Catchers Make the Worst Managers?

It seems to me that I'd seen a study like that long ago, probably by Chiba-san in Shukan Baseball. I'll look for that article and some stats later.

Nonetheless, off the top of my head there are two former catchers who made exceptionally good managers:

• Nomura Katsuya and
• Mori Masaaki

The final stints of both of these managers, managing last place teams, will probably drop their respective winning percentages down quite a bit. But I'm sure their respective earlier stints cancel out these poor later ones.

Dave Pinto of Baseball Musings is one of the most informative baseball fan sites I've ever seen.

Thanks very much for the link. Arigato!

I found the article I was referring to. Actually, it was two articles, one written just before the 1997 season, the second one almost identical, but with 1997 data included. They were Chiba Isao's "Kiroku no Techo" numbers 1856 and 1907 from Shukan Baseball. (Sorry, I just have the articles, not the magazines, and I didn't take note of the issues.)

The articles don't come to any conclusions based on position. And they don't look at managers' career win-loss records. Chiba-san notes that, at the conclusion of the 1997 season, there have only been 32 managers to have managed pennant taking teams since 1936 (with two league play starting in 1950 doubling the number of pennant takers). Seibu's Higashio-kantoku became the 32nd manager that year.

I went through and took note of the primary positions that the managers played:

 7 Pitchers
 4 Catchers
13 Infielders
   3 First base
   2 Second base
   2 Third base
   2 Shortstop
   4 Multiple
 4 Outfield
 4 No playing information available

While catchers had a pretty high victory percentage (pennants/seasons managed), especially compared to outfielders, I'm afraid that no real conclusions can be drawn from this data. It doesn't look at a broad enough scope, so comparing it to the other study would be like comparing apples to oranges.

This does sound like an interesting study to pursue.

Disclaimer: This is just a very casual observation, so don't take it too seriously, and please correct me if I'm wrong.

In the four years or so I've been following NPB, I've noticed that star players tend to get managerial jobs much more than they do in America. Of the current crop of Japanese managers, off the top of my head, only Haruki Ihara wasn't a star player (and of course Hillman and Valentine never played in Japan).

In MLB, on the other hand, there are several managers who never had significant playing careers at the major league level (Tony La Russa, Jack McKeon, Buck Showalter, et al). Maybe this is just because there are more teams in MLB.

My point is that, in Japan at least, it seems like success as a player is more important than position in becoming a successful manager. I'm sure the correlation between successful playing and managing careers has been studied already, so I think it would be kind of interesting to study the successful managers who weren't star players.