Joe Maddon has always had a way of boiling baseball down into something his players could carry with them. “9=8.”
“Try Not to Suck.” “Do Simple Better.”
“Embrace the Target.” “Respect 90.”
Now there’s a new one that fits the moment: “Respect 70.”
That’s the number Maddon wore during his managerial career, and it’s the one attached to his Hall of Fame candidacy as he lands on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot. The résumé is a strong one. Maddon won Manager of the Year three times - in 2008, 2011 and 2015 - and helped turn the Rays into a winner before later steering the Cubs to a World Series title that ended a 108-year drought.
He is hardly alone on the ballot, though. This year’s group, which covers managers, executives and umpires, also includes Sandy Alderson, Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy, Lou Piniella, Brian Sabean, Ted Turner and Bill White.
A 16-member panel made up of Hall of Fame players, Major League executives, media members and historians will vote, and a candidate needs 75% to get in. The results will be announced on Dec.
Maddon’s case stands out in that crowd because of what he did over parts of 19 seasons managing the Rays, Cubs and Angels, along with interim stints in 1996 and 1999. He finished with a 1,382-1,216 record, putting him among the 35 managers with at least 1,300 wins and one of only 16 in that group with a winning percentage of .532 or better. He also reached the postseason eight times, split evenly between Tampa Bay and Chicago, and won two pennants and one World Series.
The Rays job was the first big proof point. Tampa Bay had lost 95 games in 2005 before hiring Maddon away from the Angels, where he had spent 31 years in the organization as a Minor League player, coach, instructor and Major League coach. He had also served as bench coach under Mike Scioscia and was part of the Angels’ 2002 World Series team.
Then came 2008, when Maddon guided a young club - now known as the Rays after being the Devil Rays - to 97 wins, a division title and the American League pennant. Tampa Bay beat the White Sox and Red Sox in the postseason before falling to the Phillies in five games in the World Series.
“The Cubs winning it after 108 years is pretty cool,” Maddon said during an interview on Marquee Sports Network earlier this year. “But the Devil Rays, to the point where we got in 2008, if you had been there in ‘06 and ‘07 [when Tampa Bay lost a combined 197 games] and saw what that was like, that is even almost a more dramatic turnaround.”
Maddon won 754 games with Tampa Bay, a club record before Kevin Cash passed him. After the 2014 season, he opted out of his Rays contract and quickly landed with the Cubs on a five-year deal as Theo Epstein’s team was emerging from its rebuilding stretch.
Chicago had lost between 89 and 101 games every year from 2011 through 2014, but the roster Maddon inherited had a promising young core and a front office that had added important veterans. The 2015 Cubs made it all the way to the National League Championship Series, signaling that the rise was real.
A year later, the payoff arrived. The Cubs beat Cleveland in a classic World Series and ended the franchise’s long championship wait.
Chicago returned to the playoffs in 2017 and 2018, though it never fully matched the magic of that 2016 run. Maddon left with 471 wins in Chicago, fifth-most in team history, and a .581 winning percentage, the best since Frank Chance’s .664 mark from 1905 to 1912.
“When you do what we did,” Maddon said, “it’s a validation of all the time you spent on a Minor League bus, on an instructional league field when it’s 110 degrees, whether it’s patting somebody on the back or having to have a discussion that’s not as fun, and you learn how to do all these different things.
“And then you got to the Major League level, a team that hasn’t won in over 100 years, and you bring those sensibilities and those methods here, and it turns into what it turned into … it’s very humbling, man. It’s very humbling. And again, it’s a validation of methods, and that’s also validation of all my mentors, and I’ve had some of the best that ever existed.”
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