At some point, the producers of baseball broadcasts for television decided that the managers were the most important people in the ballpark. During this World Series, between what seems to be nearly every important pitch, the camera cuts to Terry Francona, of the Cleveland Indians, or Joe Maddon, of the Chicago Cubs, standing on the top steps of their respective dugouts, surveying the field, looking hopeful, or worried, or a bit bored—much like the rest of us. Unlike their peers in other sports, during games, baseball managers don’t seem very busy. Sometimes they signal to a coach on the field; occasionally a microphone catches a stray shout of encouragement to one of their players. When things get really exciting, they pick up a phone to call the bullpen or walk out onto the field to make a pitching change. Still, the TV tells us that it’s mostly in this stillness of a middle-aged man bearing witness that much of the drama resides. Watching baseball is, to some degree, about watching a manager watch the game.

Despite their central roles in the story, and despite the move to quantify nearly everything about baseball, there is no settled statistic that measures the added value provided by a manager—or even a general consensus about what makes for a good manager in the first place. Anyone who gets his team to the World Series is likely to get some good press, but this year’s duo have been discussed as having a chance, one day, to join the twenty-three managers currently enshrined in the Hall of Fame. And one of the chief pleasures of this year’s World Series has been following along as two of the best make seemingly all the right moves, even if many of those moves are hard to see.

On the face of it, Francona and Maddon seem very different. Francona, fifty-seven, spent ten seasons in the majors as a light-hitting utility player, and has the antsy mannerisms—nervously chewing on a constantly replenished mouthful of sunflower seeds—of a former ballplayer. Across the diamond, Maddon, sixty-two, who quickly fizzled out as a low-minors catcher before taking up coaching, looks more calm and professorial, with his signature hipsterish black glasses. During Game 5, on a cold night at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, he was decked out in what Roger Angell affectionately called a “ridiculous pompommed and pulled-down knitted wool winter hat,” like a bleacher bum who had sneaked into the dugout. But both managers take similar approaches to their jobs, combining emotional sensitivity with a rigorous and innovative approach to baseball strategy—an ideal combination of the heart and the head. During the first six games of the Series—which is now tied at three games apiece, with the deciding Game 7 coming tonight, in Cleveland—their forward-thinking, easygoing managerial competence has been thrilling to watch.

Both men are known as players-first managers. When Francona hugs his guys, which he does often, he puts a paternal hand on the backs of their necks. These embraces look warm and comforting, and exactly like the kind of thing that would engender trust or cheer someone up. Whether or not they help pitchers throw strikes or batters hit home runs remains unproved, but you can’t argue with the results. In 2004, Francona was hired by the Boston Red Sox, beating out Maddon for the job, and managed the team to the franchise’s first World Series win in eighty-six years; three years later, he tacked on a second championship. Last week, the Cubs’ starting pitcher Jon Lester—who underwent cancer treatment in 2006, when he played for Francona’s Red Sox—told reporters, “I wasn’t just a player to him. I was part of his family. And I think that’s why he’s very, very good at his job, and I think that’s why guys love playing for him.” When the Sox won, Francona’s laid-back attitude was widely credited with fostering chemistry. But, in 2011, when the team suffered a historic late-season swoon, that same attitude was criticized, and he was fired.

Maddon, meanwhile, is more avuncular than paternal, but his approach has produced similar results, first in Tampa Bay, where his backwater, low-payroll teams consistently exceeded expectations, and now with the big-spending Cubs. The Cubs entered the World Series as heavy favorites, but through the first four games several of the team’s young hitters appeared overmatched by Cleveland’s strong pitching. Some managers might have demanded more batting practice, but Maddon, as he has done during far less important points during the season, told his players to arrive for Game 5 just an hour and a half before the first pitch, forgoing some of their usual preparation. When the Cubs won, Maddon was credited with helping to diffuse the tension in his clubhouse. After the game, he told his players to wear Halloween costumes on the flight to Cleveland, and Maddon joined in on the fun.

This part of the manager’s job makes for good color stories, but it takes more than being a nice guy to lead a winning team. Maddon has always been considered an eccentric innovator, credited with incorporating advanced statistical metrics in constructing lineups and helping to reintroduce defensive shifts. And, this year, Francona is finally getting the credit he deserves as a strategist. During this World Series, these skills are showing up on the field, in key situations, in the way that both managers are using their pitching staffs creatively to win close games.

In Game 3, with the game scoreless, Francona pulled the starter Josh Tomlin, who had thrown just fifty-eight pitches in four and two-thirds innings, in order to bring in his ace reliever Andrew Miller to record four key outs. Then, in the top of the seventh, he sent the veteran Coco Crisp to pinch-hit for Miller, and Crisp singled in what turned out to be the only run of the game. Later, he used his reliever Bryan Shaw to get five outs and his nominal closer, Cody Allen, to get four. Two games later, it was Maddon’s turn: he brought his closer, Aroldis Chapman, into the seventh inning of a one-run game, and tasked him with getting the final eight outs, more than the twenty-eight-year-old had ever recorded. Chapman struck out the final batter with a hundred-and-one-mile-per-hour fastball. Game 6, on Monday, brought a respite from the tension, as the Cubs rushed out to a seven-run lead by the third inning.

This is just what stat heads have been asking managers to do for years: use their best relief pitchers in the most important spots of the game, whenever the outcome appears most in doubt, rather than relying on the standard system of sorting pitchers into rigid groups—long relievers, lefty or righty specialists, setup men, and closers—and pigeonholing the best of them as closers, reserved only for the ninth inning in what was long ago rather arbitrarily defined as a technical-save situation.

Francona has been using Andrew Miller in this more flexible way since the Indians traded for him in July. The move has received more attention as Miller has put up nearly flawless numbers in the postseason. “It’s not rocket science,” Francona said, back in August. “When you have the game on the line, in leverage situations, you want to use guys in the right spots.” It helps when one of your guys is a six-foot-seven left-hander who throws high-nineties fastballs and a slider that dive-bombs righties in the back foot. For Maddon, getting Chapman—who, like Miller, was traded in July—into games earlier and for longer is a more recent development. Chapman looks, thinks, and gets paid like a closer, and has thrived in precisely that role for years. But before Sunday’s game, knowing that the Cubs needed to pull out all the stops, Maddon told Chapman to be ready for something different. He brought Chapman in early again on Monday night, with two outs in the seventh inning, when the Indians were threatening the Cubs’ five-run lead. Tonight, he may need to do it again.