Is Terry Francona the best manager in the AL Central?

There is an interesting symmetry within the AL Central right now when it comes to managers. Ned Yost has been with the Kansas City Royals for five years, Robin Ventura has spent four years at the helm of the Chicago White Sox. Francona has three years here in Cleveland with the Tribe, Brad Ausmus has two years under his belt with the Detroit Tiger, and Paul Molitor just completed his debut season with the Minnesota Twins.

Inherently, it almost impossible to measure a manager's true worth, as much of their value comes from off the field stuff such as keeping the team motivated, dealing with personalities, and communication to the front office. There are actual numbers to look at too, but can we glean any information from them?

Here are some rudimentary numbers dealing with records. Note that SRS is a BRef calculation called Simple Rating System which is a combination of Run Differential and Strength of Schedule averaged down to a per-game basis.

Molitor looks to have made an initial impact, but one year is a fairly small sample size. Ausmus appears to have done a whale of a job the last two seasons with a +9 and positive SRS, but the largest payroll in the division will help in that regard. Francona did well the last two seasons, but the -3 last season has undone most of the goodwill from the first two seasons, although in 2015 they still had a positive SRS.

Ventura appears to have the most issues in general with just the one positive SRS and an overall negative Pythag. Yost appears to have pushed all the right buttons the last two seasons (+10), but those first two seasons were very poor.

But honestly, can we use that information to make a final decision? It is just a small slice of the overall picture.

Another angle we could use is the use of pinch hitters, overall sacrifice hits (bunting yay!) and pinch runners.

Now granted, some of those numbers will be due to specific roster constructions and overall team ability. But there are a couple of shocking numbers in there. Ausmus, not Francona has the season with the most sacrifices (61), but Francona is very consistent in his usage of them. Yost also uses them fairly consistently, but not quite to Francona's level.

Where Francona and Yost really differ is the use of pinch hitters. Francona by far surpasses all of the other managers. And again, a lot of that is due to the right field platoons that he was employing for much of the past three seasons. The one area where Yost really likes to use his bench is pinch running. Francona did that in 2013, but not so much anymore.

The last area we can at least take a little information from, is the use of the bullpen.

Again, this is also subject to the quality of relievers on staff, but Yost definitely cleans up with just one season under 5.0 WAR. And two seasons of 80% LOB% is fantastic. Francona likely edges Ventura here, but just barely. That 2014 White Sox bullpen was atrocious. Molitor had a decent year last year and Ausmus has been saddled with a lot of meh pitchers.

So given the three tables above, I's have to rank the managers as follows:

1. Yost

2. Francona

3. Ausmus

4. Molitor

5. Ventura

Please give your 10 cents in the comments to tell me how crazy I am. Or just post your rankings.