Ross is not a terrible manager. His teams generally play smart baseball and play hard. He’s done a lot with not at a lot of talent. But he’s not demonstrated any ability to shepherd young players breaking into the league.
He’s a red ass (baseball term, look it up) manager for vets. He has trouble recognizing when a SP needs to be taken out and he rides the bullpen arms that are decent into fatigue by the end of the year. Perhaps, some portion of those issues are related to personal decisions made by upper management. But on the margins where a manager’s decisions are most important, he’s not a strong decision maker. In other words, he’s more than likely not going to win as many games as he will lose. As we saw this year, those games matter.
He’s a middle of the road baseball lifer who’s not a guy I want managing the Cubs when the time comes that they actually have a good team.