(670 The Score) Longtime MLB manager Joe Maddon wants to get back in the dugout again and would be happy to interview for the managerial opening of the White Sox or any MLB team, but he knows circumstances would have to align perfectly for him to get the type of opportunity he wants next. And the way he sees it, if MLB teams aren’t on the same page with him in his recent public crusade against what he views as analytical overreach in the game, there’s little reason to sit down and talk.
“I’m open to talking to anybody,” Maddon told Laurence Holmes on the House of L podcast. “I don’t reach out. I have an agent that does that, to different groups. Right now, I have not been contacted by anybody. And I’m OK with that. I was waiting for the season to conclude. I thought maybe at this point you might hear from some folks, and it still may be that way. But my biggest thing is I want all this stuff out there now. I don’t want to interview under false pretenses. I don’t want to even think about working someplace where I have to be viewed as a middle manager where you’re worried about – worried is the right word – with what the front office is going to be thinking about and how you have to really guard against doing certain things because it’s going to draw ire frankly. It really comes down to that. I don’t like that method. I never worked under that until more recently. Even with the Cubs, the last year, I talk about that in the book too, with Theo (Epstein), it got different. And at that point there, I didn’t feel like I could be myself as a manager. And if you can’t feel that way, if you can’t feel that authenticity, it’s really difficult to do that job.”
Maddon’s comment about putting “all this stuff out there now” was a reference to his recent criticism of analytics factoring heavily into baseball decisions on a day-to-day, inning-to-inning and pitch-to-pitch basis. He likes analytics being applied from a big-picture view but wants full autonomy for managers and coaches in making decisions before and during games.
Maddon has been vocal about that in his new book titled “The Book of Joe: Trying Not to Suck at Baseball and Life” as well as in a number of interviews with different outlets in recent weeks and months.
“I’m looking for analytics to be analytics and not baseball,” Maddon said on House of L. “I’m looking for analytics to serve baseball and not the other way around. I want the best analytical team in all of baseball, but I want them to answer to coaches and not coaches answer to people upstairs crunching numbers. I think there’s a greatness conception that analytics is at the core of the success of a lot of teams. Good players are at the core of success of a lot of teams, and how you acquire them to me is where analytics really shines.
“Managers need to be managers again and not middle managers.”
Maddon, 68, reiterated that he’d like one more shot at managing a team, though he doesn’t know if it will come given he’s going against the grain of the sport’s direction.
“I do, I do, but it’s going to take the right set of circumstances with the right people,” Maddon said. “It’s kind of weird. I’m saying that. I’m not begging for a job. I want a job.”
The Angels fired Maddon in early June as they were on a 12-game losing streak. The Angels went 130-148 (.468) under Maddon’s watch after hiring him in October 2019.
Maddon led the Cubs to a 471-339 (.581) mark and a championship in 2016 during five seasons in Chicago. He’s 1,382-1,216 (.532) across 19 seasons as an MLB manager.
Little concrete information has emerged in the White Sox’s managerial search, but former Giants manager Bruce Bochy, Braves third-base coach Ron Washington and Padres third-base coach Mike Shildt are among the front-runners, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported recently. White Sox general manager Rick Hahn has stressed that experience will be important, but Maddon’s pushback against analytics doesn’t align with what the South Siders seem to want.
You can listen to all of the House of L podcasts by clicking here. The full interview with Maddon will be posted later this week.
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