How have other first-time managers performed during their first seasons?

The Milwaukee Brewers have a new leader. Twenty-five games into the season, the team fired Ron Roenicke and replaced him with former player Craig Counsell.

Counsell has no previous managerial experience, making it virtually impossible to know how he’ll perform in his new role. 

Thankfully, a number of teams have hired first-time managers in recent seasons. While their performances won’t help us get an idea of Counsell’s style, it should help set the expectations for Counsell as he takes on this new endeavor. 

Fifteen current managers were hired with no previous managerial experience. That list includes seasoned veterans like Mike Scioscia and Bud Black, guys who are still in limbo like Robin Ventura and Ryne Sandberg and newly hired rookies like Kevin Cash and Chip Hale. 

The above chart shows how each of those managers performed in their first-full seasons at the helm. There are a few things to note here. We’ve included the numbers of the four first-year managers from 2015 in the chart. It’s not an accurate reflection of their performance as managers thus far, but Counsell will basically be entering the same situation. In Sandberg’s case, we used his 2014 numbers. Sandberg managed a handful of games at the end of 2013, but we went with the larger sample. 

At first glance, it appears first-year managers perform fairly well. The 15 managers above compiled a .501 winning percentage during their first seasons at the helm.

Those numbers are deceiving, though. Much of a skipper’s success depends on the talent they inherit, and that’s evident here. Matheny, Williams and Ausmus are three of the standouts looking at the above chart, but their situations were much different than most of these men. All three were taking over strong teams from retiring managers. Ausmus took over for Jim Leyland, Williams for Davey Johnson and Matheny from Tony LaRussa. They stepped into situations where the club was expected to win immediately. 

The same could be said of Mattingly and Black. Both men took over fairly talented teams. Mattingly’s Los Angeles Dodgers finished just under .500 during the prior season while Black’s San Diego Padres won 88 games before he took over. 

The performances of those managers bring the overall winning percentage up by a fair amount. Most teams hire new managers when their clubs are coming off poor seasons, so we’re probably more likely to see guys struggle early, like Weiss or Redmond, simply based on the talent they are dealing with.

Counsell falls somewhere in the middle. The Brewers won 82 games last season, so there’s clearly some talent, but the team got off to a terrible start. Baseball Prospectus had them pegged to go 80-82 prior to the start of the year, so the thought was that this team would finish around .500.

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That may no longer be the case given the club’s awful start, but there’s still some hope that Counsell can post a record near .500. The team has 137 games left to play, so if Counsell can guide them to a .500 record in that period, they would finish with roughly 76-77 wins.

That seems possible when you consider all the issues Milwaukee has dealt with early in the year. Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Gomez have been injured, and were the team’s best offensive players last season. On top of that, neither Ryan Braun or Aramis Ramirez have started hitting yet. While Kyle Lohse isn’t an ace, his 7.28 ERA is sure to drop.

This should come as no surprise, but a manager’s success is based on the talent they inherit. Counsell will helm an underachieving team projected to win about half their games prior to the season. Getting back to that level won’t put the Brewers in the playoffs, but it might offer some hope for Counsell’s future.

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik