Riggleman resigns as Nats go over .500
Posted by John Autin on June 24, 2011
Jim Riggleman resigned as manager of the Nationals on Thursday afternoon. The move became official after the Nats' 1-0 walk-off win over Seattle, although the die was cast earlier in the day. As GM Mike Rizzo said at the postgame press conference:
"Jim told me pregame today that if we wouldn't pick up his [contract] option that he wouldn't get on the team bus today."
Riggleman took over as Washington's manager in the middle of the 2009 season, and had a record of 139-172 (.447) in just under 2 calendar years. His contract was to expire at the end of this season. No manager of the Nats/Expos has had a winning record for the course of his tenure since Buck Rodgers from 1985-91.
Riggleman was the 2nd MLB manager to resign this year, although the circumstances couldn't be more different than those of Edwin Rodriguez, who (in his first full year at the helm) abruptly quit the Marlins in the midst of their 19-of-20 losing binge.
Riggleman likely felt emboldened by the club's recent strong play. Despite minimal contributions from the top offseason acquisitions, Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche, and the 9-week absence of Ryan Zimmerman, the Nats were on a 10-1 run and had reached 37-37 when he gave Rizzo the ultimatum. It's the latest that they've been at .500 in any season since the end of 2005.
I haven't followed the Nationals enough to have an opinion of Riggleman's job performance. I've heard it said that the front office was already leaning towards not renewing his contract, and that view is supported by yesterday's events.
Nats fans, what do you think of Riggleman, Rizzo, and this showdown? And what do folks think about the oft-stated notion that a manager without a contract for next year is in an untenable position?
Here is a variety of viewpoints from ESPN columnists:
June 24th, 2011 at 11:39 am
This is an easy one. He was 100% replaceable. Bunted a little much, IBBed a little more, and never saw a double switch he didn't like. Plus our pitcher has been batting 8th for the last 2 weeks. Seemed like a nice guy and a professional, but I guess I'm wrong about that last one.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
"Likely felt emboldened"... doesn't seem so. In a public interview this morning, he said that even if the team did well this year, he knew he'd be offered another one-year contract and he'd been even more steamed about it next season.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Just checking on MNB's comment @1 re: IBB/SH:
-- Nats are right at the NL average in IBBs this year, 22, 9 behind the co-leaders (ATL, FLA). They had 57 last year, 9 over the average but well below the runaway leaders, LAD (75).
-- Sac bunts: 38 this year, 6 over NL average, 2 below leader (STL); 71 last year, 8 above average, 14 below leader (LAD).
Of course, these are just the raw counts, not a percentage of "opportunities" (however that might be defined).
June 24th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
As a Nats fan, I'm heartbroken. Who knows how long this streak could have lasted with him at the helm. However, I don't know how much the streak was due to him or the team coalescing. Has there been any effort into discerning how much of an effect a manager has on a team's winning percentage?
I guess this could quickly be looked at by selecting young, inexperienced, raw teams led by experienced, highly-acclaimed managers.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
As a Nats fan, my opinion of Riggleman has gone from indifferent to disappointment and anger. Say a player decided to quit mid season because the team wouldn't decide if they were going to exercise the next year option. Everyone would totally rip the player a new one, no one would sympathize with the player. I don't see this situation as being much different. Players, and managers, are always playing not knowing if their team is going to re-sign them for next year, it's never an excuse to quit in the middle of the season. I mean, the Nats are doing great, and they stand a chance to actually be in the wild card hunt (I said chance, I know it's probably not likely but is at least a possibility unlike other years at this time). If Riggleman didn't want to be part of this, then it's best that he quit, let's get someone in who has the desire to get the team to the playoffs.
I've never thought Riggleman was a particularly good manager, I didn't think he was particularly bad either until yesterday.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
I've known Riggleman since his minor league playing days with the Dodgers in the '70's, and know Rizzo a bit as well.
I can tell you there's alot more to this than meets the eye, and certainly more than what the average blogger would have access to.
Speculate all you want, that's the point of the forum; whether you're pissed at Riggleman for bailing on his team, or pissed at Rizzo for reneging on his promise to pick up the option earlier this year, the fact remains there's much more to this than it appears.
What disturbed me the most about yesterday was Rizzo's blatant throwing of Riggs under the bus during his press conference. Regardless of whose side your on, there are still two people involved and to not take any responsiblity at all was unprofessional and, quite frankly, bullshit.
I will wait until after the weekend and will text Jim on Monday or so; if he anything is said as a point of clarification and is not requested to be confidential, then I will share it here.
For now, all I have is two cents.
June 24th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
@5, Brent -- I'm not defending Riggleman's decision, necessarily, but it seems to me that a "conventional wisdom" has emerged over the last decade or so that having a manager (not an interim manager) with an expiring contract is a bad situation. I've seen a number of clubs in that situation make a mid-season decision either to pick up an option or dismiss the manager.
I think Tim Kurkjian made some interesting points in his ESPN column:
"The manager who took over a hopeless team with a 26-61 record [.299 W%] in July 2009, changed the culture in the clubhouse and on the field, and played 33-42 [.440 W%] the rest of the way, was rewarded after that season with a one-year contract for $650,000 for 2011, with a club option at $700,000 for 2012, hardly a handsome deal for a manager with over 1,000 games managed in the big leagues."
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kurkjian_tim&id=6699591
Kurkjian also quotes Riggleman saying, "I just wanted to have a meeting in Chicago [on Friday]. They wouldn't do that." I'm sure I don't have anything close to the full picture, but it does kind of seem that the writing was on the wall as to Riggleman's future in Washington.
June 24th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
@6/ Chuck makes a great point here, that we don't know what was really said behind closed doors. Right now it's kind of a "he said-he said" situation, a lot of statements back and forth from both of them, for PR spin and public consumption.
Did _anyone_ see this coming?
June 24th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Am I the only one who noticed that John McLaren has now gotten both of his managerial jobs in the same odd fashion? He also replaced Mike Hargrove when he unexpectedly retired after the Mariners reeled off a 7 game winning streak....
June 24th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
@9, Evil Squirrel -- As far as I know, you are only one to make that point publicly, so bully for you!
It's interesting, not so much about McLaren, but just the fact that Hargrove quit at a similar point in the season with the team playing well. I don't actually remember the details; did he have to deal with a family situation or something? Can anyone fill in the gaps?
June 24th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
#9..
And when McLaren was let go in Seattle, he was replaced by....Jim Riggleman.
How's that for irony?
June 24th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
#10
Good memory, John.
Hargrove resigned, blaming his decision on "a loss of focus and desire." The truth was his wife was pretty seriously ill and was being cared for by family in Cleveland and not at the time living in Seattle.
He just wanted to be with her, and chose another explanation for his departure as a way to keep the situation private.
June 24th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
@6
Chuck, you sound remarkably well-connected to the Washington situation.
The public nature of the "dispute" between Rizzo and Riggelman is what surprises me the most about the whole situation.
Why would the GM not at least take the high road and outline his reasons for not picking up the manager's option to the press? Instead he makes it sound like Rizzo and the Nats are the victims here. It's as if he wanted to make Riggleman look bad.
And if they aren't confident enough in Riggelman to pick up the option, then why leave him in control this year as a lame duck? Is it a dollars and cents thing?
June 24th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
I am sure there is more here than meets the eye, but still whatever the backroom details, Riggleman QUIT while under contract. This was his 4th stop as a major league manager and after this incident, most likely his last. Either he is a raging ego-manic for drawing a line in the sand right now, or the situation was just impossible to stay in. He had to know how this was going to look.
June 24th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Is John McLaren the Gerald Ford of MLB managers?
June 24th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Maybe McLaren is the Iago of managers.
June 24th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
GM gets five-year contract, doesn't want to discuss with manager the manager's short, inexpensive leash. Manager rightfully becomes upset, correctly deduces that he isn't a part of the team's plans for the future through repeated refusals to discuss his contract. Manager tries to have one last meeting during a really good run pretty much guaranteeing the best first-half of the season for the organization in a good half-decade, is still rebuffed. Manager says, "Take this job and shove it. I ain't workin' here no mo'."
Fine with it. If Riggleman isn't a part of your plans and he correctly deduces that, he owes you not a damn second more of his time. Sticking around to keep someone else's seat warm is a waste of his time.
As for those people saying, "oh, what if a player quit on the team blah blah" please cut out that nonsense. Athletes are not like normal workers. Their services are contracted to a team and except for free agency that's the team they're on unless they have the leverage to force a trade. A player can't just say, "I'm not playing anymore" during the season, quit, and expect to resume his career elsewhere. Managers are more like ordinary workers that you may find in an office. Everyone here knows someone that is a decent person that worked a job where the situation deteriorated so much that they declined even the courtesy of giving their employer the two weeks notice. That's basically what managers and coaches have always done. All Riggleman did was not give the Nats the equivalent of his two week's notice. Honestly, if your employer treats you like crap sufficiently I don't think you owe them that. Riggleman wasn't making a mil and his option wasn't for a mil. They just threw $120 million at Jayson Werth. At least picking up his option when you give the GM a half-decade is kind of in order, if not at the time certainly when the team is at .500 nearly halfway through the season. So I'm with Riggleman.
You know, earlier I compared finishing your job as an interim manager or a manager on a short deal as giving your two week's notice but I'd like to say something a little different. Correctly deducing as Riggleman had that the Nats were not going to keep him in the future is actually more like when the ordinary office worker is asked to train his replacement but the employer doesn't want to tell him that it's his replacement. He just correctly deduces it.
June 24th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
B-ref's nicely designed manager register shows that over his ML managerial career, Riggleman's teams have finished a collective 662 wins and 824 losses, which is 162 games (one full season's worth) under .500. You can also see on b-ref that only ten managers in MLB history are more games under .500 than that.
But then Riggleman has served as manager for four franchises: the Nats/Expos franchise, the Mariners, the Padres and the Cubs. Those four franchises collectively have played, if I've calculated correctly, 220 full seasons of major league baseball from 1910 through 2010 and collectively have not won a single World Series championship in those 220 seasons. So I guess Riggs isn't really to blame.
June 24th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
@18
Birtelcom, where have you been?
June 24th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
@15 @16
Very clever!
However McLaren will NOT trip coming out of the dugout to take out his starting pitcher.
June 24th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Ahhhhh... Thank you John for making this post. Now THIS is the kind of discussion I was hoping for.
I kinda agree with a lot of what Fireworks says in #17. Riggleman clearly was not going to be the manager when guys like Harper and Strasburg were seasoned enough to potentially start turning the franchise around. 600,000 a year is more than most of us make, but in baseball it is at the very bottom of the manager's scale (I could only find a full salary list from 2007).
Joe Torre was 109 games under .500 as a manager before he joined the Yankees, and finished his career 329 games over .500. It helps when you have a good team of players to start with. Casey Stengel also was 161 games under .500 when he became manager of the Yankees. Did they suddenly become geniuses after joining the American League? Or did the quality of players have something to do with it?
June 24th, 2011 at 8:24 pm
@21
Thomas, totally agreed with what you posted in John Autin's Baltimore blog about the low-IQ posters out there in fan web sites.
The civility in BBRef is refreshing, plus you don't have to know 500 instant-messaging acronyms.
To the topic at hand .......
I tend to think the circumstances reflect more poorly on the Nationals' management than on Riggleman. Without being close to the situation, Riggleman comes across as a man of principle.
Did they just want him to be a cardboard cutout on the bench for the rest of the year?
June 24th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
@17, Fireworks -- Would you allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment?
First, I agree with you that comparing Riggleman's action to those of any player is not apt. On the other hand, I don't think the analogy of a generic employee whose only duty is to give 2 weeks' notice is on target, either. Here's my quick take on the situation, for the sake of argument (and with the acknowledgment that all I know is what's been in the major media):
-- Last off-season, Riggleman agreed to a 1-year contract with a team option for a 2nd year.
-- The team has not breached the contract; has not reneged on a verbal promise to discuss another contract during the season; and has not contributed to any negative changes in his working conditions.
-- The only reasons Riggleman has given publicly for his resignation are that he felt uncomfortable working on a "short leash" and frustrated that Rizzo would not agree to a meeting to discuss an extension.
My first-take conclusions, then:
1. Riggleman is a veteran manager. He should have known before agreeing to a 1-year deal whether he would be uncomfortable being a "lame duck" as the season wore on.
2. The solid play of the ballclub does not create an ethical obligation for the front office to extend the contract. It does create a presumption that Riggleman was doing a good job; but we can't assume that his job performance was so outstanding that the GM would be foolish not to act now to retain him. And although I think most GMs in this situation would have agreed at the very least to discuss the matter, and probably would have picked up the option year, Rizzo's actions are not at all unprecedented. We've seen managers get fired after making the postseason (and not just Billy Martin, either). Rizzo's actions were not completely outside the accepted norm of front-office culture.
3. If you have a 1-year deal with a club option and no promise of anything more, and you have the team playing well near mid-season, wouldn't you anticipate that either your contract will be renewed (perhaps with a multi-year deal and a raise), or if not, that you will be well-positioned to get a different managerial job in the off-season?
4. If point #3 is true, why would you feel such an urgent need to address your future employment at this time? I can only speculate on a few possible reasons: maybe you're not confident that the team's good play will continue; maybe you're jealous of the contracts held by other managers; maybe you feel insulted by the possibility that, even with the team playing well, the front office might prefer to hire a different manager after the season.
Again, I have no insight into Jim Riggleman's psyche or the process by which he came to this decision, and I'm sure there's more to the picture than I have seen. But none of the reasons I speculated on above reflect well on him as a leader of men, because Rizzo isn't the only person to whom Riggleman had made a commitment.
More to the point, though: How is he better off now than he was 2 days ago? True, he doesn't have to deal with the daily "insult" of not getting the extension he felt he deserved. But I suspect that such satisfaction will wear off quickly.
June 24th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
Imagine if this was Milton Bradley that said he was concerned about his contract and would not get on the team bus? Life is not fair Mr. Riggleman and you are not Casey Stengel, and there are a whole lot of folks that have been laid off in the last couple of years that feel more than a little undervalued when they look at the salaries of available jobs on the market now! Shame on Wiggleman. He said yesterday that having a one year deal didn't allow him to take chances and such,? As a Cub fan I can remember him being scared $#@!less of being aggressive when he was manager. He was a giant baby then.
June 24th, 2011 at 10:51 pm
@ 23 JA
Riggleman called into MLBN today and he said that when he signed the contract he didn't like it. I don't remember the precise adjective he used, but it was strong enough that you could almost question why he signed it in the first place. He then said Rizzo reassured his concerns verbally.
I can't say precisely what he said and neither do I remember him being especially clear about it but it overall gave the impression that not being interested in discussing the option really undermined what Rizzo said when he reassured Riggleman during the initial signing.
June 24th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
I can tell you for sure what JA refers to in post #25 is true.
There was a handshake agreement between Rizzo and Riggleman which made the picking up of the option a formality and also established a timeframe.
The deadline has passed. and by quite awhile, which is why Riggleman was so upset. It wasn't about the money, obviously he's on the low end of the manage pay scale. But when your boss gives his word, there's an expectation he'd keep it.
Not only did Rizzo not keep his word, he gave Riggleman the understanding the option would not be picked up.
June 24th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
@25, Fireworks -- Thanks for the update. Just to be clear, I'm not getting on Riggleman's case. And I know that I can't begin to know what he felt, without knowing all the details and shadings of his relationship with Rizzo. It's just that I'm not able to see him in a sympathetic light in this situation, based on what I do know.
I also think it will be interesting to see whether this drama has any lasting effect on Rizzo's career and his dealings with future managers.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:13 am
@Neil L -
I meant the Ford reference more out of the fact that he was never the guy «elected» to his position - so to speak...nothing to do with his ability to counteract gravity 🙂
June 25th, 2011 at 12:26 am
@22 Riggleman comes across as a man of principle.. Well he did sign a contract, would not the principled response be to honor what you've committed to? If he was Joe Torre he could have gotten someone in the media to start talking him up for a extension.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:36 am
Nationals named Davey Johnson manager and signed him to a contract through 2013.
There you go.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:45 am
The oral agreement doesn't really make sense. If Riggleman just signed the contract before this season, one year with an option, and thought Rizzo promised to pick up the option, why not just sign a two-year contract? If Rizzo refused to offer a two-year deal at that time, then obviously the option is not just a mere formality. I can't think of any advantage the Nats gain by offering a 1-and-1 contract rather than a 2-year, if they fully intend to give him the 2nd year away. Something is missing here.
June 25th, 2011 at 12:48 am
"away" should be "anyway"
June 25th, 2011 at 1:39 am
Whatever happens, he'll still have his forearms.
June 25th, 2011 at 1:47 am
@31, M.R. (and BTW, how long do you plan to maintain that identity?) --
I agree that a handshake agreement on top of a 1-year contract seems illogical. But after all the under-the-table agreements that have come out over the years, in various sports, it wouldn't totally surprise me. Maybe Rizzo had some political reason of his own for wanting to limit the official deal.
P.S. The story took an even stranger turn with Riggleman's round of radio interviews today, including his comments about his evening at a local watering hole:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-sports-bog/post/jim-riggleman-talks-about-his-night-at-caddies/2011/06/24/AGujD9iH_blog.html
June 25th, 2011 at 5:22 am
@34- read the article, that you posted the link for- good for you, Jim!
I wonder, what percentage of the workers, that Fireworks spoke of (in comment#17), went out for drinks, after bailing on their crappy job.
(Hint: It can't be zero percent, because I have 🙂 )
June 25th, 2011 at 5:53 am
Riggleman 6. “I’m too old to be disrespected.” Wrong, we're running a business here Jimmy.
June 25th, 2011 at 9:20 am
@35
~~It can't be zero percent, because I have~~
Nash, I sense a story here for another time, another place ..... 🙂
@28
YoungHickory, I got your reference perfectly. I was just being a disrespectful wise***!
June 25th, 2011 at 9:32 am
@34
JA, thanks for the link. I, too, read the article.
Strange state of affairs in Washington. I assume the lady in the photo with him is his wife and not one of the "beautiful young ladies in that place."? ~cough, cough~
And then the Nats go out a earn a bizarre win last night.
June 25th, 2011 at 10:19 am
I have zero sympathy for Riggleman. So what if he had only a one-year deal? Clearly the players were listening to him. Millions of people out of work and this guy whines about making big money. What a loser.
http://pinetarandbrickbats.blogspot.com/2011/06/another-baseball-quitter.html
June 28th, 2011 at 11:19 am
@ 37
...all good Neil! 🙂
It was fun just to participate versus lurk for once.