2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Lou Piniella

This publish is a part of a collection protecting the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires poll, protecting candidates in these classes who made their best affect from 1980 to the current. For an introduction to the poll, see right here. The eight candidates shall be voted upon on the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anybody receiving at the very least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members shall be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024 together with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Lou Piniella

Lou Piniella spent much more years managing within the majors (23, between 1986 and 2010) than he did enjoying the outfield (18, between 1964 and ’84). To each, “Sweet Lou” introduced a aptitude for the dramatic and a fiery depth — his dust-kicking, hat-stomping, base-throwing tirades grew to become the stuff of legend — in addition to super baseball acumen. Like fellow Contemporary Baseball candidate Davey Johnson, he received championships in each phases of his profession, however his failure even to achieve the World Series a second time as a supervisor solid a protracted shadow on each successive cease. Unlike Johnson, nonetheless, he got here near election, lacking by only one vote on the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee poll from which Harold Baines and Lee Smith have been elected.

A local of Tampa, Florida, Piniella was signed by Cleveland as an newbie free agent in 1962. Before getting a foothold within the majors, he handed by means of the arms of the Washington Senators, Baltimore Orioles (for whom he performed 4 video games in 1964), Cleveland (once more, with a short 1968 cameo) and Seattle Pilots. He spent spring coaching with the growth Pilots, the place he caught the eye of Jim Bouton, who memorialized the rookie’s’s scorching mood (and baseball’s great terminology for such a case) in Ball Four by writing, “Lou Piniella has the red ass.” More, from lower than every week later:

“Piniella is a case. He hits the hell out of the ball. He hit a three-run homer today and he’s got a .400 average, but they’re easing him out. He complains a lot about the coaches and ignores them when he feels like it, and to top it off he’s sensitive as hell to things like Joe Schultz not saying good morning to him. None of this is supposed to count when you judge a ballplayer’s talents. But it does.”

The Pilots ended up buying and selling Piniella to the AL’s different growth group, the Kansas City Royals, on April 1. Piniella pulled himself collectively, profitable AL Rookie of the Year honors with the Royals in 1969. A high-average contact hitter who didn’t have a ton of endurance or energy (as his .291/.333/.409 line suggests), he was significantly potent as a lefty-masher. He made the AL All-Star group in 1972, and after being traded to the Yankees in December ’73, he would contribute to 4 pennant-winning groups, together with their ’77 and ’78 championships.

His repute preceded his arrival within the Bronx. “Yes, I had a bad temper,” Piniella mentioned in 1974, his first spring as a Yankee. “I guess I was trying to succeed too much. I probably was trying to exceed my capabilities and was expecting perfection all the time. When I couldn’t reach it, I’d get mad at myself… Last year, they had a wire mesh screen around the water cooler at the new park in Kansas City so I couldn’t kick that one.”

A left shoulder ailment restricted Piniella’s enjoying time late in his profession, so he grew to become the Yankees’ hitting coach below supervisor Yogi Berra in 1984 whereas nonetheless a reserve outfielder. By mid-June, he determined to retire as a participant in order to take over first base teaching duties as nicely. In 1986, he grew to become the group’s supervisor, that in an period when proprietor George Steinbrenner was consuming managers for breakfast and lunch. Billy Martin, in his fourth of 5 stints managing the Yankees, had gone 91–54 in guiding the Yankees to second place in reduction of Berra in 1985, however he was fired but once more, this time after an notorious late-September brawl with pitcher Ed Whitson. With 25-year-old Don Mattingly hitting a scorching .352/.394/.573 within the follow-up to his MVP-winning marketing campaign, Piniella’s Yankees received 90 video games in 1986 however completed second, 5.5 video games behind the Red Sox.

After New York slipped to fourth regardless of profitable 89 video games in 1987, basic supervisor Woody Woodward resigned. Steinbrenner rehired Martin for the ultimate time and “promoted” Piniella to basic supervisor. The job was not a match. “After 25 years in uniform, I wasn’t used to the office aspects of it, the confinement,” he advised The New York Times. “I enjoy the baseball part of it very much. When I talked to other general managers about talent, I enjoyed that aspect.”

Piniella resigned as GM on May 29, 1988, downplaying rumors of clashes with Martin over personnel, although inside the group there was consciousness of the friction. Less than a month later, with the group in a slide, Martin ran out of rope by way of a collection of alcohol-related incidents, together with one which left him with 40 stitches following an altercation in a topless bar in Texas. Steinbrenner fired him for the fifth and closing time, and Piniella returned to the dugout. After the Yankees went simply 45–48 below him en path to an 85–76 end, Steinbrenner fired Piniella with two years remaining on his contract, the primary of which he spent within the Yankees’ TV sales space.

In November 1989, Piniella escaped from New York to grow to be the supervisor of the Reds. Replacing Pete Rose, who had simply acquired his lifetime ban for playing, he inherited a group diven by stars Barry Larkin and Eric Davis in addition to the “Nasty Boys” bullpen of Norm Charlton, Rob Dibble, and Randy Myers. His first 12 months in Cincinnati was probably the most profitable one in every of his managerial profession: the Reds went 91–71 and received the NL West (the Senior Circuit’s screwed-up geography by some means had each Cincinnati and Atlanta within the West and St. Louis and Chicago within the East) and the World Series, the final by sweeping the closely favored A’s, the defending champions.

The Reds collapsed to only 74 wins in 1991, and regardless of rebounding to 90 wins in ’92, Piniella resigned at season’s finish, simply weeks after brawling with Dibble. His departure owed much less to the combat than to proprietor Marge Schott’s lack of help when he was sued for defamation by umpire Gary Darling. Following the reversal of a house run name in a 1991 recreation, Piniella had publicly proclaimed that Darling was biased; Schott refused to pay for a lawyer, forcing Piniella to take action out of his personal pocket. The go well with was finally settled out of court docket, and Piniella issued an announcement of apology, retracting his feedback and praising Darling and umpires normally. “But I got no backing,” he mentioned of Schott, who by the point of his feedback had been suspended for a 12 months because of racially insensitive remarks. “It got in my craw. That was the big thing.”

Piniella wasn’t out of a job for lengthy. In November 1992, he reunited with Woodward in Seattle, the place the Mariners had completed with a profitable file simply as soon as in 16 years. With younger Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, and later Alex Rodriguez, he oversaw probably the most profitable stretch in franchise historical past. The Mariners went 82–80 below Piniella in ’93, the primary of seven occasions in 10 seasons (by means of 2002) that they’d publish a profitable file. They made the playoffs 4 occasions on his watch however have completed so simply as soon as since then.

Piniella’s 1995 group overcame a 12.5-game deficit to complete the lockout-abbreviated season tied with the Angels atop the AL West. The Mariners received the one-game tiebreaker, then beat the Yankees in an exciting five-game Division Series that ended with Martinez bringing Griffey dwelling with the profitable run by way of The Double. The pleasure of the second helped generate the groundswell of help that secured the Mariners a brand new taxpayer-funded stadium inside every week of the collection’ finish. Piniella received the primary of his three Manager of the Year awards that 12 months.

He took the Mariners again to the playoffs in 1997, 2000 (after Johnson and Griffey had been traded upfront of their free company) and ’01 (after Rodriguez had departed by way of free company). Fueled by the arrival of Ichiro Suzuki, the 2001 Mariners tied the key league file with 116 wins, and Piniella garnered his second Manager of the Year award. Yet his Mariners groups by no means superior previous the ALCS, falling by the hands of the Yankees in each 2000 and ’01. Often, they have been restricted by horrible bullpens, and Piniella made issues worse; the 1997–99 models all completed with ERAs of 5.44 or above and totaled an AL-low 0.7 WAR over that span, squandering the final years of the Johnson/Griffey/Rodriguez nucleus.

After profitable 93 video games in 2002, Piniella, who nonetheless had yet another 12 months below contract, determined he wished to go dwelling to Tampa to assist take care of his ailing mom. The Mariners obliged by buying and selling him and infielder Antonio Perez to the Devil Rays in change for outfielder Randy Winn, who was coming off his lone All-Star season. Though Piniella guided the growth group to its first 70-win season in 2004, the Devil Rays weren’t in a position to progress additional, and he grew to become pissed off by the group’s minimal payrolls. After agreeing to a buyout with one 12 months remaining on his deal, he grew to become the supervisor of the Cubs in October 2006, succeeding Dusty Baker.

With a solid led by Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano, and Carlos Zambrano (a person with an notorious mood of his personal), Piniella’s Cubs received back-to-back NL Central titles in 2007 and ’08. He received his third Manager of the Year award within the latter 12 months after main the Cubs a league-high 97 wins, however in each of these seasons, his squads have been swept out of the Division Series. The Cubs declined to 83 wins in 2009, and in August of the next 12 months, with the well being of his mom once more in thoughts, he stepped down for the ultimate time.

Because he managed for 21 full seasons plus two partial ones, Piniella ranks excessive in managerial counting stats. He’s sixteenth in video games managed, fifth behind the still-active Bruce Bochy, Baker, Gene Mauch, and Terry Francona amongst skippers outdoors the Hall. Piniella is seventeenth in wins, trailing solely Baker, Bochy, Francona, and Mauch amongst these not enshrined, and tied for sixteenth with seven playoff appearances, a complete aided by a profession spent largely within the Wild Card period; even so, 10 contemporaries have as many or extra such appearances. Due partly to his time in Tampa Bay, he’s a modest 122 video games above .500, tied for forty third all-time; even when you wave off his time there (200–285, .412), he’d rank simply twenty eighth.

It’s price noting {that a} low profitable share isn’t itself disqualifying for the Hall of Fame; many an excellent manger has discovered himself caught in a noncompetitive state of affairs for years at a time however offset that with their success. Connie Mack (.486) and Bucky Harris (.493) are within the Hall regardless of sub-.500 information, Wilbert Robinson is true at .500, and Casey Stengel completed at .508. But Stengel received 10 pennants and 7 World Series, all with the Yankees after years piloting mediocre NL groups. Mack received 9 pennants and 5 World Series between teardowns of the group he owned, and Harris received three pennants and two World Series. Robinson’s whole of two pennants and not using a championship is one thing of an outlier on this context, however he was a larger-than-life character for a group that was typically severely outmanned.

Anyway, the positives for Piniella’s case boil all the way down to his longevity, a championship in Cincinnati, a memorable run that legitimized main league baseball in Seattle, and one hell of a spotlight reel for his tantrums. His enjoying profession, with 12.4 bWAR, doesn’t add a lot of a bonus if one desires to suppose alongside these traces; if we begin enjoying that recreation, he loses floor to managerial giants like John McGraw, Stengel and modern Joe Torre, to call only a few. Piniella’s positives are offset by his lack of postseason success past 1990 — his groups received simply three collection in his closing 18 full seasons — and a relatively unexceptional profitable share. Even when you exclude his lost-cause Devil Rays stint, his .533 would rank thirty third amongst managers with at the very least 1,500 video games.

Ultimately, Piniella’s case as a Hall of Fame supervisor rests extra on longevity, which fellow candidates Johnson and Cito Gaston lack, than it does sustained success. As I wrote when he stepped down in 2010, “In a world where [Whitey] Herzog and [Dick] Williams — two innovators who won multiple pennants and made the playoffs more frequently without benefit of the wild card — needed a quarter of a century to gain election via the Veterans Committee, I just don’t see how Piniella has got enough to get into Cooperstown.” Despite my very own affinity for him, that feeling is even stronger as I eye the chance that Baker, Bochy and Francona, all far more embellished, may very well be elected when this poll cycles round in three years.

That mentioned, I’m not the one with the vote, and Era Committee members have typically supported Piniella. He acquired seven votes on the 2017 Today’s Game poll from which John Schuerholz and Bud Selig have been elected, then 11 two years later. Since then, three of the 4 candidates who fell one vote brief in an Era Committee vote — Ted Simmons, Marvin Miller, and Tony Oliva — have been subsequently elected, with Dick Allen once more falling brief by one vote. On a poll that lacks any slam-dunk candidates, he is perhaps the more than likely honoree, or at the very least second behind Joe West, the longevity king amongst umpires. Maybe the 2 can have a full-blown argument as a part of their induction speeches.