Is ex-Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland a shoo-in for Baseball Hall of Fame?
The last time Jim Leyland received a big honor, it was “Jim Leyland Day” in Detroit, decreed by then-Mayor Dave Bing back on Nov. 12, 2013, a few weeks after the longtime Detroit Tigers manager had retired for the final time.
Leyland departed with kind words for the city and the franchise he led to a 700-597 record and two American League pennants over eight seasons (2006-13): "I'm very grateful and appreciative," Leyland said. "I did my job here. I was paid. Nobody owes me anything.
"Don't get me wrong. It's touching. It's nice. But I'm not looking for any kind of accolades."
But as of Thursday, Leyland is up for another accolade, and it’s baseball’s highest: the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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The Hall announced its eight-person ballot under consideration by the contemporary era committee for managers, executives and umpires. The group’s decision, with inductees needing 12 of 16 votes, will be announced Dec. 3 at the winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee.
In addition to umpires Joe West and Ed Montague, former National League president Bill White and former general manager Hank Peters, the committee will ponder four managers for Cooperstown: Leyland and contemporaries Cito Gaston, Davey Johnson and Lou Piniella.
There aren’t any limits to who’ll get the Hall call, but it seems unlikely that all four managers will make it. So let’s break down which manager has the edge in four key categories:
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Wins
Thanks to sheer longevity, Leyland fares pretty well in this category. His 1,769 regular-season wins are second in the group, slightly behind Piniella’s 1,835 victories, but well ahead of Johnson’s 1,372 and Gaston’s 894.
Then again, Leyland was a big-league skipper for a long time, getting his start at age 41 with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986 and going until he was 68 in 2013 with the Tigers. In all, he managed 22 seasons over 28 years, with an average win total of 80.4 and a career winning percentage of .506 (most definitely aided by his Tigers run, which featured just one losing season).
Piniella, meanwhile, managed 23 seasons, going from age 42 in 1986 (with the New York Yankees) until age 66 in 2010 with the Chicago Cubs. A couple of those seasons were partial campaigns — he was a midseason replacement for the Yankees in 1988 and fired by the Cubs 125 games into the 2010 season — but it averages out to 79.8 games, with a career winning percentage of .517.
Johnson also started at 41 with the 1984 New York Mets and lasted until 70 with the Washington Nationals in 2013 — a span of 17 seasons, thanks to a 10-season gap between his stints with the L.A. Dodgers (1999-2000) and the Nats. A few partial seasons (one firing, two midseason hirings) brings his average win count down to 80.7 despite a career winning percentage of .562.
Gaston had the shortest career of the quartet, at just 12 seasons, all with the Toronto Blue Jays (in two stints). That included two midseason hirings, in 1989 (at 45) and in 2008 (age 64), so he finishes with an average yearly win total of just 74.5 and a career win percentage of .516.
The edge: Johnson takes it (on his overall win percentage), but only barely over Leyland — a surprise considering how bad some of Leyland’s Pirates, Marlins and Rockies teams were.
Playoff success
Considering the years Leyland toiled in the Steel City in the first half of his career, perhaps it’s fairer to compare the quartet on seasons they had the horses — their postseason records.
Leyland is the clear leader in postseason wins; his 44 are nearly two dozen more than Johnson’s 25, Piniella’s 23 and Gaston’s 18. And it’s not just only because Leyland’s late Tigers run — accounting for four of his eight postseason campaigns — gave him 84 career playoff games, well ahead of the 51 for Johnson, 50 for Piniella and 34 for Gaston. Leyland’s postseason winning percentage is .524, No. 2 in the group, with Gaston ranking No. 1 at .529, Johnson at .490 and Piniella at .460.
Of course, in the postseason, there’s just one win that matters: the World Series. All four skippers have Series titles: Johnson’s came in 1986 with the Mets, Piniella’s came in 1990 with the Cincinnati Reds, Gaston won two with the Jays (1992-93) and Leyland’s came in 1997 with the Florida Marlins. Leyland and Gaston are the only managers with multiple Series appearances, and Leyland is the only one to do it with multiple franchises. (And if Barry Bonds had made a better throw in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, Leyland would have taken THREE franchises to the Fall Classic.)
The edge: Gaston’s two rings triumph over Leyland’s three league titles, though, again, it’s a close fight, as the Jays manager won his two Series with basically the same squad in 1992-93.
Awards
Another measurement of managerial greatness? The year-end Manager of the Year awards. There’s no set criteria, but the winners tend to be the skippers who did the best compared to their preseason expectations.
Leyland fares well here, with three MOY wins — 1990 and ’92 with the Pirates and 2006 with the Tigers — and nine other appearances on the media ballot. Those wins are tied with Piniella for tops (1995 and 2001 with the Seattle Mariners and 2008 with the Cubs), though he has even more seasons receiving votes — 11 times in addition to his wins.
Johnson won two MOY awards, featuring one in each league — 1997 with the Baltimore Orioles and 2012 with the Nationals — but only appeared on eight other ballots. Gaston is the least decorated skipper of the four, thanks to his short career and high expectations during the Jays’ big-spending peak; he received MOY votes seven times, tipping out at second in the 1989 AL vote when he led the Jays to a 77-49 record after a mid-May hiring.
The edge: Piniella’s 14 times receiving MOY votes gives him a win here, though — just as he did three times in MOY voting — Leyland finishes as the runner-up.
Intangibles
If we were just considering tobacco intake, Leyland would take this category quicker than pulling Max Scherzer from a postseason start. Unfortunately, baseball-reference.com doesn’t track Marlboros smoked (yet). Similarly, Leyland’s raspy voice, gray hair, wizened visage and no-nonsense attitude frames him as the prototypical manager for a generation of baseball before analytics took over.
Piniella gets high marks here, too, for his numerous mid-game feuds with umpires (and, occasionally, players) and multiple ejections. Though Leyland scores highly here, too; his 73 ejections topped Piniella’s 64 — though each was tossed more than Johnson (36) and Gaston (27) combined.
It shouldn’t be a consideration, but it’s worth noting that Johnson was the most successful player, making three All-Star squads and winning three Gold Gloves; he finished third in the 1966 AL Rookie of the Year voting to start a 13-season big-league career. Piniella played 18 seasons, with a 1969 AL ROY award and a 1972 All-Star nod (both with the Kansas City Royals). Gaston played 11 seasons, making the NL All-Star squad in 1970 as a San Diego Padre. Leyland is the only one of the four not to reach the majors as a player; he topped out at Double-A Montgomery in the Tigers’ system in 1970, posting a career .222 batting average in the minors.
Leyland also has something none of the other three have: a World Baseball Classic title, as he skippered the 2017 U.S. squad to gold, the only manager with World Series and WBC wins. (Johnson, meanwhile, skippered the U.S. to a third-place finish in the 2009 WBC.)
The edge: Finally, Leyland takes a category, topping Piniella as he did in 28 of the 46 times they faced off as managers.
So who's in?
Just as it was in the 1990 National League campaign, this appears to be a two-horse race, between Leyland and Piniella. Piniella (and his Reds) won that one, 4-2, in the NLCS, but this feels like Leyland’s year. Each won one category in our breakdown, but Leyland finished second in the three he didn’t win. Then again, Leyland and Piniella rank 18th and 17th in career MLB wins, respectively; of the 13 retired managers ahead of them, 12 are already in the Hall. (Only Gene Mauch, in 15th with 1,902 wins — and fifth in losses, with 2,037 — is still left out.) It’s pretty easy to make the argument that both are worthy of Cooperstown and that both will get the call in December.
As for what hat Leyland’s plaque will bear — Pirates or Tigers, or maybe Perrysburg, for his Ohio hometown — well, that’s an accolade to be debated another time.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?) @theford.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Detroit Tigers' Jim Leyland is a shoo-in for Baseball Hall of Fame
