Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and Oakland Athletics manager Mark Kotsay took the stage at the 2024 USC Sports Business Association Summit Thursday afternoon alongside moderator and Fox Sports 1 MLB Analyst Mark Sweeney for a panel called “Inside the Dugout: Baseball Fireside Chat,” to discuss what it’s like to be a manager of the two men’s respective teams and in the current MLB landscape.
After a short hype video of the two managers’ best moments from the 2024 season, Sweeney, who was teammates with both Roberts and Kotsay during his time with the San Diego Padres, opened up the panel praising both managers and promising a valuable talk ahead.
Kotsay began by discussing the value of mentorship as he has stepped into becoming a big league manager. He cited Roberts and Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, who managed Kotsay during his Padres stint from 2001 to 2003, as two of the coaches he has learned from the most over the years.
Roberts also gave his props to Bochy, with both men calling him a “player’s manager,” meaning he really understands how to relate to and lead baseball players as human beings.
“[Bochy] supported you, he listened to you, everyone uses the language ‘he’ll have your back,’” Kotsay said. “It was transparent as long as you gave him effort. If you showed up and prepared every day, Bruce was right there with you.”
That insight came at an interesting moment in MLB history, as the use of analytics has become pervasive and roster turnover seems higher than ever before. It seems as though, despite the numbers’ increased influence and general managers’ aggressiveness in roster building, the managers at the top of the game still believe in backing their players as human beings first and foremost.
The conversation then shifted to Bud Black, another manager both men admired. Both Kotsay and Roberts served on Black’s coaching staff in 2015 with the Padres.
Objectively, Black doesn’t have a great resume. As a manager, he has lost more games than he’s won. He won Manager of the Year in 2010 but has never won the World Series as a manager either. But, according to Roberts and Kotsay, he stands out to everyone who has played for or coached with him as a leader who loves players and loves the game, and makes a huge impact at every organization he works for.
Sweeney then asked Kotsay about the Athletics playing in Sacramento this upcoming season. He admitted that it’s going to be a real challenge to get some of MLBers to buy in to playing at a Triple-A facility when all the other teams in the league, with the notable exception of the Tampa Bay Rays—who will be playing in a spring training stadium this season due to hurricane damage—are playing in a standard Major League stadium with much better facilities.
Kotsay even admitted that the Athletics reached out to World Series-winning Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler about playing for them, but Buehler expressed major concerns about playing in Sacramento. It was one of the event’s most viral moments, as Kotsay casually dropped some free-agent insight with Buehler’s former manager sitting directly to his left.
Roberts also spent time lauding the Dodger fanbase. He said earning a World Series parade—which hadn’t happened in L.A. since 1988—for the fanbase was extremely important to him this season. He acknowledged that there are pressures that come with coaching for a franchise that wins so consistently, with fans that expect a championship every season, but he doesn’t take the criticism that occasionally accompanies that pressure personally because he loves what he does.
“I think for me, the expectation part of it, the responsibility part of it, it kind of comes with it, and it’s easy to manage if you have the right thought,” Roberts said.
That sparked perhaps the richest portion of the conversation for baseball fans, as Kotsay and Roberts both provided an in-depth look at what their jobs as MLB managers truly look like.
Kotsay began by sharing what it takes to manage a roster, especially a roster like the Athletics, which has recently had considerable turnover. He said that communicating with the players and building trusting relationships has been crucial for him, and that taking initiative and being on top of everything is an important leadership skill. He concluded by noting that while a manager should always want to be part of each conversation in and around his clubhouse, he also needs to let people do the jobs they were hired for.
When it was Roberts’ turn to speak, he offered insight on a side of the game that fans don’t often consider as part of a manager’s jurisdiction: the business side. While players are only concerned with the baseball side, managers also have a responsibility to keep the business people within the organization, who are just as invested as the players are, happy and meet their needs. On top of that, managers have to face the media twice a day, acting as the organization’s figurehead for both the baseball and the business side.
This portion of the conversation offered incredible insight into the life of a manager that even the most diehard fans rarely think about.
“Mark and I have a really unique job because we’re essentially the faces of the organizations because we are in front of the media twice a day,” Roberts said. “So we’re talking about the brand, we’ve got to represent owners and front office and talk about a fanbase, but then yet still find ways to win a baseball game that night.”
The next chunk of the conversation applied mostly to Oakland A’s fans, and it likely brought many of their emotions from the past few years back to the surface.
Kotsay admitted that, back when he was hired in 2022, he expected to inherit the Oakland A’s roster that had made the postseason every year from 2018-2020 and gone 86-76 in 2021, missing the postseason by only a handful of games.
At that point, the roster was chock full of stars like Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Sean Manea and Chris Bassitt. What happened next? Well…
“I’m excited about that roster,” Kotsay said. “Well, three hours after the lockout ended, our owner chose to cut salary from $91 million to $60 million. So, my first experience of walking into a locker room that I was really excited about the group that we had there…we had to trade them.”
While remembering their owner dismantling a competitive roster and turning their beloved team into the league’s laughingstock was surely painful for Athletics fans, they perhaps took solace in knowing their manager shared in that pain.
Kotsay continued to, without being outright critical of his organization, display a somewhat sympathetic attitude towards Oakland fans and a more bewildered one toward the organization and its decisions. He expressed annoyance with the Athletics’ lack of roster consistency in 2023 and said that, talent level aside, purely having the same guys in the lineup every day helped fuel the Athletics’ improvement in 2024.
The A’s were indeed 19 games better in 2024, going from an unsightly 50-112 record to 69-93, and finishing fourth instead of last in the AL West division.
Kotsay also said he believed the Oakland fanbase was one of the most supportive in baseball, and that their anger at the organization was justified.
“They expressed their anger, and they needed to, and rightfully so,” Kotsay said. “They’ve given their support for generations of fans.”
He also shared that his wife encouraged him to speak to the fans after the final game, which turned out to be a beautiful speech. He led the crying fans in one final “Let’s Go Oakland” chant that no one in Northern California will soon forget.
Roberts reentered the conversation to speak on maintaining a devoted fanbase despite all of the opportunities clamoring for peoples’ attention in Los Angeles. He said investment in players like Shohei Ohtani maintains the Dodgers’ box office status.
“It ends up turning out that we underpaid for [Ohtani],” Roberts said. “To get another fanbase in Japan and Asia, it helped Major League Baseball, and it helped the Dodgers.”
The managers concluded by emphasizing the importance of analytics and the need for young minds, even those who did not grow up around baseball, to contribute to the game through data-driven work.
They answered a few questions from the audience with their remaining time, which did result in one final, incredible nugget from Roberts.
“I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I’d be managing the Los Angeles Dodgers. Never.” Roberts said. “It was one thing to get to the big leagues, and then play for the Dodgers, and I never thought I’d be managing this club.”
“But I think that’s part of it I never let myself forget. The humility part is really important. You’re never as good as they say you are and you’re never as bad. I sort of live by that.”
It was an incredibly informative hour where the Trojan Grand Ballroom felt like the center of the baseball world for a short time, and Trojans were able to connect with these larger-than-life baseball figures in a uniquely deep way.