This was well written my friend!

I never had the pleasure to watch Musial play. I wish I had. It always amazes me to look up the careers of guys who put up Hall of Fame stats, and yet left in their primes to join the service. What a life. The man may not have brough in the mega contracts we got today, but he lived through so much of this country’s “prime.” That’s something you can’t really mourn. I can’t anyway. It must be celebrated. So a toast of my Coke Zero to Stan the Man, and making the most of the prime years in life!

My point was that what made Weaver great was that he went well beyond “platooning”, which every manager does depending on their players. He paid close attention to individual pitcher-hitter matchups. He was adept at putting players in situations where they would succeed by paying close attention to all of their skills, strengths and weaknesses. Which is really the opposite of relying on “stats” to tell you probabilities.

Of course he didn’t use today’s modern statistics. But I do believe he would have used them to a greater degree than most of his modern-day counterparts if he were managing today. He used primitive stats and his memory because those were the best tools he believed he had to work with at the time.

As for Ripken, in his last two final years of minor league ball, he played 3B four times as many games as he did SS, so I’ll stand by my opinion that he “primarily played 3B” at that level and regardless of when, during his rookie year, Ripken was moved to SS by Weaver, the fact remains that it was Weaver who made the move.

As for whether Weaver could have managed for Beane, we’ll simply have to agree to disagree. As I wrote, they may have only been able to coexist for a while, because of the egos involved, but I do believe Weaver would have embraced much of what Beane believes in.

You’re welcome to disagree.

Where is the evidence for that? Weaver appears to have done the opposite. His teams had a whole bunch of role players around a handful of stars.

“He figured out what a player did best and then utilized him in ways that took advantage of those strengths. Just as importantly, he avoided using a player in situations he was unlikely to succeed in.”

This is what made him a great manager. He was an active manager who chose players for their particular skills and then putting them into specific game situations where they could use those skills to greatest advantage and be successful. He was noted for using statistics, but ones that current statheads would ridicule for “sample size”, like putting hitters into the game against a pitcher based on how well they done against that particular pitcher in the past.

“Weaver moved the rookie to shortstop”

Cal Ripken split time between shortstop and third base every year he was in the minor leagues. Weaver started him out at third base and moved him to shortstop in July after the guy he had there showed he couldn’t hit. But its not like Weaver came up with the idea of him playing shortstop.

“Weaver could have managed for Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s”

I doubt it. Beane inherited a great team when he started, but the teams he has built since have mostly been lousy. Last year was his first winner in 7 years. Weaver also valued defense a lot more than Beane appears to. Beane would have gone nuts when Weaver started making moves in games based on individual players skills that went against the “odds”.