Change is one thing, progress is another. "Change" is scientific, "progress" is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
—Bertrand "Don't Call Me Bill" Russell

On May 31, 2005, Buddy Bell was named to replace Tony Pena as the manager of the Royals. Pena had resigned three weeks earlier and was being spelled by bench coach Bob Schaefer on an interim basis. Bell quickly reeled off four victories in his first four games, their first four-game winning streak in two seasons, and has done nothing basically with the team in the last two years.

Less than one month later, on June 20, 2005, the Reds made a change replacing manager Dave Miley with former backup catcher Jerry Narron. Narron was first named the interim manager, but after guiding the Reds to a .500 record, he was awarded with a new, shorter title—manager. He proceeded to have a record in Cincy that was similarly marginal to Bell's, but he made the mistake of front-loading his tenure with some competency and an air of hope whereas Bell's Royal team has been consistently awful.

On August 4, 2005, the O's realized that they had Lee Mazzilli—Lee Mazzilli?—as their manager, something akin to putting Bon Jovi in the Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame, and promptly fired him in favor of bench coach cum interim manager Sam Perlozzo. Despite going 23-32 with a .418 winning percentage over the rest of the season, the Orioles took the interim qualifier off Perlozzo's title because they weren't very bright after all. Repeat my comments about Bell's and Narron's most recent managerial tenures for Perlozzo and rinse.

On September 6, 2005, Lloyd McClendon was mercifully fired as the Pirates manager. Bench coach and former Phillie scrub Pete Mackanin took over the team on an interim basis compiling a decent 12-14 record but wisely did not repeat the managerial career of the aforementioned Bell, Narron, and Perlozzo though the Pirates' fortunes are not the better for it.

But what is of note about these four managerial changes two seasons ago? First, they represented the last midseason managerial changes in the majors for over a year. No managers changed hands during the season in 2006. There are just a handful of seasons in major-league history in which they happened, or didn't happen I guess, and just two in the last 65 years. They are in descending order 2006, 2000, 1942, 1931, 1926, 1920, 1903, 1901, 1893, and 1878.

Don't expect 2007 to appear on that list. All that changed rather quickly in the last two weeks.

That is the other thing that is of interest. Three of the characters in the narrative above are already involved in midseason managerial changes this season, and it's not too late for Bell to get into the action.

So far this year, three managers are already gone, two in the last couple of days. Jerry Narron has been, at least on an interim basis, replaced by Mackanin in Cincy. Mike Hargrove "up and quit", as the saying goes, in the middle of an eight-game win streak yet and was replaced by John McLaren, who once managed the Sex Pistols, if memory serves. June 18 the O's replaced Sam Perlozzo, who always seemed like an interim manager to me anyway, with Dave Trembley. I mean no slight against Mr. Trembly, but that name does not exactly inspire confidence in his managerial skills. Too bad Joe Girardi took one look at that mess of a team and quickly replied, "Thanks, but no thanks," to the O's request to take over the team.

If you are wondering what the "record" is for managerial changes in a season, the answer is 1890 when 18—count 'em, 18!—managers were let go during the season. In all fairness, there were three major leagues that season, as the players union formed a one-year "brotherhood" league, the Players National League or Players League for short. For two-league seasons, 1961 is tops with 16 midseason managerial maneuvers though all but six were the result of the Cubs' "College of Coaches", otherwise known as a manager by committee that was the brainchild of owner Philip K. Wrigley (El Tappe, Lou Klein, Vedie Himsl, and Harry Craft).

Here are the seasons with the most in-season managerial changes:

Here's hoping that Charlie Manuel can help 2007 make that list.

Anyway, all this change coming almost at once a season after the owners thought it appropriate not to make any managerial changes made me wonder. In each of their cases, it wouldn't have mattered much if they were fired this year or less. It seems that a large percentage of managers—and McClendon was the epitome of this—slough along with a sub-par club that never seems to get much better.

So why not just make changes whenever your team is struggling a la George Steinbrenner circa 1978? I guess it gets expensive after a while, you know, all the new stationary, and there's always that guy who has to painstakingly paint the manager's name on the little glass window of his office door while everyone keeps opening and closing the door causing him to mess up repeatedly.

Besides does it work? Do teams fair better? Let's take a look.

I ran the numbers for all managers that started the season but were replaced at some point as well as for the managers that replaced them. Here are the results:

Not that in this past decade you really had to do a horrible job (.434 winning percentage) to get fired, but your replacement or replacements have not faired much better (a 2-point increase in winning percentage).

Historically, changing a team's manager resulted in just a 7-point improvement. Over the course of a full 162-game schedule, that means translates into less than one win.

Of course, teams most often make midseason changes not to reach the playoffs that season but rather to right their course and potentially set themselves for contention the next season. So how's that going?

Here are the managerial changes from above but now I have added the team's record in the next season with the change from before the managerial change. (Note that the numbers do not match those above for the early years of the game since some of these teams never made it to "next year" back then):

So that is a 44-point improvement though these teams are still on average losing teams. For the three teams that switched managers midseason this year, that would translate into a .464 winning percentage for the O's (75-87), a .422 winning percentage for the Reds (68-94), and a .621 winning percentage for the M's (101-61) for next season. The first two are good bets—I'm not so sure about the 2008 Mariners.

Also, two of the newly appointed managers (McLaren and Trembley) are rookies—actually, McLaren managed the Mariners to a 4-0 record in 2001 when he substituted for then-manager Lou Piniella because of the death of his father-in-law. Mackanin is hardly a veteran himself with just 26 games as a major-league manager under his belt. Is it advisable to hire newbies or go with veteran managers when you dismiss the old guy?

First, let's broaden this to managerial changes in the offseason as well. Here are the records of all teams after they switch to a new manager whether midseason or at the start of the season:. For each the managerial turnover and overall team turnover rate are listed (Note: the records of new/expansion teams are included):

Now here are records for teams that retained their manager from the end of the previous season:

OK, maybe that's not a big surprise: winning teams don't fire their managers.

Let's look at midseason vs. end of season managerial changes. Which is the best way to go?

Overall, it's advisable apparently to wait for the end of the season if possible. Teams seem to be realizing that as midseason firings are have been going down since the Eighties.

So what about rookie managers? I took a look at managers in their first season and compared their records when they start the season to when they are a midseason replacement (Remember what happened to Drive?):

Again, it's best to stick a rookie in there when it is the start of the season.

Finally, it appears that Trembley et al have little to fear about losing their jobs during the season. The 2000s have witnessed just four teams that have made more than one managerial change, the last being the aforementioned 2005 Royals:

One Final Note: The third entry in my series on umpires is up at Baseball Prospectus. This one's on umpiring "homer"-ism—Doh!