Jim Naughton is a Washington Nationals fan who may have some pretty good insight into what Davey Johnson is thinking when he is making moves from the dugout — like his continuous use of beleaguered reliever Henry Rodriguez.
“Davey likes to have guys with specific roles or potentials,” Naughton said. “It’s like he has certain boxes he wants to have checked — I need a guy to do this, or that. You can see the wheels turning, his thinking that there’s going to be a Tuesday next month when I am going to need this guy for this role. He thinks very situationally a lot of times and hides certain cards up his sleeves.”
Pretty good analysis for a fan. Naughton, though, has seen Johnson’s managing strategy up close, and arguably, when he was most successful.
Naughton, 55, was the Mets beat reporter for the New York Daily News during the Mets’ 1985 and 1986 World Series championship seasons.
Also a former style section writer for the Washington Post, Naughton is out of the business, working in the area as the canon for communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. But he remains connected to the game and enjoys watching the manager who he covered during the Mets’ glory seasons.
“Davey was great to cover when you made a connection,” Naughton said. “He’s very smart about strategy, and when I was covering him, probably felt a little underappreciated. This was a time when people thought [St. Louis Cardinals] manager Whitey Herzog had invented baseball, and you could tell he felt that people were underestimating his analytical ability. You had Davey winning 108 games [in 1986 with the Mets] and still wasn’t named manager of the year.
“If you were around Davey enough, you could see a little chip on his shoulder at the time. He had accomplished a lot as a player [a four-time All Star] but was overshadowed by some of those other great Orioles players.
“Sometimes it was almost like he was playing a character — the wily guy who would hide behind this ‘aw, shucks’ presentation.”
When the Nationals were in New York last week, former Mets pitching great Dwight Gooden compared these Nationals to the 1984 squad Johnson managed when Gooden was a rookie. Naughton said he sees some differences in approach between this team and Johnson’s Mets squads.
“He’s bringing Stephen Strasburg along differently than Gooden,” Naughton said. “And there are clearly people around Bryce Harper [who are] smarter than there were [around] Darryl Strawberry.
“But a lot of it is still the same Davey — boxes he needs checked. He did it with the Mets’ bullpen in 1985 and 1986 and is doing it now.”
In those two seasons Naughton covered the Mets, Johnson won 206 games. If he checks the right boxes again, he won’t be underappreciated this time.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
