Postseason Managerial Report Card: Dave Roberts

If grad students come home with a report card, why shouldn’t big league administrators? We at FanGraphs tend to be egalitarian, and if little Liam or Daenerys can be sent to bed without Roblox, or whatever the kids are these days, why not Big Stephen or Dodger Dave? That’s why every time the manager is removed from the competition, we run his game, and whoever gets it, the Grape Job! barrier

Ben Clemens has already evaluated the work of Will Venable and Aaron Boone, while Jon Becker destroyed the October runs of Walt Weiss and Craig Stammen, as well as the missing managers from the Wild Card round. Today it’s Dave Roberts’ turn.

It can be an odd exercise to relate to these films. Major corporate executives simply don’t have as much of an impact on the team’s field as, say, the head coach of an NFL team. The card is a game of player execution, and the manager’s job mainly comes down to making sure the best players are on the card lineup and that everyone is killing each other by August. But this does not mean that managers have no effect on their fortunes. A ticket is, by its very nature, a light, volatile coin game where the fates of both parties hang on a knife’s edge. Small decisions can have a big impact. Last year, I gave Pat Murphy somewhere between an A- and B+ overall. Let’s see how Robert fares!