Who knows how this season will end; hopefully the Metties continue their recent tear and go all the way. I don't know if Manuel's a better manager than Willie or a product of an inevitable run of good luck, but I can say he does at least two things differently that I think are important. First, he argues a lot more and shows a lot more life. Where Willie was a lamb and completely unwilling to ever go toe-to-toe with umps, Manuel's already been tossed twice. The players definitely notice and appreciate this support.
Second, he is clearly very cautious about player health and energy. He pulled Jose in that first game, Pedro yesterday, and immediately moved to get some rest for Wright early on. I think this is critical, and it definitely irritated me that Wright and Reyes got so overworked in previous seasons under Willie.
All in all, so far I give positive marks to Manuel. He has definitely addressed many of my criticisms of Willie.
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Whenever you change managers, you blow a lot of tension out of the clubhouse. Over the course of years, players and managers inevitably have disagreements, and those disagreements add up. Whether they turn into grievances, or respect dictates that players (or in some cases the manager) change their minds has a lot to do with the character of both sides involved.
I'm not surprised everyone's playing better now. If you evaluate a manager one month after a change, you'd determine that Bud Harrelson was ten times the manager of Davey Johnson. Alas, we know this isn't so.
Manuel's done a number of nice things. Willingness to fight for his players vis-a-vis the umpires is, in my mind, the biggest positive. I haven't seen much else different, except of course, that Jerry has a much more comfortable, glib manner.
I've always felt the best managers are the people that can get the clubhouse to coexist over long periods of time, keep conflict in house, and keep teams on an even keel when going through ups and downs. That's why, despite all the knocks on Torre as a passive AL manager (which he was), I was always respected the job he did considering the weird personalities and oversize paychecks that were happening over there. It was also what I liked about Willie. We'll see what happens over the long term with Manuel. If we win playoff series and he goes on to stay here 10 years and win 2 championships, you won't here me complaining. Of course, just look at the track record in Chicago and you seem something different--someone who came in, relaxed the clubhouse, and got immediate results, and then was run out of town on a rail two years later.
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