2024 Modern Baseball Period Committee Candidate: Lou Piniella

This put up is a part of a sequence masking the 2024 Modern Baseball Period Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires poll, masking candidates in these classes who made their biggest influence from 1980 to the current. For an introduction to the poll, see right here. The eight candidates will probably be voted upon on the Winter Conferences in Nashville on December 3, and anybody receiving no less than 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will probably 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, “Candy Lou” introduced a aptitude for the dramatic and a fiery depth — his dust-kicking, hat-stomping, base-throwing tirades turned the stuff of legend — in addition to large baseball acumen. Like fellow Modern Baseball candidate Davey Johnson, he gained championships in each phases of his profession, however his failure even to succeed in the World Collection a second time as a supervisor forged an extended shadow on each successive cease. Not like Johnson, nevertheless, he got here near election, lacking by only one vote on the 2019 As we speak’s Sport Period Committee poll from which Harold Baines and Lee Smith had been elected.

A local of Tampa, Florida, Piniella was signed by Cleveland as an newbie free agent in 1962. Earlier than getting a foothold within the majors, he handed by way of the palms of the Washington Senators, Baltimore Orioles (for whom he performed 4 video games in 1964), Cleveland (once more, with a quick 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 sizzling mood (and baseball’s fantastic terminology for such a case) in Ball 4 by writing, “Lou Piniella has the crimson ass.” Extra, from lower than every week later:

“Piniella is a case. He hits the hell out of the ball. He hit a three-run homer right this moment and he’s acquired a .400 common, however they’re easing him out. He complains rather a lot concerning the coaches and ignores them when he feels prefer it, and to prime it off he’s delicate as hell to issues like Joe Schultz not saying good morning to him. None of that is purported to depend while you choose a ballplayer’s skills. However it does.”

The Pilots ended up buying and selling Piniella to the AL’s different growth crew, the Kansas Metropolis Royals, on April 1. Piniella pulled himself collectively, profitable AL Rookie of the Yr honors with the Royals in 1969. A high-average contact hitter who didn’t have a ton of persistence or energy (as his .291/.333/.409 line suggests), he was notably potent as a lefty-masher. He made the AL All-Star crew 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. “Sure, I had a nasty mood,” Piniella stated in 1974, his first spring as a Yankee. “I suppose I used to be attempting to succeed an excessive amount of. I in all probability was attempting to exceed my capabilities and was anticipating perfection on a regular basis. After I couldn’t attain it, I’d get mad at myself… Final 12 months, they’d a wire mesh display across the water cooler on the new park in Kansas Metropolis so I couldn’t kick that one.”

A left shoulder ailment restricted Piniella’s enjoying time late in his profession, so he turned 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 effectively. In 1986, he turned the crew’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 aid 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 gained 90 video games in 1986 however completed second, 5.5 video games behind the Pink Sox.

After New York slipped to fourth regardless of profitable 89 video games in 1987, normal supervisor Woody Woodward resigned. Steinbrenner rehired Martin for the ultimate time and “promoted” Piniella to normal supervisor. The job was not a match. “After 25 years in uniform, I wasn’t used to the workplace facets of it, the confinement,” he informed The New York Occasions. “I benefit from the baseball a part of it very a lot. After I talked to different normal managers about expertise, I loved that facet.”

Piniella resigned as GM on Could 29, 1988, downplaying rumors of clashes with Martin over personnel, although throughout the group there was consciousness of the friction. Lower than a month later, with the crew in a slide, Martin ran out of rope by way of a sequence 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 develop into the supervisor of the Reds. Changing Pete Rose, who had simply acquired his lifetime ban for playing, he inherited a crew 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 essentially the most profitable certainly one of his managerial profession: the Reds went 91–71 and gained the NL West (the Senior Circuit’s screwed-up geography in some way had each Cincinnati and Atlanta within the West and St. Louis and Chicago within the East) and the World Collection, the final by sweeping the closely favored A’s, the defending champions.

The Reds collapsed to simply 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 battle than to proprietor Marge Schott’s lack of assist 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 swimsuit was finally settled out of courtroom, and Piniella issued an announcement of apology, retracting his feedback and praising Darling and umpires generally. “However I acquired no backing,” he stated of Schott, who by the point of his feedback had been suspended for a 12 months on account of racially insensitive remarks. “It acquired in my craw. That was the large factor.”

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 essentially the most profitable stretch in franchise historical past. The Mariners went 82–80 below Piniella in ’93, the primary of seven instances in 10 seasons (by way of 2002) that they’d put up a profitable file. They made the playoffs 4 instances on his watch however have performed so simply as soon as since then.

Piniella’s 1995 crew overcame a 12.5-game deficit to complete the lockout-abbreviated season tied with the Angels atop the AL West. The Mariners gained the one-game tiebreaker, then beat the Yankees in an exciting five-game Division Collection that ended with Martinez bringing Griffey dwelling with the profitable run by way of The Double. The joy of the second helped generate the groundswell of assist that secured the Mariners a brand new taxpayer-funded stadium inside every week of the sequence’ finish. Piniella gained the primary of his three Supervisor of the Yr 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 main league file with 116 wins, and Piniella garnered his second Supervisor of the Yr award. But his Mariners groups by no means superior previous the ALCS, falling by the hands of the Yankees in each 2000 and ’01. Usually, they had been restricted by horrible bullpens, and Piniella made issues worse; the 1997–99 items 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 one more 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 Satan Rays in alternate for outfielder Randy Winn, who was coming off his lone All-Star season. Although Piniella guided the growth crew to its first 70-win season in 2004, the Satan Rays weren’t capable of progress additional, and he turned pissed off by the crew’s minimal payrolls. After agreeing to a buyout with one 12 months remaining on his deal, he turned the supervisor of the Cubs in October 2006, succeeding Dusty Baker.

With a forged led by Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano, and Carlos Zambrano (a person with an notorious mood of his personal), Piniella’s Cubs gained back-to-back NL Central titles in 2007 and ’08. He gained his third Supervisor of the Yr award within the latter 12 months after main the Cubs a league-high 97 wins, however in each of these seasons, his squads had been swept out of the Division Collection. 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.

As a result of 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 Corridor. 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 in the event you wave off his time there (200–285, .412), he’d rank simply twenty eighth.

It’s price noting {that a} low profitable proportion isn’t itself disqualifying for the Corridor of Fame; many an important manger has discovered himself caught in a noncompetitive scenario for years at a time however offset that with their success. Connie Mack (.486) and Bucky Harris (.493) are within the Corridor regardless of sub-.500 data, Wilbert Robinson is true at .500, and Casey Stengel completed at .508. However Stengel gained 10 pennants and 7 World Collection, all with the Yankees after years piloting mediocre NL groups. Mack gained 9 pennants and 5 World Collection between teardowns of the crew he owned, and Harris gained three pennants and two World Collection. Robinson’s complete 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 crew 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 assume alongside these traces; if we begin enjoying that recreation, he loses floor to managerial giants like John McGraw, Stengel and up to date Joe Torre, to call just some. Piniella’s positives are offset by his lack of postseason success past 1990 — his groups gained simply three sequence in his closing 18 full seasons — and a relatively unexceptional profitable proportion. Even in the event you exclude his lost-cause Satan Rays stint, his .533 would rank thirty third amongst managers with no less than 1,500 video games.

Finally, Piniella’s case as a Corridor 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 the place [Whitey] Herzog and [Dick] Williams — two innovators who gained a number of pennants and made the playoffs extra continuously with out advantage of the wild card — wanted 1 / 4 of a century to realize election by way of the Veterans Committee, I simply don’t see how Piniella has acquired sufficient to get into Cooperstown.” Regardless of my very own affinity for him, that feeling is even stronger as I eye the chance that Baker, Bochy and Francona, all far more adorned, might be elected when this poll cycles round in three years.

That stated, I’m not the one with the vote, and Period Committee members have typically supported Piniella. He acquired seven votes on the 2017 As we speak’s Sport poll from which John Schuerholz and Bud Selig had been elected, then 11 two years later. Since then, three of the 4 candidates who fell one vote brief in an Period Committee vote — Ted Simmons, Marvin Miller, and Tony Oliva — had 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 most definitely honoree, or no less than second behind Joe West, the longevity king amongst umpires. Perhaps the 2 can have a full-blown argument as a part of their induction speeches.