It's the Recyclables vs. the New Age as Joe Maddon and other veteran managers vie for 7 openings against younger, inexperienced candidates

Oct. 4--"The only way to make money as a manager is to win one, get fired and hired somewhere else," former Cardinals manager White Herzog once said.

Joe Maddon is about to find out if Herzog was right. Maddon enters the job market at age 65, only three years after winning a World Series championship with the Cubs.

Virtually no one believes Maddon will match his previous $6 million salary, though Cubs President Theo Epstein predicted a bidding war for Maddon's services. Managerial experience seemingly is far less important these days than the ability to heed the advice of the stats geeks in the front office, bringing salaries down across the board.

With the Cubs, Mets, Giants, Royals, Angels, Pirates and Padres all having vacancies, a plethora of former major-league managers are vying for new gigs, including Maddon, Joe Girardi, Buck Showalter, Dusty Baker, John Farrell, John Gibbons and Brad Ausmus.

It's a veritable smorgasbord of characters to choose from, from celebrities to charisma-free types.

But the big question is whether the Recyclables can compete in the job market against the New Age newbies -- candidates with no experience such as David Ross, Carlos Beltran and Raul Ibanez.

It will be fascinating to find out in the next month or so as teams interview candidates during the postseason and settle on their "perfect" choices before the first snow.

The trend toward younger, less experienced managers works against the Recyclables, who must prove to prospective bosses they can adapt to the new ways, whether it's game-planning with the front office or understanding the mindset of millennial players.

Do the players themselves care?

"I don't know that it matters," said Giants third baseman Evan Longoria, 33. "I think part of the reason (for younger managers) is that the game has gotten younger. We're seeing players called up at younger ages and at a more frequent pace. I think part of it is upper management wanting the manager not necessarily to be a father figure, per se, but more of a relatable figure the players can kind of get behind.

"To me, it doesn't matter. A manager is a manager. Playing for Kevin Cash (with the Rays), I never looked at him as an equal to me. I always felt like he's the leader of the club and what he says goes and you don't question that. I respect them all the same."

Cash was 37 when he replaced the popular Maddon in 2015. He had no managing experience, having served as the Indians bullpen coach under Terry Francona. The Rays went 80-82 in his first season, and Cash had a difficult time following in Maddon's big footsteps.

"I know Kevin Cash was very vocal and upfront about his struggles early on," Longoria said. "Sometimes the game was speeding up on him. You watch the game as a player and you think you can manage, but then there are some things that happen very quickly when you're managing a game. You were thinking about the game and the manager was thinking about managing, and those two things don't really intersect all that often.

"He was very vocal about some of those things speeding up on him and how he learned on those things. This is his fifth year now and he's conquered some of those things. But when you bring in a manager that has a ton of experience already, those things don't sneak up on him and (he) understands how to handle certain game situations. There is a give and take."

Cash, who guided the Rays to 96 wins this year and into an American League Division Series against the Astros, is considered by some the brightest innovator in the game, particularly with his use of the "opener." Only one Rays starter -- Charlie Morton -- pitched more than 134 innings this year, and the starters combined for 702 1/3 innings, second-fewest in the majors.

Rays starters finished with 40 wins, about half as many as the 79 combined wins for the vaunted Astros rotation, which includes Cy Young Award favorites Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole and trade-deadline acquisition Zack Greinke. Yet the Rays' vast collection of starters finished with baseball's fourth-lowest ERA (3.64), just below the Astros' 3.61.

Brewers manager Craig Counsell didn't employ an opener regularly but did limit his starters' workload, particularly in September, when his staff went 20-7 with a 3.01 ERA. That helped fuel a late-season run past the Cubs and into a wild-card spot, even without MVP candidate Christian Yelich most of the month.

Starters getting paid $15 million to $30 million will typically complain if they're removed before the end of the fifth inning and denied an opportunity for a win. Brewers starters understood the team goal was more important than their individual stats and readily bought in.

Before using an opener one day in April, Counsell explained he was "just doing something different and hoping it's a better way for our guys to get 27 outs." The objective was 27 outs, he said, no matter how they were cobbled together.

So why don't more teams emulate the Rays?

"It's personnel-based," Counsell said. "I do think the National League (rules make) it more challenging also. We could have a very tough decision in the fifth or sixth inning when you do this. You've already gone through one pitcher and you're going to your third pitcher in the fifth inning? That's not a good formula for success over the long term."

Both Cash and Counsell, who also was hired without any managerial experience, work closely with their general managers and are part of the progressive wing of modern managers. Their success emboldens other GMs to take risks on managers whose resumes don't include on-the-job training, such as the Twins' Rocco Baldelli, a leading candidate for AL Manager of the Year in his first season.

Counsell will be a free agent next year unless Brewers owner Mark Attanasio ponies up, and he could spark a bidding war of his own after what he accomplished the last two years. Too bad the Cubs already will have a new manager.

The working relationship between a manager and the top baseball executive is probably more important than ever. And whether it's true or not, younger and less experienced managers have a reputation for being more willing to adapt to change than their Baby Boomer peers.

"From the top down, they're all on board with that, right?" Longoria said of the Rays. "A lot of the reason organizations are going younger is because the younger generation has grown up with that style of play.

"If you came in two, three years ago and told the (veteran) manager, 'We're going to have an opener and we're going to structure (the pitching staff) this way,' he probably wouldn't have been as open-minded as bringing in a younger manager who has seen the evolution of the game. It's two completely different styles of baseball."

Starting out with three sub-.500 seasons, Cash might not have lasted in some organizations. But Rays President Matt Silverman gave him a long leash to try different things, and it has worked. Who would've predicted Cash's career in Tampa Bay would outlast Maddon's in Chicago?

That doesn't mean the 70-year-old Baker or 60-somethings such as Maddon and Showalter aren't better candidates than a bright, young mind who's willing to work closely with his boss and adapt to the changing game.

It just means they'll have to find a team that values what they bring to the table -- knowledge, experience and leadership -- while overlooking alleged faults such as by-the-gut moves, blunt answers to reporters and Big Gulp-sized egos.

Pitcher Jeff Samardzija, who played for Lou Piniella at the start of his career with the Cubs and for the retiring Bruce Bochy the last four years with the Giants, laments the demise of old-school managers and the rise of what he called "yes-men."

"To be replacing these amazing in-game managers like (Maddon) and Boch with yes-men and guys that are almost like personality cops in the dugout that keep everybody happy and talk to the media ... a lot of these managers are simply PR guys," Samardzija said. "It's just unfortunate."

Plenty of dinosaurs are out there this winter, ready to compete against the progressive candidates in one of the more interesting offseasons in years. In this battle between the old and the restless, they're all waiting to have their brains picked apart by some of the best and brightest baseball executives.

Some are hoping for an opportunity to lead.

Others just want one last shot.

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