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Yeah, if this managing thing doesn't work out, I have enough stashed away that I skimmed from Dominican prospects saved from my playing days to make my getaway to Bulgravia. [Yes, it's a joke.]

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Here's a little graph and some thoughts (non Yankees, Red Sox, Dodger, or Jake Peavy-related) before the (for some, long) weekend.

Take a moment to revel in the greatness revealed at Sean Smith's historical Wins Above Replacement page for Mr. Hinch. The young Hinch was a defensive master in 1998 at +1, and can anyone forget his 1999, when he turned on the wheels and avoided double plays and ran the bases at a madman's pace? The majesty of his 9 plate appearances in 2000 speaks for itself.

Of course, he's now the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. In a rare move, Hinch, who had been running Arizona's minor league system, was tabbed to replace Bob Melvin, who had been fired after the Diamondbacks' miserable start.

I'll leave it to you to look  up all the thoughts about Hinch's total lack of managerial experience, whether he was "jumping rank" or whatever. If he's the best person for the job, all those niceties go out the window. And if he's a bad manager, well, there are a lot of "terrible" managers who had "prior managerial experience." But that isn't what I want to discuss.

We know that, for the most part, baseball managers don't make that much of a difference. Don't get me wrong, the worst manager in the majors (or minors, probably) is better than me, but just like with players, our baseline isn't "no manager" or "someone completely useless," but a "replacement level" manager. The different between the best and worst manager is probably about 4 wins a season. And that's at most -- it's really hard to tell, since the "great managers," to everyone's surprise, coincidentally had the best players. But my purpose here isn't even to reiterate the usual sabermetric stuff about the relative importance of the baseball managers.

Rather, my point is this: we know that good front office staff is way more important that managers when it comes to baseball teams. Hinch was part of the player development staff that was responsible for Arizona's excellent collection of young (if currently underperforming) talent. So my question is this: why make him the manager if he's in a more important position to begin with? We know that almost every manager is "hired to be fired." Few "go out on top." So it is more likely than not Hinch will eventually not be the manager of the Diamondbacks. And usually, managers don't get shifted to another part of the organization, they're gone. There are exceptions, I'm sure, and maybe Arizona's front office and Hinch have a plan, but they're rare...

So the question is this: Hinch maybe very well be a good manager (whatever that means), but is the real problem that the Diamondbacks have put him in a less important position, and one that, in the end, will result in a good executive being available to another team in a more important post down the road?