SAN DIEGO – Last year at this time, Terry Francona didn’t have a care in the world. He was one year into his retirement after 23 years of managing in Major League Baseball and loving it.
“It was wonderful,” the man, who’s nicknamed Tito after his ballplaying father of the same name, said this week during several interviews at Petco Park. “I had no intention of coming back. I was thinking about what I wanted to do, because I was doing nothing. But I was not thinking about managing.”
Then, the Cincinnati Reds came calling, and that all changed.
“They flew out to talk to me in my rocking chair,” Francona, 66, said. “It just seemed right.”
A year ago, the Reds lost 85 games, and incumbent manager David Bell was fired before the season was over. With less than three weeks to go in this regular season, the team’s current 74-72 record is a significant improvement. They’d have to go 3-13 in their final 16 games to match last season’s record. It could happen but probably not.
Same goes for making the playoffs—the team is two games behind the New York Mets, who hold the National League’s last wild-card spot, tied with the San Francisco Giants. It could happen but maybe not.
It wouldn’t surprise San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt, though, if they do it with Tito managing the team.
“Winners win,” Shildt said Wednesday night after the Reds came from behind for a 2-1 victory to take the last two of the three games in the series here.
This season, Francona has done what he does best: take a low-payroll team and exceed expectations. The Reds have a luxury-tax payroll of $140.8 million, 22nd in the league and fourth in their own NL Central. In 11 seasons managing Cleveland, he dwelled in baseball’s bargain basement and still made the postseason six times, a stark departure from the Boston Red Sox, which spared no expense when building the Francona teams that won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. His Indians lost to the Chicago Cubs in a thrilling seven-game 2016 Fall Classic.
Francona said he doesn’t mind dealing with the low payroll as long as he has some autonomy over decisions on the field.
“I’m at an age where doing it in a place I prefer is probably more meaningful than having a high payroll,” he said. “I mean, I’ve been treated great. Nobody ever tells me what lineup to make out or things like that. I don’t mind input, but I’m probably too old for that.”
The Reds are generally a faceless team save for Elly De La Cruz, one of MLB’s best young players, but finishing his third season earning a scant $770,000, just $10,000 above the league minimum. He has 19 home runs and 34 stolen bases, but hasn’t hit a homer since July 31. He had the game-tying eighth inning single Wednesday night.
The Reds don’t have a player on the team with more homers than De La Cruz, which makes what they’re doing more remarkable. But they claim to be having a having a great time playing for Francona.
Earlier in the season, the team celebrated Francona’s 2,000th win as a manager. At 2,024 he’s 12th on the all-time list. There are only 13 managers above 2,000, and Francona is second among active managers behind Bruce Bochy (2,248), who has the Texas Rangers in the playoff hunt.
“It’s been special playing for Tito,” Reds starter Hunter Greene said in an interview. “His reputation speaks for itself. He’s deeply entrenched in the baseball world and its history. To be as young as I am and to have his leadership is pretty special to me.”
Baseball needs the old, crusty managers like Francona, Bochy and Ron Washington. They offer expertise and experience, having made decades of in-game decisions under myriad circumstances. Though they’ve adapted to changes like the three-batter minimum rule for a relief pitcher—“I was told the reason that put that in was because of me,” Francona said—they tend to emphasis basics like defense and proper base-running.
To that point, Francona had first base coach Colin Cowgill going over some drills on the right way to run bases, relayed outfielder Austin Hays.
And then there’s Francona’s self-deprecating sense of humor. Cowgill finished up by presenting a video saying, “Tito wanted me to put this on here showing what not to do.”
The video showed Tito as a player going from first to third stumbling around the bases. “He wound up eating it about 15 feet before getting to the [third base] bag,” Hays said. “We all got a good laugh out of it.” Francona had a promising career as an outfielder derailed because of injuries to both knees, which have since been replaced. In 1984 for the old Montreal Expos, he batted .346 with a 136 OPS+. He later joked that he probably couldn’t have played for the Red Sox team he managed because of his low .300 career on-base percentage, a staple of modern day analytics.
Francona said that’s the key to getting the most out of a young team like the Reds. Keep it light, but make your point.
“It’s my responsibility to take the parameters and see how good we can get,” he said. “That’s why I never bitch about what our payroll is. That’s not my responsibility. It’s my responsibility to see how much I can get from our players. Sometimes we do better than others.”
Right now, the Reds are doing just fine.
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