Thursday, October 01, 2009
Mr. LaRussa, meet Mr. McGraw
Posted by Chris JaffeEarlier today the Cards inflicted a considerable butt-whipping on the Cubs, 13-0. The big story was Chris Carpenter's 6-RBI performance. Not bad for a pitcher.
Still, it wasn't the most impressive achievement on the day. That honor went to his manager, Tony LaRussa, who filled out the lineup card for the 4,769th time, tying him with John McGraw on the all-time leaderboard. Only Connie Mack has done more.
Sure, games managed is a far from glamorous stat - but as many games managed as John McGraw?!? He (and Connie Mack) have been atop the career leaderboards for managers for so long I never imagined it was possible for anyone to catch either one.
In three more years, LaRussa should pass him up in victories, too.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.
And by “Cubs” I mean Reds. I actually knew that one. But I just had to get my daily quota of factual error in a THT Live post.
Dammit.