What a Baseball Manager Does

Video Transcript

"BEN GRAHAM: We're going to take a look now at the responsibilities of the manager. He is the boss of the bench. He runs the game. He determines who is going to play, what position, what order they're going to bat in, when to pinch hit, when to pinch run, when to hit and run, when to bunt. He makes all the decisions. Now, he has a team of advisers and we'll talk about their roles here in just a moment, but ultimately, he has to make the final decision about what goes on in the game of baseball. His primary responsibility, first thing he has to do is turn in a lineup card and that will be your batters from one to nine. In the American League that includes the DH and in the National League, it doesn't. He has to determine what order they're going to bat in and he has turn that in to the umpire before the game starts. Also, he'll keep track of who he has on his bench, who he has in his bullpen, who his starting pitcher is going to be. And he'll watch the game and determine when the starting pitcher has had enough, when he needs to come out, which relief pitcher he needs to bring in. He also determines the strategy of the game. Sometimes, he may have pitcher in who is having a great game, but the numbers, the statistics, tell you that you need to bring in a pinch hitter or a pinch--a relief pitcher to face a particular batter depending on the situation that you're in. So the manager has to make all of those types of decisions. He also gets to tell the batters when to swing away, when to bunt, when to hit and run, when to steal a base, when to hold up. He gets to make all the decisions and everybody on the bench on the team has to defer to his will. So he's got a lot of responsibility, a lot of prep work goes in to what he does, especially filling out our lineup card here and determining who's on the field and who's not. Those are the basic responsibilities of the manager."