Last Updated: October 8th, 2026 by Shaiel Ben-Ephraim
Unless you win the World Series, being a manager is a pretty thankless job. Everyone remembers your biggest blunders, and when things go right, they give credit to the players. So we have to say that a lot of these managers had so many great decisions that everyone forgets; they just remember that one blunder.
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And then, of course, there's another thing: sometimes the decisions that seem like the biggest blunders are judged on the result, but maybe, with the information that the managers had at the time, they were the right thing to do. So let's try to be charitable, but these are the mistakes that cost their teams the most.
15. Grady Little Leaves Pedro In—Boston Can’t Bear to Watch
You try to be kind, but this one decision was so bad it's kind of hard to do it. So this is the scene: it's game seven of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium, 2003. Boston hadn't won a World Series since 1918, but they're ahead five-two going to the bottom of the 8th.
Pedro Martinez at this time is the best pitcher on Earth, but he's past 100 pitches. At this time, the bullpen is warm; you have Alan Embree and Mike Timlin, both rested and both good, waiting there.
The 9th inning, hands out like this: Nick Johnson pops out, Derek Jeter doubles on 0-2 pitch, Bernie Williams singles, five three. Little walks to the mound, doesn't signal for the bullpen; he just asks Pedro if he has enough gas left for Matsui. Pedro says yes.
Little walks back. Matsui doubles on a 0-2 pitch. Jorge Posada hits a bloop two-run double into short center, and it's five-five.
That's when Little takes him out, with 123 pitches. Three innings later, Tim Wakefield throws one pitch to Aaron Boone, and that's it.
Now is this a bad decision or a bad result? It's a bad decision. Theo Epstein was running the Red Sox with sabermetrics at the time, he had told Little how bad things get when Pedro gets past 105 pitches, they hit 370 against him.
There was just no excuse for all of this. And Little pretended that Pedro had done it all season and said, "We done it through the year, over and over and over; got a bad result this time; most of the time we got good results."
But the statistics show otherwise; they did not get good results. This was a terrible, terrible mistake.
14. Buck Showalter Benches Britton, O’s Fans Reach for the Tums
This is another truly bad one. Now, to understand why Buck Showalter didn't bring in Zach Britton in 2016, we have to set the scene and remember how good he was that year.
He wasn't just an elite closer; he was maybe the greatest relief pitcher of all time that year. He was pitching over 54, 47 saves and 47 attempts, basically can't miss. The situation couldn't have been more high-stakes.
It was October 4th, 2016, the American League wild card game in Toronto, one game, the winner advances. The Orioles are the road team, and that's important.
That Showalter seemed to use everyone else: Brian Duensing, Michael Givens, Donnie Hart, Brad Brach, and, in the bottom of the 11th, Ubaldo Jimenez, a failed starter with a 5.54 ERA that year. Jimenez, not too shockingly, gave up a single to Devon Travis, then a single to Josh Donaldson, then Edwin Encarnacion hit a three-run walk-off homer into the second deck. That was it for the Orioles.
Zach Britton didn't throw a single pitch. Showalter said that it's because it wasn't a safe situation; he was holding Britton for when Baltimore took the lead. That might work in June, but it certainly doesn't work here, not only because it's a winner-take-all game, but also because they were the visiting team; that means there is no later.
He was saving his best pitcher for a lead that never materialized, and mathematically speaking, it was a very good chance that that's what would happen.
13. Buck Showalter Leaves In Jack McDowell—Yankees Fans Still Cringe
Yeah, we're really beating up on poor Buck Showalter, but this is what happened. 1995 ALDS Game 5 at the Kingdome. The Yankees had won the first two games, and it looked good, but then they lost three straight.
Tied four-four in the 9th, Cone had already thrown 147 and walked in the tying run. That's when they brought on Mariano Rivera; no one had heard of him at the time, and he was fantastic. You'll no longer be anonymous.
Then Showalter went to Jack McDowell, the 1993 Cy Young winner who had started Game Three two days earlier. That backfired. The Yankees scored in the top of the 11th, and eventually Griffey came all the way from first base to end it all 6-5 after being driven in by Edgar Martinez.
McDowell gave up three hits and never recorded an out. It was pretty catastrophic, but there's good reason Buck did it. This time, John Wetteland was the closer, but he had just been so awful, pitching 14.54 over the five games, so Showalter was totally right to bypass his closer Wetteland, but he bet on the wrong guy.
Meanwhile, Seattle brought in Randy Johnson from the bullpen in the same game for three innings with short rest, and it worked. It was just a gamble gone wrong. It wasn't a bad gamble based on the information at the time, but it could probably have been the right decision.
12. Gene Mauch’s Collapse: The Phillies Phold of ’64
Now this one is a strange one. In 1964, the Phillies were ahead by six and a half games with 10 games to play. They're a good team; they have Jimmy Bunning, who threw a perfect game, and Dick Allen was about to win Rookie of the Year, and they've already printed their World Series tickets.
Who wouldn't? But they lost 10 games straight and finished one game out. Now fans have really singled out one game, the game that began the losing streak.
They were tied 0-0 with two outs, Frank Robinson was at the plate, and Cincinnati's Chico Ruiz stole home. Nobody does that, but it worked.
Now, Mauch, the manager for the Phillies, had Bunning start three starts on two days' rest that month. Meanwhile, Chris Short made too, and Bunning got hit hard in most of them: six runs and four and a third against Houston, five straight hits before getting pulled into walking.
Now, were these bad decisions? Partially yes, he panicked, the sixth game lead, he started managing like it was game seven. He was trying to cover for the back of his rotation, which was hurt and ineffective; he had two good arms and three bad ones.
So the ten games trick wasn't all short rest, the bullpen, the defense, the bats all quit at once. According to advanced studies, this sabermetric study, the short rest hurt but didn't cause it. Really trying to blame someone for this is beside the point; sometimes everything goes wrong, and you can't really blame one person for it.
11. Chuck Dressen Puts In Branca—The Shot Heard ’Round the World
Now this one was definitely a mistake, but not for the reason that people think. On October 3rd, 1951, at the Polo Grounds, it was the deciding game of a three-game playoff between the Dodgers and the Giants. The Dodgers had led by 13 and a half games in August, but the Giants went on an incredible tear, 37 to 7, to force a tie.
At the bottom of the ninth, Brooklyn was ahead for one. What happened then? Dark singled, Mueller singled, Urban popped out, Lockman doubled, and it was for two on second and third.
Don Newcomb was finished, and he'd been telling people we've been finished all week. That's when Dressen goes to the bullpen.
Coach Clyde Sukeforth said that Carl Erskine was throwing awful curveballs; they were bouncing, so Dressen says Give me Branca. Frank had already given up a home run to Bobby Thomson in game one, but the rest is history. Second pitch, high and inside, Thomson hits it into the lower deck in left, and the Giants win the pennant.
Now here's why it was really a mistake: they could have walked Thomson, who was so hot, and the guy on deck was 20-year-old Willie Mays, who, by his own account, was praying he wouldn't have to hit.
We're not talking about the fearsome Willie Mays of later days. The smart thing would have been to walk Thomson, pitch to Mays. They probably would have gotten out of it, or Willie Mays would have had an early peak.
I guess we'll never know.
10. Joe Torre Picks Weaver Over Rivera—Yankees Fans Gasp in ’03
I remember watching this one; it made very little sense at the time and still doesn't make much sense. It was October 22nd, 2003, game 4 in Miami. Yankees were two to one in the series over the Marlins, tied at three-three in the 9th on Ruben Sierra's two-run triple.
They gave Mariano Rivera the 9th and the 10th, and he held it, but Jeff Weaver was given the ball for the 11th, and of course that goes famously wrong. Alex Gonzalez, not the greatest hitter, 256 that year, put it over the wall and left. Marlins went up three, and Florida ended up winning at 6:00.
So riding Rivera for two innings was a smart thing; couldn't do it for three, though.
But why bring in Weaver? Weaver had a 599 ERA that season and hadn't thrown a meaningful postseason inning. Torre went to him because he was supposed to be his long man.
That makes absolutely no sense in the 12th inning. Sure, Torre thought it would go longer than it did, but that certainly was the wrong move. And Weaver never pitched for the Yankees again.
9. Joe Torre Bats A-Rod Eighth—Yankees Nation in Shock
It's not often that a hitter as good as A-Rod bats eighth, but that's what happened. It was October 7th, 2006, ALDS Game 4 in Detroit. The Yanks were facing elimination.
A-Rod was the reigning American League MVP, but he was one for 14 in the series, and in a nationally televised game he put A-Rod… A-Rod went over for three. Yankees lost, three-zero.
Detroit went to the World Series.
Now, as a baseball decision, it's basically meaningless. Moving hitters from fourth to eighth could cost one plate appearance, not more than that. But it was a public relations and interpersonal management blunder of the highest degree.
It's a humiliation for A-Rod, and the Yankees had him under contract for another 8 years. And with Derek Jeter hitting 500 in that series, the story wrote itself, and it's the one we all know. Jeter as the winner, A-Rod as the player who chokes.
And that's something that A-Rod continued to live with for many years.
But it wasn't really true. In 2009, under a different manager, batting where he belonged, A-Rod hit 365 with six homers in the postseason. Yankees won the World Series.
Could be that if A-Rod had been given the amount of trust that he deserved, he would have hit better in that game.
8. Mike Hargrove’s Mesa Meltdown—’97 World Series Woes
This one led to the greatest grudge in the history of baseball. It all started on October 26th, 1997. It was Game 7 in Miami; Cleveland was leading two to one going into the bottom of the 9th, three outs from the franchise's first title since '48.
That's when Mike Hargrove, his closer Jose Mesa, was a guy who two years earlier had saved 46 games with a 1.13 ERA. Wasn't quite that effective this year, though.
In the 9th, Mesa allows a leadoff single, Bonilla strikes out, Charles Johnson singles, Alou doubles to third, Craig Counsell hits a sacrifice fly to deep right to tie it up, Mesa gets out of it, but the lead is gone. Now Mesa blew the save, and then Charles Nagy, starting pitcher, came in for the 10th, and in the 11th, that's when they lost the game.
Now, was this a bad decision or a bad result? It was clearly a bad result. Bringing in a closer in the ninth of Game 7 with a one-run lead isn't a gamble.
Now there were some signs that he was struggling, allegedly, but that comes from Omar Vizquel's book, written 10 years later, when he said that Mesa's eyes were vacant and he knew it was coming. That's not concrete, and that's not something Hargrove could really act on from the dugout.
Now Mesa's response to that was that he would hit Vizquel with the pitch every time they faced each other for the rest of their careers, and he did it repeatedly for years.
A lot of drama, but I don't really see a mistake here, do you?
7. John McNamara’s Bill Buckner Blunder—Booted Dreams
Now we don't usually think of Bill Buckner's blunder in the 86 World Series as a managerial one, but there was a managerial element. Of course you all know what I'm talking about: October 25th, 1986, game 6, Red Sox ahead 5-3, and the 10th, two outs and nobody out, and Mookie Wilson hits that slow roller up the first base that goes under Buckner's glove; that's after, of course, the wild pitch that tied it up five-five.
Now McNamara had replaced Buckner with Dave Stapleton for defense late in games one, two, and five; that was the pattern, so why didn't he do it in the ending that mattered most? Sometimes he said he wanted Buckner on the field for the celebration, sometimes he said Buckner was the better defender, he didn't really have a clear narrative.
But a lot of people believe that even if they hadn't had that blunder, Mookie, with his speed, would have made it, and we'll never know for sure. There's another blunder that no one ever talks about, which is that McNamara pulled Clemens after seven innings with a 3-2 lead, and Clemens says he wants to stay in, and of course we all know how that ended.
6. Terry Collins’ Familia Fiasco—World Series Game 5 Gaffe
The Fiasco of the Terry Collins decision in 2015 may have cost the Mets that World Series, and here's what happened. November 1st, 2015, in Game 5 at Citi Field, the Mets were down 3-1 in the series. Matt Harvey was having an incredible game: eight shutout innings; the Mets were up two-nothing.
He was starting to show some signs, though, and Collins tells him he's done. The Dark Knight says to him he wants a ninth. Citi Field is chanting his name.
Doesn't work out well. Eric Hosmer double leads to the two-run lead; now Collins goes to Familia after Harvey pitched 111 pitches. The play that actually did it was a bad throw by Lucas Duda, which allowed Hosmer to score on a Pretty Reckless dash to home.
That was a fielding mistake, not because of the pitcher. Kansas City 172 and 12 and takes the series.
Now, is it a bad decision or a bad result? Leaving Matt Harvey in was probably a bad decision. Bringing Familia in was what had to be done.
And it's not his fault that Lucas Duda had that bad throw. But there's a nice symmetry here.
1986, the Mets won a World Series because McNamara left a beloved hobbled veteran on the field out of sentiment. In 2015, the Mets lost because Terry Collins did the same thing. Same franchise, both sides of the same mistake.
And sadly, this was also the peak and the end of Matt Harvey's great years.
5. Bob Brenly Leaves Byung-Hyun Kim In—Yankees Make Him Pay
There's a lot to unpack in the way that Bob Brindley handled his bullpen in the 2001 World Series. Let's start with game four. Arizona was ahead 3-1 in the 9th and that's when friendly brought in his closer, Byung-Hyun Kim, 22 years old, submarine delivery, 19 saves that season.
They were two outs, O'Neill on first, and Tino Martinez hit a two-run homer to tie it. That was a defensive bullpen decision; that's what a closer is for. Friendly left him out there for the 10th, and he passed 60 pitches on a full count.
Derek Jeter, Jeter put one into the right field seats. That is already a questionable one, leaving him in for the 10th.
Now the next night is really no excuse for this. Game five, Friendly brings Kim back in. Two outs and Scott Brosius hits a two-run homer to tie it.
Kim dropped to his knees on the mound. Yankees won it in 12. That's the blunder, not the usage in any one game: the decision to give him both of those in 24 hours, especially after giving him that extra inning.
Now Bradley won the World Series anyway, so we can't hold it against him too much, and Kim was never really the same closer. Boston got him in 2003; he got booed during playoff introductions at Fenway and flipped off the crowd, and he's still the standard cautionary tale for relief overuse.
4. Joe Maddon’s Chapman Overuse—Cubs Fans White-Knuckle It
Another case where a really bad mistake did not lead to losing the World Series, despite the best attempt of the manager, in this case, Joe Maddon. He had a role; this Chapman pitched three appearances in four days over 60 innings, and here's what happened.
Game 5, they were facing elimination at Wrigley, so Chapman was brought on in the 7th inning and got an eight-out save. That was fantastic, and that's why there's a Game 6; that was the right call. The trouble wasn't game 6, the Cubs had 7-2 in the 7th, Maddon brought on Chapman, he did what he had to do, but he got really gassed as a result.
In Game 7, the Cubs had 6-3 in the 8th, and Chapman was in with two outs and a man on.
That's when Brandon Guyer doubled on him, 6-4, Rajai Davis pulled the fastball down the left field line to make it 6-6. Chapman's velocity was visibly down from where it had been all October. Luckily for Maddon, there was a 17-minute rain delay, and all the drama happened with Jason Heyward's speech in the weight room, and the rest is history.
But man made a terrible mistake that really could have cost him the World Series.
3. Terry Bevington’s Bullpen Blunder—Nobody Warming Up
This one's just funny. Wouldn't be so funny if they were higher stakes, but this was a regular-season game, and the White Sox were already out, so it didn't matter much. But it was pretty embarrassing.
Terry Bevington, who managed the White Sox in 1997, walked to the mound, signaled to the bullpen for a relief pitcher, pretty normal stuff, until he realized that no one had been told to warm up. No one was ready, and you can't take the signal back once the manager points Pitchers. So he sent in a cold reliever, had him very slowly, intentionally walk the hitter, purely to buy time for someone else to get loose in the bullpen.
Back then there were no automatic intentional walks, so they had to actually lob four pitches, and it was pretty hilarious. Gave time for the next pitcher to warm up, and Chicago booed him for a mistake that he made.
2. Kevin Cash Pulls Snell Early—Rays Fans Scream at the TV
Anyone who watched this game remembers that moment when they pulled Blake Snell and the way he reacted. It was October 27th, 2020, Game 6, Rays facing elimination down 3-2 in the series. Blake Snell was just fantastic.
He had no runs after five and one-third innings; Tampa was up one-nothing.
One out in the sixth, Austin Barnes singled, and it was Snell's first baserunner since the first inning. That's when Cash walked out and took the ball. Snell threw his arms up and glared all the way to the dugout.
Nick Anderson then came in. Mookie doubled, a wild pitch scored the tying run, and Bet scored on a groundout, 3-1 Dodgers. Dodgers won their first title since 1988.
Now, there was a reason that Snell was removed: he was pretty weak third time in the order; that's where he was traditionally vulnerable. The trouble was, Nick Anderson was also awful in the postseason; every appearance he had was terrible. Grady Little ignored the numbers and lost; Kevin Cash followed the numbers and lost; both got vilified.
It's very hard to know what to do; in hindsight, these things look like a mistake. Of course the great irony is that Blake Snell signed a five year 182 million dollar deal with the Dodgers in November 2024, and he finally won that ring in 2025 with the team that had denied him all those years ago.
1. Danny Ozark Leaves Luzinski In—Disaster in Left Field
Let's end this with a true mistake; there's really no way to explain this one away. October 7th 1977 the NLCS Game 3 Series tied 1:1. Philly's won 101 games that year best team in the National League they're ahead of the Dodgers 5 3.
Going into the top of the night, Jean Garber retired eight straight.
But Ozark didn't do what he had done all season: replace Greg Luzinski in left field with Jerry Mark. Now, he was a tremendous hitter, and what a season, but he was an awful outfielder. He would be replaced, but this time, when it mattered most, that didn't happen, and of course they paid dearly for it.
