Alex Ramirez, whose five-year tenure with the DeNA BayStars was the second-longest in NPB among foreign-born managers next to Bobby Valentines’ seven with the Lotte Marines, will not remain with the Central League club in 2021, the club’s chief executive, Kazuaki Mihara told the Sankei Sports.
Despite a sometimes subtle media campaign run by people around the team to paint Ramirez’s managing in an unfavorable light, the club said it recognized the Venezuelan-born skipper’s gifts and said they wanted to retain his services after he quit the dugout job.
“We talked different times, but he said that for the time being he would like to spend valuable time with his family. We respect his stance and won’t offer him a contract,” Mihara said.
The franchise’s .443 winning percentage since its inception in 1950 to 2015, the year before Ramirez took over, is the worst of any franchise in existence since NPB went to 12 teams in 1958. Ramirez’s 692 games are third-most in franchise history. His .499 winning percentage is second-best among managers who managed more than one season to Hiroshi Gondo’s .541.
Gondo and the two who managed longer, Osamu Mihara and Kaoru Betto are all Hall of Famers and Ramirez will likely join them within a few years.
Tuesday saw another attack on Alex Ramirez’s managing, this time from Nikkan Gendai, which claimed it was appropriate to fire the DeNA BayStars skipper at the conclusion of this year’s one-year contract.
The article claimed people within the team are now talking about Ramirez being out, and that former ace and current minor league skipper Daisuke is the logical choice to succeed him
The article argues that Ramirez is the reason that the BayStars have scored fewer runs than the Giants despite similar offensive numbers.
“The (BayStars) batting average tops the league, and they are second in home runs. Yet they are fourth in the league and have scored 27 fewer runs than the Giants. One cannot argue with the reasoning that the difference is down to the managers.”
–Unnamed former BayStars player
As I’ve written before, whenever one sees an article by a former player for a team arguing that the manager should be fired, one should consider the possibility that the player in question is ripping the manager so that the new regime will hire coaches including the former player himself or former teammates who desire coaching positions with the club.
In regards to the logic, the data bears up under scrutiny. The BayStars are essentially as good as the Giants at getting runners on base and advancing them and have scored fewer runs. But saying the difference between the two managers’ skill IS the difference and saying that conclusion is arrogant beyond words.
Let’s look at this in a different context. Let’s say we have two batters. Over five seasons, Player A has batting averages of: .289, .330, .307, .319 and .275. Player B’s averages over the same period are .248, .290, .270, .265 and .295.
In the current season, Player A bats .275 and Player B bats .295. What person, with any understanding of the randomness of batting averages, would conclude that Player A is batting .275 because he is an inferior hitter? No one, that’s who. Yet that is essentially the argument against Ramirez, that everything he has done the past four years is irrelevant and ONLY this year’s offensive underperformance is the true indicator of the manager’s quality.
That is analogous to the BayStars’ offense this year. They have underperformed their projected runs scored by one run, while the Giants have overperformed by 31 runs. But calling it Ramirez’s fault is stupid because over the past five seasons, his teams have outperformed expectations more than any in the CL.
Since 2016, when Ramirez took over, the BayStars’ offense has averaged scoring 27 runs per season more than its Bill James Runs Created projections. Over the last two seasons they are an average of 20.5 runs above expectations. This is exactly the same figure for Giants skipper Tatsunori Hara.
Team
2020 RS
2020 RC
5-year average above RC
DeNA
423
424
27
Yakult
395
376
17
Hiroshima
426
411
16
Hanshin
407
373
16
Chunichi
349
329
15
Yomiuri
450
419
12
Teams sorted by their average Runs Scored – Runs Created
The thing is the BayStars’ have an active analytics department, and unless their boss is as ignorant and or politically motivated as the former player who contributed to this story, then they will look at Ramirez and see they have something special.
Ramirez’s problem is compounded by a poor win-loss record relative to their actual offensive and defensive results. Given the runs they have scored and allowed, the BayStars should be 48-45-5 this year, five fewer wins than they have actually managed.
If you look at the team’s underlying credentials, what they actually do, and how their talent base has actually expanded under Ramirez, then claiming he should be fired is just an appeal to populism without logic.
The same player argues that Miura is a credible candidate because his team is second in the Eastern League, which I will admit is a positive. The other argument given is that the BayStars farm team is leading the EL in sacrifice bunts. This is an opaque attack on Ramirez, who bunts less than any other manager in the CL.
