The field of sabermetrics has made a lot of strides in assessing performance and value, but one area where it remains difficult to peg who's good and who isn't is evaluating baseball managers. Every single one of them was hired for a reason, almost all of them will eventually be fired for other reasons. Some of them will go to the Hall of Fame, and others you'll forget faster than you can say, "John Felske." But what they do, who they play, what they ask players to do, how well they prepare them, matters. Everybody wants to improve and win, because flags fly forever.

This isn't easy, though. There's a big part of the job we can't describe well, if at all: Leadership or people skills, or whether or not a guy runs an effective management team with his coaches. Most of those things, all critically important to how good a manager might be, handling his players and working with his front office, are usually going to be opaque to reporters and analysts.