Admiration for the job Ned Yost has done with the Milwaukee Brewers is nearly unanimous. By hiring talented coaches, stroking the confidence of his players, and instilling a winning attitude and solid work ethic in the clubhouse, Yost has turned the Brewers’ franchise around. Gone are the days of Jerry Royster and Davey Lopes, two of the worst managers in baseball over the last decade. Good riddance.

At the same time, Yost has rightly received criticism in some camps for his in-game management and lineup composition. Preferring to rely on his “gut instincts,” Yost has shown a tendency to give disproportionate playing time to bench players like Brady Clark and Gary Bennett, hard workers who play solid defense but are below-average at the plate. He also has made no excuses for his lack of concern with statistics, commenting on numerous occassions that he isn’t one to dive into the numbers. While Yost most likely puts more stake into stats than he would admit, his style nonetheless puts him decidedly in the category of “clubhouse managers” and not “strategists.”

Larry Stone penned a fantastic article in the Seattle Times outlining the different approaches to managing a baseball team. Stone emphasizes the ongoing evolution of The Book, the “hypothetical masterwork [that] has served, over the past century-plus, as the guiding principles for generations of managers ? the invisible bible of baseball, governing both the strategy and ethical standards of the sport.”

One of the more interesting tidbits from the article comes from Lou Piniella, who shares his surprisingly progressive philosophy on baseball managing.

“I like data. That starts the process. Within that data, you sprinkle in your personal knowledge of the pitcher-hitter matchup, who you think can hit whom, what type of lineup works better against a certain pitcher ? in other words, the baseball part.”

“A lot of managers talk about ‘gut.’ I don’t like that. I would explain gut as knowledge. If it’s just ‘gut,’ I don’t buy it. I don’t trust my gut. I do trust my gut if it’s based on knowledge. If it’s just a hunch, I don’t trust hunches. Baseball, to me, is a percentage game. You can go against the grain occasionally, but you’d better keep the percentages on your side.”

If I were in charge of selecting a manager for my team, this would be part of a winning application. Self-described baseball people often take great pride in their ignorance of statistics, ridiculing those who would attempt to measure their beloved game as sheltered geeks who know nothing of the “real” game of baseball. Piniella might at first seem like just another baseball man, but his appreciation for the contributions of new statistical forms of analysis reveals a much different character.

In no small way, the advent of the “Moneyball” general managers like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein has changed the way field managers do their jobs. Gone are the days, at least for those teams, when a manager was given full authority to “go with their gut” and manage the team in whatever fashion they saw fit.

The Red Sox, who hired the patron saint of sabermetrics, Bill James, to serve in baseball operations, are one of a handful of teams at the forefront of the statistical revolution. The Oakland Athletics helped pave the way, not just under GM Billy Beane, glorified in the book “Moneyball,” but rather his predecessor, Sandy Alderson.

When Alderson and his prot�g�s ? Beane, Bob Watson, Ron Schueler, Walt Jocketty, as well as second-generation GMs like Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi ? required that their managers go by The Book, it’s more often the Bill James Baseball Abstract or The Elias Analyst.

“Managers are being told how The Book is being rewritten,” said Alan Schwarz, author of the illuminating new book on the evolution of statistics in baseball, “The Numbers Game.”

“A lot of them now are being hired by GMs who lay down the law more strongly. The manager’s job, and the cachet, is being greatly diminished. They’re not an all-knowing guru. He is in some ways a glorified babysitter.”

While that term is quite harsh, the reality is that the qualities that make for a good “clubhouse manager” and those that make for a good “in-game manager” are vastly different. While the astute analyst with a keen understanding of run expectations, match-ups, and bullpen usage might be fantastic at the latter, his shortcomings as a “people person” might make for a troubled clubhouse. Likewise, the qualities that make Ned Yost a fantastic leader of his ballplayers might also make him susceptible to favoritism, and his skills might not include statistical analysis and strategy.

At some point, a progressive organization like Oakland is going to alter the traditional “General Manager/Field Manager/Coach” hierarchy and better equip their team with the leaders it needs to succeed. Would Rich Dauer, bench coach and architect of the Brewers’ fantastic but unorthodox defensive positioning, be a superior in-game manager to Ned Yost? Perhaps. If that is the case, decisions about strategy or player usage could be delegated to Dauer while Yost concentrates on the “human resources” portion of his job. Just as NFL head coaches allow their coordinators to call the plays, baseball managers could more efficiently operate their clubs if they delegated authority to those with more specialized expertise.

Opportunities for innovation in baseball are everywhere. You just have to know where to look. Unfortunately, there is no glossary in The Book. If there was, it wouldn’t be any fun.