Hardball Talk: Which major-league managers were the best players?
Ryne Sandberg is obviously #1 since he's the only HOFer. I'm surprised Ventura is ranked ahead of Don Mattingly. Just skimming throught he list -- the top 5 all had pretty good careers. 6-11 have atleast some value I'd say; after that there's a drop-off. Walt Weiss seems like he should be higher than #9.
Mattingly has the hype, and Ventura doesn't have quite the career-length advantage I expected. But in ~500 more plate appearances, Ventura hit 72 more homers and walked ~500 more times (compared to Mattingly's ~275 hit advantage). He was also a great defensive third baseman compared to Mattingly being a good defensive first baseman. Mattingly would have needed a full additional WAR every year to make up the difference between him and Ventura.
Matt Williams also has a career WAR advantage, but I think Mattingly's peak is significantly greater.
I probably would put Weiss above Ausmus and likely Black, but a lot of that is personal bias. Ausmus had a much longer career, and arguably was a more important player to his teams. They were actually fairly similar: quality defensive players who could get on base a run a bit.