Joe Maddon is in the zen phase of his breakup with the Los Angeles Angels.
Maddon, fired amid a 12-game losing streak and 27-29 record during his third season with the club this past June, spoke to the Tampa Bay Times about how it would require an “absolutely correct” situation to lure him back to baseball — and he stressed his indifference with the Angels.
“It’s like, once that happened, I dissolved my affiliation with them,” Maddon said. “There’s no emotion anymore. There’s no anything. It’s like to me they don’t even exist, organizationally.
Joe Maddon bemoaned MLB front offices for over-emphasizing analytics. Getty Images“I still text with a lot of the players, I text with a lot of the staff. One of them called me (Friday). So we’re staying in touch.”
The Angels have a worse winning percentage since moving from Maddon — they are 25-40 since that point — but there’s no schadenfreude on his part.
“It doesn’t make me feel better, it doesn’t make me feel worse,” Maddon said. “Organizationally, I’m kind of numb to the whole thing. Because when you wish them badly, I’m wishing really good friends badly — and I can’t do that.”
Nonetheless, he was not high on the front office.
“The infrastructure needs to be improved. There’s a lot of things that need to be improved there,” Maddon said. “These guys can’t do it alone, obviously. It’s the non-sexy stuff that has to get better. It’s not just bright, shiny objects — they have that.
“They need to do the infrastructure better in order to get to where we had been in the past. That was my goal, to get the Angels back to where we had been in the past. That was it. Nothing but pure intentions. I was an Angel. They had every ounce of me. And now that’s done.”
Maddon bemoaned how general managers have usurped power from managers with an apparent over-emphasis on analytics, and said that for him to return he’d have to be assured some measure of autonomy.
Joe Maddon was fired in June as the Angels had a 25-27 record. MLB Photos via Getty Images“I would only go into that marriage really feeling good about that I’m philosophically aligned with whomever I’m going to work with,” he said. “Meaning, it has to be a balance, it just can’t be lopsided analytically. Baseball operation has to be one that understands both sides and understands it well.”
He dared a GM to just cut out the middleman — and do the managing himself.
“It’s at the point where some GM should really just put a uniform on and go down to the dugout, or their main analytical membrane, he should go down to the dugout,” he said.
Joe Maddon hoists World Series trophy after the Cubs won in 2016. Getty Images“That’s something that should be done. Because they try to work this middle man kind of a thing. And what happens is when the performance isn’t what they think it should be, it’s never about the acquisitional process. It’s always about the inability of coaches and managers to get the best out of a player. And that’s where this tremendous disconnect is formed.”
The 68-year-old Maddon managed for nine seasons with the Rays — winning the AL pennant in 2008 — and was the skipper for the Cubs for five seasons, including their first World Series championship in over 100 years in 2016.
