I took as a manager.”
Now he’ll get his chance to prove his own theories still work. Those same principles he used while winning 12 division titles with the White Sox, A’s and Cardinals. The same thinking that led to six World Series appearances.
A nd now he’s back where it all began, too. La Russa is replacing Rick Renteria in Chicago, right where he began his managerial career more than 40 years ago when he replaced Don Kessinger in 1979.
La Russa, who spent 10 years as the A’s manager while leading them to their last World Series title in 1989, is now also primed to better his standing as Major League Baseball’s third winningest manager ever.
His 2,728 victories trail only Connie Mack (3,731) and John McGraw (2,763), with La Russa needing just 36 more victories to pass McGraw for No. 2 on the all-time list of winningest managers.
Winning should be made easier not only because of La Russa’s experience and guile, but because he’s blessed with a roster loaded with young stars such as pitcher Lucas Giolito, shortstop Tim Anderson, outfielders Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert, as well as AL MVP finalist Jose Abreu.
Renteria led the Sox to a 35-25 record and a second-place finish in the AL Central this season. The A’s eliminated the White Sox in the first round of the playoffs, thanks partly to some crucial bullpen moves by Renteria that didn’t work out.
At 76, La Russa becomes baseball’s oldest manager
since 80- year- old Jack McKeon took over the Marlins in 2011. But his nearly 60 years in the game give him a unique perspective.
For instance, La Russa felt so passionate about fixing what he feels is wrong with the game that he fired off an unsolicited text to some of his closest friends in baseball about a year or so ago. In the lengthy note, he detailed why baseball needed to make changes.
With La Russa’s permission, here is the message he sent to his baseball friends:
“If you picture the most enter t aining ba seba ll game you could see today, there’s always going to be the ball being put into play and see these marvelous athletes make these incredible defensive maneuvers, you’ll see baserunners running, sliding, taking extra bases, you’ll see the beauty of starting a rally with a tough at-bat, a well-placed hit that advances a runner; or second and third, a line drive single to the middle that drives in two runs instead of a three-run homer attempt three times, and you get nothing.
“And along with that vision, there is also plenty of room for the dramatic home run and the big-time strikeout by the pitcher with the bases loaded or a runner on third. So, it’s not that you degrade strikeouts and home runs, it’s that you need to glorify the way the game should be played, which is pretty much:
“You put the ball in play hard, and if you’ve got that kind of talent, the ball leaves, if not, you’re still getting base hits. And there’s action. THAT’s the game that we need to get back to.”