Do MLB managers matter? Inside the paradox of a job built to be blamed

By Hannah Keyser, CNN

New York (CNN) — Before hiring a manager for his mid-market franchise, a general manager and five other team stakeholders sat in a room with a whiteboard to brainstorm what they believed to be the attributes of a championship skipper. The last manager had been fired at the end of a disappointing season and they needed a fresh voice.

They ended up with more than 40 characteristics written on the board, narrowed the list to the five they felt were the most important for exactly where they were in the competitive cycle, and interviewed only candidates they believed to be strong in at least four of the five. The man they hired won Manager of the Year, led the team to the playoffs multiple times – and was fired just months after the team had picked up his option.

He was replaced the following season with someone who had also been fired from his last job for the disappointing performance of a different club.

“Like general managers,” the former GM, who now works in a different front office, told CNN Sports recently, “managers are hired to be fired.”

And yet he – along with seven other executives and coaches CNN spoke to for this story, all of whom were all granted anonymity to speak candidly – does not believe that is a manager’s highest and best use. The people who hire and ultimately fire managers, and the coaches who spend six-plus months in the daily grind of the dugout with them, believe managers matter for a multitude of reasons.

In fact, that same former GM mused that the modern manager is actually spread too thin.

“They matter a tremendous amount,” said another former GM who now works for a different team. “But I don’t know if they matter a tremendous amount in the way that people think that they matter.”

The 2026 baseball season has already given two primary examples of managers losing their jobs for reasons that may or may not have actually been their fault – or reasonable.

The Red Sox were in last place when they fired manager Alex Cora and nearly all of his staff in a stunning Saturday night bloodletting that came just hours after a blowout victory. After several disappointing seasons, Boston was off to a sloppy, sluggish start. And yet, it was only 27 games into the season.

The aggregate response – after the initial wave of sheer shock – seemed to be that Cora didn’t deserve to be fired because he is an obviously brilliant World Series-winning manager and also because modern managers don’t have enough authority to meaningfully impact the record. And yet, how could both of those things be true?

When the Phillies fired Rob Thomson just a few days later, the reaction seemed to be that he similarly didn’t deserve such a fate – in this case because the team had made the playoffs in every season since he’d taken over the helm amid another mid-season firing in 2022 – but also that, indeed, part of a manager’s job is to lose their job.

When a team with high expectations underperforms at a point in the season when there is little opportunity to shake up the roster, the manager gets fired. But is it a ritual sacrifice necessary to appease the angry fanbase or because a new voice can meaningfully tap into latent talent?

In both situations, there are nuances that contextualize the apparent paradox of the response (a power struggle in Boston, a concern of complacency in Philadelphia). But the question at the heart of the paradox extends beyond any one hiring or firing: How much does the modern MLB manager matter?

From the epicenter to the ultimate glue guy

Decades of increased emphasis on statistics and ballooning front offices has brought baseball to a point where savvy commentators know better than to ascribe total strategic responsibility to the manager. It’s the nerds in khakis and quarter-zips, not the guy dressed unnecessarily in full uniform, calling the shots on lineups and bullpen matchups. Or at least, providing the data that will shape those decisions. That’s the stereotype, anyway.

So pervasive is the assumption that everything is analytics now that you could start to wonder whether managers matter at all. Attempts to quantify the impact by focusing on in-season managerial changes seem to indicate that the effect is minimal to negligible.

The methodology is sound, but the conclusion seems at odds with logic. Anyone who has had a job can attest to the fact that their boss – even if they’re middle management working within a larger structure – has an impact on the productivity or the mood (which, let’s be honest, can affect productivity).

Several of the people who spoke to CNN Sports conceded that managers have less organizational sway these days, in part simply because every organization is so much bigger than it used to be.

“When I started, I feel as if the manager was kind of the epicenter of the brand of the team,” said the first former GM.

Teams had their own distinct strategies or styles of play, “and that typically emanated from the manager, who was the front-facing person, and who, by and large, had jurisdiction over who was going to be able to play for him and who was not, based upon their ability to adapt to that style of play.”

Now, players have their own specific approaches optimized from numerous angles – an expanded roster of on-staff coaches, analytics input from the team’s front office or the player’s own agency, and often personal coaches from independent training facilities. The goal is to wring as much production out of each athlete rather than implement a cohesive strategy that must be conformed to.

And the manager’s role, then, is less about setting that strategy, and more about making sure all these elite individuals can coexist and stay focused on the task at hand amid an ever-increasing onslaught of information.

“Culture is an elusive word in sport, but I believe it starts, and stops, with the tone a manager sets. They shape the daily habits and standards of the team,” said one current GM. “Every club has tacticians who understand the odds and edges, but it’s the (emotional intelligence) and the ability to elevate those around them that drives consistent winning.”

Humility and aura

But a great manager doesn’t undermine the front office or even just counterbalance their focus on analytics. He embraces it as well, and helps his players to do the same.

Another former GM of multiple teams now working in a different front office said that what separates capable managers from elite managers is “probability-based thinking and the ability to actually deliver it to a player in a way that lands.”

“There are managers who can speak analytics fluently in a front office meeting and then walk into the clubhouse with no real ability to translate it – or who actually don’t believe in it. Players know the difference between a manager who genuinely understands why the data is pointing somewhere and one who’s simply repeating what he was told to say,” he said.

“Elite managers can sit with a hitter or pitcher, explain what the information is showing, connect it to something real in that player’s experience, and make him feel like the idea came from a genuine conversation. That skill is rare and it requires intellectual honesty and humility.”

That trait – humility – came up across multiple conversations. One of the former GMs told of hiring a then-first time manager who admitted he would need to be taught the finer points of actual in-game managing. They hired him anyway, because of his humility and because he possessed the other traits they believed defined a winning manager.

“You want a certain amount of charisma, a certain amount of presence, the ability to communicate the organization’s message to the players, to other coaches, to the media, to the fans,” the former GM said. “Because what we are doing in the clubhouse and in the front office is not always going to be the most popular thing.”

And because even the best managers have to shepherd their clubhouses through an incredible amount of losing. Baseball teams play nearly every day for half a year. Championship-caliber clubs lose 60 games a season, if not more. Star players will slump, hard-fought contests will go the other way, criticism will come for everyone involved.

“Decision fatigue is real. Emotional stamina is real,” said a current major league coach. “Clarity and communication is often noted but not fully understood by those who do not have to execute on it – maintaining engagement, preventing small fractures from becoming big ones, protecting your people from bad situations, affecting and making necessary changes are all requisites of the job, but difficult to track and evaluate objectively above a replacement level.”

Or, as a different major league coach put it: “When you work 162 games, personalities matter.”

Most of the people who spoke with CNN Sports mentioned that different teams – depending on the market or the immediate goals or the existing personnel in place – might need different strengths in a manager. And perhaps, if some of those circumstances change, even a good manager may no longer be the best fit. In that case, perhaps a change is necessary.

Which is not to say that they’re never jettisoned as a scapegoat. In some ways, even that unceremonious dismissal is an acknowledgement that managers do matter. Otherwise, teams wouldn’t fire them when they’re still making millions of dollars. And GMs wouldn’t want to admit they failed by picking someone in the first place if it’s a manager they hired. And because, as good as the analytical models have gotten, they can’t account for everything anyway.

“If a team’s projected talent level is 76 wins and it consistently performs like an 81-win team, something in the environment is adding value,” one of the major league coaches said. “Conversely, if a projected 86-win roster repeatedly underperforms like an 82-win team, something is leaking value.”

The misconception that managers don’t matter seems to come from a mistrust of anything mercurial. But just because there isn’t a formula for their value doesn’t mean people close to the game don’t see it and assess it – confidently, if incorrectly at times.

Not everything that matters can be quantified. That’s why they still play the games, and why teams still hire – and fire – managers.

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