NY Yankees: The five best Yankee managers of all-time

Who are the best New York Yankees best managers of all-time?

In addition to the usual obstacles managers face in guiding any MLB team to victory, those who manage the New York Yankees must also deal with temperamental superstars and the highly critical and often unforgiving sports media in New York City. The best Yankee skippers have been able to handle both the club’s erratic superstars and the frequent second-guessing of the media.

This is the second of two essays where I critically evaluate the performance of previous Yankee managers dating back to the establishment of the New York Highlanders in 1903.

In this piece, I focus on the five most outstanding Yankee skippers of all time. Since Aaron Boone is the current manager and doesn’t have a complete record to judge yet, he is excluded from the analysis.

As all baseball fans, and especially Yankees fans, are fully aware, managing a baseball club is an extremely challenging job. The manager is responsible for deciding who plays and who pitches, when someone gets up to bat, who plays where and the location of players on the field, what the starting rotation looks like, and who is the closer.

Like army generals on the battlefield, the strategies, tactics, and decisions of managers ultimately determine the success or failure of the team. Players are normally expected to perform well on the field.

Data analytics has now become a staple in the decision-making process of modern-day skippers. However, the human element has not been eliminated. Far from it.

Dealing with the psychology and social behavior of individual players is more challenging today than ever before for baseball managers, given the complexities of the sport, in particular, and the difficulties and temptations of life today, more generally.

Most previous evaluations only consider won-loss records during the regular season and the postseason. In determining who are the greatest Yankee managers of all time, I assess not only the regular season and postseason records of all 34 prior managers but also how well they handled their players game in and game out and year in and year out.

In other words, to what extent were players willing to fight, live, and die for their skippers on the battlefield? Exceptional leaders will be able to instill in their players a “warrior, us against the world” mentality consistently over time. They also should be able to successfully develop young talent with potential.

Based on the regular season and postseason records of past managers of the Bronx Bombers, along with my assessment of their leadership during their tenure, in my view, the following five managers were the best skippers the Yanks ever had.

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New York Yankee all-time greatest managers – No. 5: Billy Martin

The tempestuous relationship between Martin and George Steinbrenner has been well chronicled. Martin was fired and then rehired a remarkable five different times between 1975 and 1988. He was the skipper for a total of eight years. (He would have earned a sixth stint as Yankee skipper if he had not been in a fatal car accident on Christmas Day 1989.)

Martin’s win-loss record with the Yanks was 556-385 for an impressive .591 winning percentage. A huge favorite of Yankee fans up until his death, Martin won one World Series (in 1977 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-2) and two American League pennants (in 1976 and 1977) as manager of the Bombers. (He won four other World Series as a player.)

He was well known to be able to get the best out of his players by motivating them to win at all costs and to keep their cool on the field (even if he often couldn’t do this himself). His players adopted his drive and played hard for him.

His uniform number “1” was retired in August 1986 in a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. During the ceremony, he remarked: “I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I was the proudest.”

New York Yankee all-time greatest managers – No. 3: Joe Torre

Torre was one of the best catchers whoever played the game. A nine-time All-Star, Torre won the 1971 NL MVP Award after leading the major leagues in batting average, hits, and RBIs. He finished his career with a .297 batting average, 2,342 hits, 252 home runs, and 1,185 RBIs. During his career, he played for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, and New York Mets.

Initially referred to as “Clueless Joe” by the skeptical New York media, Torre showed that he was anything but clueless during the twelve years in which he managed the Yanks. Up until then, he had been fired by three different teams and never had been to a World Series as either a player or a manager. Yet, he led the Yanks to World Series victories on four of six occasions, including three in a row (1998-2000).

All 13 of his Yankee teams advanced to the playoffs, and his teams won 10 division crowns and six AL pennants. He finished with a 1,173-767 won-loss record for an impressive winning percentage of .605, thanks to Mariano Rivera and the other members of the “core four.”

He was selected AL manager of the year twice (1996 and 1998). Torre was unanimously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 2014 by the Expansion Era Committee. He is a Monument Park honoree.

In his time in the Bronx, Torre earned the respect, trust, admiration, and affection of Yankee fans and his players. Throughout the Bombers’ dynasty in the late 1990s, he dealt with the spotlight of the New York media with aplomb.

New York Yankee all-time greatest managers – No. 2: Casey Stengel

The colorful Stengel managed the Yanks for 12 seasons, between 1949 and 1960, and he compiled a terrific record as the Yankee skipper. He guided the Bombers to an incredible 1,149-696 won-loss record and a .623 winning percentage, among the highest for a Yankee manager.

During that time his teams won 10 pennants and seven World Series. He won five World Series in a row, the only manager to ever do so. The Yanks were a dominant team throughout his tenure as Yankee skipper.

In large part, his success was due to his innate ability to keep order on the club with so many different characters and personalities, such as Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle, and others.

He was well known and liked for his wit and sense of humor, as well as his craftiness on the baseball diamond. His baseball IQ was extraordinary, and he consistently invented and applied sophisticated new techniques and strategies to the game.

Stengel even created his own “language,” dubbed “Stengelese.” Appropos of this essay, he once said, “The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”

Stengel was from another era and, arguably, from another planet. In recognition of all his remarkable achievements, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966. The Yankees retired his number “37” in 1970.

Stengel was unique, and I very much doubt that we will ever see another manager quite like him again.

New York Yankee all-time greatest managers – No.1: Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy was a predecessor to Stengel who adeptly managed the Yankees from 1931 through 1945 and part of 1946. Like Stengel, McCarthy had seven World Series wins, with four in succession between 1936 and 1939. He also won eight pennants, two less than Stengel.

However, he won an amazing 1,460 games and lost only 867 games, for a record-setting .627 winning percentage, as the Yankee skipper. He also managed four more seasons than Stengel, which speaks volumes about his unbelievable success and staying power as a manager, and the consistently superior job he performed in that role.

In 1936 McCarthy’s bombers began a run in which they won seven of eight pennants. During that time his teams thrashed the AL second-place clubs by a double-digit margin and dominated the AL.

He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1957. A plaque in his honor was included in Monument Park by the Yanks in 1976.

McCarthy was regarded as an excellent teacher and was revered for his ability to develop talent. He was especially skilled at handling temperamental players such as Babe Ruth, who had wanted to become New York’s manager and who opposed the decision to hire an “outsider” to manage the club.

McCarthy utilized a low-key, gentleman’s approach to managing, never going to the mound to remove a pitcher or arguing with an umpire except when specific rules were at issue. Instead, he preferred to remain in his seat in the middle of the dugout bench.

For these and other reasons, the media referred to him as, “Master Joe.” Based on his spectacular accomplishments and his ability to consistently guide his players and teams to greatness, I place McCarthy ahead of Stengel as the best skipper the Bombers ever had in their history.

The Yanks have been extremely fortunate to have had many superb managers throughout their history, especially the likes of Martin, Huggins, Torre, Stengel, and McCarthy. While it is true that the organization has also been lucky to have many of the greatest players who have ever played the game on its teams, it was the managers who set the table and effectively guided the Yanks to dominance over time.