Why Terry Francona's teams get better in second half. Can Reds follow trend?

USA Today

2 days ago

A few nights ago, during a pitching change in a game the Cincinnati Reds were losing, with manager Terry Francona trying to coax a much-needed comeback win, star shortstop Elly De La Cruz chose to get playful and snatch the glasses off Francona's face.
De La Cruz put them on his own face, then mocked a grimace, laughed and took them off.
The bemused look on Francona's face suggested it wasn't the tone he expected in the moment. Maybe not the time for goofing off?
Francona took the glasses back and allowed a laugh with De La Cruz at the shortstop's reaction, then put them back on and got back to work.
'I know we're losing out there, but they're playing their ass off,' Francona said. 'I don't ever want to just be their buddies when we're winning. That doesn't work.
'(Carlos) Santana used to always do that with me on the mound (in Cleveland),' Francona added. 'He probably (expletive) told Elly. He'd always pull my socks down. Like, 'Dammit, Carlos.' '
One of Francona's great strengths as a manager through a career that has led to more than 2,000 wins and has him headed to the Hall of Fame has been an uncommon level of personal trust, connection and (in turn) accountability he builds with players.
Moments like these can trust any manager trying to do his job, win games, run a tight ship, hold players accountable. Baseball managers have snapped on a player for less.
That Francona is able to walk the fine line that lets Elly be Elly in that moment, whatever his own sensibilities might suggest is appropriate, might speak to the success he has had with players of all ages, stature and personalities in his career.
This wasn't Trevor Bauer throwing the ball over the center-field wall when Francona took him out of a game in 2019 and getting traded from Cleveland to Cincinnati three days later.
'It's OK. They're trying their asses off,' Francona said. 'We're not gonna win every night. And there's some nights where things don't go (well). But I don't want to be just patting them on the back when (it's going good) — they're actually great kids.'
Francona has had barely five months since the start of spring training to get to know his new group of ballplayers.
And as they opened the toughest remaining schedule in the majors over the weekend with the start of a three-series homestand, against the Tampa Bay Rays, it's the relationships with those players he'll lean on to try to replicate perhaps his most impressive career accomplishment.
Francona's teams almost always perform better after the All-Star break. Often significantly better.
And that's especially true in his first year with a new team in three previous managerial stops.
'That's not surprising,' said veteran catcher Jose Trevino, who's in his first year with the Reds after a trade from the Yankees.
'There's calmness but with a sense of urgency,' Trevino said. 'A sense of urgency to play the game right. A sense of urgency to do things right. But the calmness comes in the craziest times, when there's runners on, there's bases loaded, we need a hit, or need somebody to get out of a jam.
'You can look over in that dugout and see just that calm presence.'
Whether that level of calm feeds a growth arc of performance over the course of a six-month, 162-game season, or whether it's the more tangible levers Francona tends to pull as he decides what his roster can do and starts managing with more urgency down the stretch, it has worked.
In his last stop, in Cleveland, Francona took over a last-place team, went 51-44 (.537) before the All-Star break, then went 41-26 out of the break to reach the playoffs — 90 percentage points better in the second half.
Even when he inherited a loaded Boston Red Sox team in 2004, that team was 48-38 (.558) in the first half and 50-26 out of the break — a 100-point difference in winning percentage. That team of personalities as divergent as they were big called themselves 'idiots' all the way to a World Series championship, as Francona let his stars play and their personalities flow.
The secret to all that second-half growth with his new teams?
'I don't know,' Francona said. 'If I knew, we'd play better in the first half.'
If he pulls it off again this year, it might even be more impressive than either of those two. Forty of the Reds' final 60 games were against teams with winning records, including the defending-champ Dodgers in town this week.
Actually, he may never pull off what his first Phillies team did in his first year as a big league manager in 1997.
That team won barely 28 percent of its games in the first half: 24-61.
'They were running a daily (update on) if we were going to have a worse record than the (1962) Mets,' Francona said, referring to the Mets' all-time record for losses in a season that the White Sox broke last year. 'Every day.
'That's always fun.'
That same, awful first-half team went 44-33 after the All-Star break — for a stunning jump of nearly 300 points in winning percentage.
'You're always trying to build,' Francona said. 'Tthere's some years where some guys get hurt so much and then you just can't play as well as you want, or win as much as you want.
'But you're always trying to build toward getting better,' he said. 'That's the object. I think as guys learn how you want to play the game, it's easier for them also.'
That's what the players say. The expectations have been clear, the accountability consistent, the calm constant, the roles ingrained, the comfort growing.
'You go back to the first month of the season. We were kind of up down, still trying to see where we were,' Trevino said. 'And then all of a sudden we take off. But Tito's the same guy the whole time, telling us to trust ourselves and play the game hard, play the game fast and do what we do.
'We know what he's trying to tell us. There's a great understanding of what he wants from us,' Trevino added. 'It takes some time. It's just like anything."
Just in the past week, he pulled the lever on trying Noelvi Marte in right field to create a way a get two of his more trusted right-handed bats in the lineup, with Santiago Espinal, and potentially get tighter fielding out of two positions (also third). Marte had never played in the outfield in his professional career.
Three days later, Espinal played first base for the first time in his career.
These aren't moves that would have been made in April.
'He's constantly setting guys up to succeed,' Trevino said. 'Constantly.'
Whatever is next, the Reds seem ready for anything the manager might ask. That much trust seems to be there five months in.
Whether it leads to another one of those second-half surges, they seem to be ready for that, too.
'He has that reputation of getting the best out of his players,' first baseman Spencer Steer said. 'He's had a couple meetings where we've been in a little bit of a rut or not playing well, and he says, 'This is when it gets fun. This is when it really gets fun. You see what you're made of. This is when it really matters about playing for the guy next to you and really caring about the ultimate goal of winning. When it gets tough, that really comes out.'
'That's kind of where we're at,' Steer said. 'We're not in the perfect spot by any means. But we've got life. And as long as we've got life, there's a chance.'