OC Register: Hoornstra: In Joe Maddon, Angels pick the best manager for the moment; They’ll need more

[AngelsWin.com]

The Angels’ new manager was not among the 679 players chosen in the 1975 amateur draft. A catcher by trade and the son of a plumber, Joe Maddon retired after batting .250 for the Single-A Santa Clara Padres in 1979. He toiled for another 15 seasons in the Angels’ organization as a minor league manager, coach, or scout, before ever wearing a major league uniform. When the Angels needed a manager in 1999, Maddon had already done the job twice on an interim basis, winning 27 games and losing 24. Yet he was not one of the three finalists for a job that ultimately went to Mike Scioscia.

Now, 20 years later, Maddon has the job he’s been preparing for most of his professional life.

The news of Maddon’s hiring had been anticipated from the moment Brad Ausmus was fired Sept. 30. The Angels’ most predictable off-season transaction was also their first. It is appropriately billed as a “homecoming,” yet the job of a major league manager is not the same now as it was in 2005, Maddon’s final season as Scioscia’s bench coach. Neither is this organization.

Maddon is considered a baseball Progressive, an early adopter of managerial practices that have become standard since he helped resurrect the Tampa Bay Rays from oblivion. Freeing players from draconic rules of decorum? Maddon was doing that more than a decade ago. Relying on binders full of data to form the basis of in-game decisions? Maddon helped make that popular, too. Thick, black-rimmed glasses? Maddon didn’t start that exactly, but he wore them as Scioscia’s right-hand man. And that’s central, not tangential, to today’s announcement: to connect fans with a brand of baseball familiar from an era that brought Anaheim its only championship.

To bring Anaheim its next championship, the Angels need more than Joe Maddon. Baseball isn’t basketball. Winning is not predicated on the strength of a team’s stars. It is a “weak link sport,” where coaxing contributions from the five worst players on the roster is essential. To his credit, Maddon seemed to grasp this before many of his contemporaries.

Maddon wasn’t the only early adopter former Rays GM Andrew Friedman hired in Tampa Bay. In a Cubs organization led by Theo Epstein, Maddon was surrounded by other baseball progressives. The Angels are of a different DNA, a franchise too often enchanted by past success. Maddon’s worldview represents a step in the right direction. But he will need more progressive thinkers around him to make the Angels a relevant franchise on the field in 2020.

As an organization, the Angels are still playing catch-up within their own division. The Astros and A’s play in smaller markets, but they have been smarter than most teams about taking a bottom-up approach to roster building and player development – an approach that is reflected in the standings.

If nothing else, Maddon will be blessed with stars for the duration of his three-year contract. Mike Trout is signed through 2030. Shohei Ohtani is under team control through 2023. Whatever star power Albert Pujols commands in 2020 and 2021, the Angels have that, too.

What they lack is depth, a baseball necessity that Maddon regularly enjoyed in Chicago and St. Petersburg. The Angels have a star prospect (Jo Adell) and the financial wherewithal to sign a big-name free agent or two. To compete with the Houstons and Oaklands of the world, the Angels will need more than that.

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They are one of five teams – the Reds, Padres, Marlins and White Sox are the others – who have yet to finish a season at .500 or better since 2015. The recent headlines surrounding the Angels paint an even bleaker picture off the field.

The Drug Enforcement Agency is presently investigating the death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs. An Angels public relations employee, Eric Kay, reportedly told the DEA that he supplied Skaggs with oxycodone pills a few days before the Angels left for their trip to Texas on June 30. Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room the next day. An autopsy revealed Skaggs had oxycodone, fentanyl and alcohol in his system at the time. Other current players might have bought drugs from Kay, and it’s possible the team could be held legally liable for Skaggs’ death.

Those are turbulent waters for any manager to enter. Many might drown. Maddon’s job, in large part, will be to project that he is keen to every moment. To do that, he’ll need more than a solid analytical base, or a progressive approach to managing. He will need to draw on the kind of the lessons a man learns only through experience.

To that end, the Angels could not have picked a better manager for the moment. Yet for everything they are up against, on and off the field, they will need much more.

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[Chuck]

[T.G.]