“He has a great deal of humility, so he’s very uncomfortable with all of the attention he’s getting,” said Chris Antonetti, the Indians’ president of baseball operations. “But his preparation, his intelligence, his thoughtfulness, his baseball I.Q. is off the charts. He wouldn’t want to acknowledge that, but nothing surprises him because he’s prepared for all those moments.”

Joe Torre, who played with Tito Francona and recommended Terry to the Phillies, has congratulated Francona this postseason on a job well done. Torre, now the league’s chief baseball officer, said the trust Francona has built with his players shows itself on the field. “Everybody bought in, that’s the key,” Torre said of the Indians. “You can do a lot of things, but if your players take it the wrong way, it’s going to be a little tougher to do. I credit the players, too, because they trust in their manager that even though it may have been a little unorthodox, he’s trying to win. You can only win as a team, anyway.”

Torre, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame two years ago, said Francona would get there, too.

“Yes,” he said, “and if he wins this series, I don’t think there’s any question, if for no other reason than he took two teams that hadn’t won in 100 years or whatever it was and got them to the promised land. That’s pretty impressive.”

Francona has a 1,381-1,209 record in the regular season. Only two managers with multiple championships and as many wins as Francona are not in the Hall of Fame: Bruce Bochy, who is still managing the San Francisco Giants, and Ralph Houk.

Houk’s case is hurt by timing; he inherited a juggernaut Yankees team from Casey Stengel in 1961 and won World Series in his first two seasons, then another pennant in his third. But in his last 18 seasons, with the Yankees, Detroit and Boston, Houk never reached the postseason.

The best historical parallel to Francona, for now, is probably Whitey Herzog, who reached the Hall of Fame in 2010. Francona has more victories and a better winning percentage than Herzog, who is best known for guiding the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1980s.