Alexander: Dave Roberts has Dodgers winning, second-guessers aren’t satisfied

The world according to Jim:

• This might have snuck up on you the way it snuck up on me, but the Dodgers’ Dave Roberts has the best winning percentage of any manager in what we now consider the major leagues. Ever.

It might have snuck up on us because, as we saw again this week, he’s still a human dartboard in the eyes of the Twitter experts, who as we all know are infallible. …

• First the numbers: Following Thursday night’s victory in St. Louis, Roberts in six-plus years as Dodgers manager (plus an 0-1 stint as interim manager in San Diego in 2015) was 600-360, for a .625 winning percentage. The only better regular-season records in baseball history were compiled by four Negro Leagues managers: Bullet Rogan, Vic Harris, Rube Foster and Dave Malarcher. The only active MLB manager in the same area code is the New York Yankees’ Aaron Boone (.614 in his fifth season). …

• Roberts has won at a higher rate than Walter Alston (.558, 35th) or Tommy Lasorda (.526, 102nd), both Hall of Famers. His teams have won a World Series and three National League Championship Series and have been in the postseason every year of his tenure.

And yet the armchair experts were again tweeting “Fire Roberts” the other night, after he pinch-hit Max Muncy with the bases loaded in the seventh and a 6-5 deficit and Muncy popped up for the second out of the inning. I’ve never figured out exactly why, but it’s the nature of baseball: When the player fails, the manager gets the blame. …

• We all understand the drill. Every manager gets it from his fan base to some degree, and some get it from their bosses, too. Toronto’s Charlie Montoyo received AL Manager of the Year votes last year but was fired this week with a 46-42 record, though the Blue Jays were fourth in the rugged AL East.

Maybe it was because his team was only 26-18 at home, against all of those opponents decimated by the absences of anti-vaxxer players who aren’t allowed to cross the border without their shots. …

• In Roberts’ case, maybe it’s the consequence of an increasingly engaged and demanding Dodgers fan base that often understands only part of the picture.

Viewers see the easy-to-grasp stuff, the strategical moves that might backfire, but they generally have less knowledge than Roberts and his coaches have of who’s available, who’s limited physically, or what all of the voluminous metrics available to the staff suggest about potential hitter-pitcher matchups. Their first guess is seldom if ever done on a whim. …

• Also, most have no clue of what happens behind the scenes. The position is called “manager” for a reason, because it’s about managing people. Roberts’ communication skills are invaluable in an organization where players are often asked to relinquish everything they’d previously thought about playing every day at one position or in one spot in the batting order, or are asked to not only rethink their roles but retool their physical approaches. …

• Footnote: Muncy failed Wednesday but succeeded in a similar situation the next night. So obviously Roberts was a better manager Thursday, right? …

• Then again, feel free to forget all of this when Craig Kimbrel comes in to pitch the ninth inning. …

• Item: The International Olympic Committee finally recognized Jim Thorpe as the sole winner of the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games, That was more than a century after his medals had been stripped because he’d played minor-league baseball a few years before for $25 per week, and more than 40 years after the IOC, in a half-measure, had declared him a co-winner of those events.

Comment: One more death knell for the outmoded concept of amateurism. Now give Thorpe’s descendants his gold medals! …

• Gov. Gavin Newsom has weighed in on UCLA’s defection to the Big Ten, as chair of the University of California system’s Board of Regents, and mainly he’s unhappy that UCLA didn’t give anyone – particularly the Regents – a heads-up.

It’s on the agenda for the next Regents meeting on July 21, as the Bay Area News Group’s Jon Wilner reported. Beyond fuming, though, there doesn’t seem to be much the Regents can do – besides maybe legal action against UCLA with an eye toward a cut of that Big Ten media rights money. …

• The restrictions, noted above, against non-vaccinated players crossing the Canadian border to play the Blue Jays have done us a service. It’s shown us which guys on those rosters are team players and which aren’t. (And keep in mind that the same restrictions exist for Canadians crossing into the U.S.)

So when, for example, Andrew Benintendi was one of 10 Kansas City players who opted out of a series in Toronto this week, what do you suppose that did to his trade value with the deadline approaching? …

• People in Pittsburgh are experiencing some angst this week, after naming rights of the Steelers’ stadium were resold to a relatively anonymous insurance company. (But it could be worse. I assume it deals in real money, as opposed to the company whose name now graces that arena in downtown L.A.)

And since we can relate, let’s make a deal. Here in SoCal, we’ll use more Heinz ketchup, and people in Pittsburgh can do more of their shopping for office supplies at Staples. It won’t solve the problem, but it might make the fans feel better.

jalexander@scng.com