Doyle to the A’s
For Ryan Langerhans, word is.
HOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooly mackeral.
Attention Vidro fans, Doyle haters: this is not your thread. Seriously.
By request, a really depressing ranking
1B, by 2007 salary
—
Helton $16.6m
Pujols $15m
Berkman $14.5m
Delgado $14.5m
Sexson $14m
Lee $13m
Konerko $12m
Teixeira $9m
Garciaparra $7.5m
Young + Johnson $6m
Johnson (Nick) $5.5m
Morneau $4.5m
Huff $4m
Casey $4m
Aurilia $3.5m
Mientkiewicz/Phelps ~$2m
Hatteberg $1.5m (+Conine 2m)
Howard $.9m
Pena $.8m
Gonzalez (Adrian) $.5m
Young (Dmitri) $.5m
Shealy $.4m
Youkilis $.4m
Garko $.4m
Jacobs $.4m
Overbay $.4m
Jackson $.4m
Thorman $.4m (+ Wilson $2m)
Johnson (Dan) $0 (Swisher $0)
Morales/Kotchman/etc $0
Fielder $0
LaRoche (Adam) $0
Bullpen usage debate rages!
Geoff Baker, in the Times blog:
There were plenty of congratulations thrown Mike Hargrove’s way by his bullpen critics after he used his relievers outside their normal roles in that series finale in Oakland. Nice to see the critics try to give credit when something goes right for a guy, but I think they might have gone a little overboard in interpreting Hargrove’s willingness to cater to the “high leverage” crowd by looking at the situation rather than the inning.
I don’t think anyone interpreted that as catering to a “high leverage” crowd. But anyway, there’s some meat on what went into the decision (go check it out).
There is a reason managers do not like to use their relief pitchers outside their stated roles on too many a consecutive occasion. It isn’t simply because they are dinosaurs unwilling to try new things. It’s because they’ve seen what can happen when you get a little too cute and creative with your bullpen. Pitchers are creatures of habit and routine. Mess with that at your own peril.
I disagree that using relief pitchers means that you have to use them too frequently, which means, obviously, I disagree with the rest. In every game, no matter how you use your bullpen, some portion of them may be unavailable because of how the previous games went. Even use-restricted closers don’t pitch every night if every night is a save situation: generally they’d go two in a row and sit if there was a third (we saw this followed pretty strictly with Sasaki, for instance).
But if the spot closer blows the save, no one goes after the manager for having used the closer too often.
Every bullpen strategy will at some point result in throwing the wrong guy in. The argument for using good relievers in critical situations is that by doing, they’re able to contribute the most to the team’s success. Using them that way doesn’t mean that you have to ignore their particular talents, or use everyone multiple innings, or engage in loony, mockable behavior.
Or, to put this another way: if you use JJ Putz early in a game to snuff a rally and that means later Mateo has to pitch the ninth with a three-run lead, that’s a dramatically better situation for the M’s than Mateo losing the game and Putz pitching mop-up in the ninth. Either way, the next day both of them will have worked.
I disagree that relief pitchers are inherently creatures of habit and routine — this wasn’t the case for all of baseball’s history. If there’s a good argument for why, when the save was invented, they slowly became creatures of habit and routine for some unrelated cause, I don’t know what it is.
I’m reminded of something in Michael Lewis’ Blind Side, when he talks about how the NFL talent stream works backwards sometimes: a player like Lawrence Taylor will change how the game’s played, and then colleges will look to develop LT clones, and high schools will produce them. Once the save statistic was invented, and baseball moved towards increasingly rigid roles, with defined talents (closer must throw really fast), colleges invented relief aces, and so on. Part of why it’s so hard to manage a bullpen today is because of the constant closer controversies, and the desire of the best relievers to move into that role, because of the recognition and financial incentives.
No one, even the most vehement critics of modern role-based usage, would argue that it’s going to be easy or quick for baseball to work its way out of this.
Cult of Doyle update for 4/22
16 games, 39 at-bats, 5 runs, 9 hits, 1 double, 1 triple, 1 home run, 7 RBI, 7 walks, 5 strikeouts for a .231/.385/.388 line. That’s a decent OPS line, if walk-heavy.
On the Mariners, he would tie Beltre (who has about twenty more plate appearances) for the team lead in walks, and be behind only Johjima in OBP among regulars, with Vidro-esque power.
On bullpen usage
The lengthy post I did on Hargrove’s reliance on roles and how it likely cost the team a game generated a lot of good discussion and some derision that I would even throw out Putz as an option in discussing Hargrove’s options. I disagree that this (or really, any strategy or move) is beyond questioning, and this is an important subject worth our consideration.
Here’s my basic point: modern bullpen usage, with its reliance on one-inning specialists, is a poor use of pitchers.
The role, and the mystique, only began with the invention of the save, and since the save statistic was kept, the role of the closer’s become narrower and narrower, until they’re now largely limited to only pitching the ninth, only if the team’s up 1-3 runs.
This is not how teams managed their pitchers for almost all of baseball history. For a long time, of course, pitchers were expected to go all game, and the pitchers in the bullpen were scraps and cast-offs, often starters who’d lost their endurance as they aged, random kids hoping for a shot.
Then we got the modern relief ace, the stopper, brought in to quench rallies, regularly throwing more than one inning.
In any event, I wanted to throw out some avenues for further reading about optimal bullpen usage, if you’re curious why there’s a huge contingent of really smart people who think the rigid adherence to roles, with 8th inning = setup man, 9th inning = closer, is not the best way to do things.
Baseball Prospectus stuff
“How to Run a Bullpen” (Me)
This is why modern bullpen usage is inefficient. It’s like saving your best pinch-hitter for when you’re behind by three runs, or only starting your best option at shortstop on days when there’s a full moon because that’s when things get crazy. Resources should always be deployed where they can do the most good, and modern closers as blood-lusting Gods of War, along with their Phobos/Deimos setup men (one lefty, one righty), are a bad use of resources.
Includes leverage chart!
“Optimal Bullpen Usage, Continued” (Me)
Research into the value of closers and bullpen usage shows us that the best places to use your best relievers is in close games, especially games that are tied, or where you have a one-run lead. The difference in quality between the first and the third man out of the pen isn’t as great as is generally perceived, so worrying about saving the best pitcher for the highest-leverage inning in a tight game doesn’t make much sense. For all this, though, how to use your best relievers in a game will almost never be quite as clear as choosing a .080 advantage over a .059 advantage in spotting your second-best reliever in the seventh or eighth, because the game situation will never allow you enough future information to use relievers in a way that will appear optimal in retrospect
There’s also a good chapter on this in “Baseball Between the Numbers” (“Are teams letting their closers go to waste?” by Keith Woolner)
Are teams wasting their closers? Not completely, but they aren’t getting as much out of them as they could, and it’s costing them wins. This is one area where the refinement of strategy has actually taken us away from the optimum usage pattern. During the “stopper” era of the 1970s, it was common to see a relief ace such as Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage come in as early as the sixth inning to halt a nascent rally. That was the smart way to go. Focusing on situational leverage, rather than the accumulation of easy ninth-inning saves, is the best way to get the most out of the relief aces.
It’s a great essay, and I recommend it (and the book).
The Book
The Tango/Lichtman/Dolphin “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” has a lot on this. Helpfully, this is excerpted in Sports Illustrated for your enjoyment.
The Hardball Times
Which brings us to another great Tango piece, which goes into leverage and why it’s important to think about it when considering bullpens.
I really liked “The Closer and the Damage Done” (Treder) which examines the evolution of the closer and the modern bullpen.
The Closer model, with its highly specialized distinct bullpen roles, serves a purpose of greatly structuring and simplifying the in-game decision-making process for managers. Once the manager makes the determination of who his Closer is, who his primary Setup man is, who his LOOGYs are, and so on, then the decision of who to summon in various game situations becomes something close to following the recipe in a cookbook: when this happens, do that; once that’s happened, do this. Pre-1979 Bruce Sutter might be brought in during a crucial spot in the 7th inning – a tricky tradeoff decision for his manager to weigh – but a manager following the Closer model faces no such challenge. No matter what, if it’s the 7th inning, your Closer sits. One less thing to have to think about.
It’s a great read. Treder also wrote on the evolution of the lefty specialist in “A History of the LOOGY”: Part One and Part Two
Those should form an excellent introduction to the topic, but please, if you think there are pieces that should be added, drop them in the comments.
All of that raises the question of “why don’t teams do this, if it’s a better way?” Treder addresses this a little, but there are several reasons:
– it’s how it’s done (institutional inertia)
– it’s the easy way to go (risk/reward for managers favors running the bullpen this way)
– it’s what players expect (fit to role, financial rewards for performing to role)
You do see teams apply some of the lessons of baseball research, but usually they only go whole hog if they’re desperate. Generally, where you see this used is on the margins: a manager will annoit someone the closer, someone else the setup man, picking veterans, and then will use their stud youngsters in the role that used to be the “stopper”.
However, the prominent failure of “bullpen by committee” experiments (and the loud, public criticism that came with those failures) makes teams even more risk-averse. Even the A’s, who generally speaking will go out on the weakest limb to test these things, and who for some time enjoyed turning out “proven closers” and then trading them while their value was inflated, gave in and now only play with roles on the margins.
When we saw the White Sox go without a traditional closer and managed the bullpen by the game demands and matchups, they called it “closer by situation” and it worked just fine.
That something exists, and the establishment believes it’s the way things have to be, doesn’t mean that it has always been so, or that it’s the best way to do things. I hope these articles will help show how we got here, and how teams can get more from their relief pitchers.
ESPN broadcasts Yankees game
Thank goodness this week’s Wednesday game is the Indians @ Yankees (4:05). For too long the Yankees have been ignored by both Fox and ESPN in choosing games to broadcast, and this presents a rare opportunity for national fans who don’t have the Yes Network to see this interesting and too-often overlooked team. Kudos to you, ESPN schedulers, for bringing us this unique treat. May your daring programming choice be rewarded by many intrigued fans who will be turned on to see this unfamiliar team take the field.
Other upcoming nationally broadcast games
Friday: Yankees at Red Sox, ESPN
Saturday: Yankees at Red Sox or Cardinals at Cubs, Fox
Sunday: Yankees at Red Sox, ESPN
Monday: Yankees at Tampa Bay, ESPN
Interview at Salon
If you’re looking for something else to read after the 1,000 articles about Felix, you can check out my Q&A with King Kaufman about cheating and baseball over at Salon.
Was a trade any good, and how it relates to evaluating Bavasi
The Foppert release provides a good opportunity to talk about something that frequently comes up in discussions here as an object of contention. When evaluating a trade, there are, to horribly oversimplify, two schools of thought.
1) Each trade should be evaluated on what’s known at the time. If a trade turns out much better than expected, or much worse, that shouldn’t affect our opinion of the trade.
2) Each trade should be evaluated on the results of the trade. If a trade looks like it’s an amazing rip-off, even if at the time everyone acknowledges it as such, but the victim turns out the winner due to unforseen circumstances, the victim’s still the victor.
Obviously, in practice it doesn’t work out that way. Members of the first camp are willing to concede that results are why you make trades, and members of the second camp might well admit that you make the best deal you can and then it’s a bit of a crapshoot.
Generally speaking, I’m almost always in the “time of trade” camp. The example I always cite is “if I walk into the Bellagio, find a roulette table and bet everything I own on number 23 and win, was that a good move?”
People who say yes because it turned out regardless of the odds I received are crazy.
People who say that there are situations where it makes sense – I need to raise money in five minutes to pay for a million-dollar medical procedure, for instance – make sense.
If the Mariners traded Ichiro tomorrow for a can of Sprite, and next week Ichiro tore his hamstring while the can of Sprite turned out to be delicious, that wouldn’t make that trade any better.
There’s a whole other dimension to this, though. The way we evaluate “how a trade looked at the time” means that we’re making a best guess based on all kinds of factors we know, without having knowledge of other factors the teams involved do know, and situations out of the GM’s hands. As Bavasi put it when talking about having to move Guillen and others for nothing when he took the job, “There were a lot of people who were just tired of these guys.” It’s the same as when a GM is well-aware that when they’re ordered to sign a particularly popular player to a new deal that it’s too much money for too long. They’re dinged for the signing, in the same way they’re dinged for releasing a player for off-field reasons.
Evaluating based on what we knew at the time fails in another important way. Teams like the A’s believe that by being smarter in their player evaluation than other teams, they can win what appears to be an even swap. So they want to make many even swaps. If that was true, the “at the time” evaluation would fail: we’d say “Wow, looks like Beane’s making a ton of trades that are okay… and they sure do end up good down the road. I guess he’s an okay trader, based on what we know at the time.”
And the same thing if the reverse was true, and he was being fleeced every time. “Sure looks like he’s making a ton of decent trades… even if they all fall apart a year later.”
“At the time” evaluation’s clearly a lot more reasonable, but it’s also obvious that the results-based can show us something much more valuable, if we’re smart about it.
Take the Braves. For a long time, the Braves ran up an almost unblemished record of giving up pitching prospects in trades that turned into dogs. Every trade, it would look like they might even have given up too much, and those guys would turn to dust. It starts to look suspect: that they knew so much that they gave up pitchers where they knew the perceived value far exceeded the actual value.
And this is where I think the people grinding an axe about the M’s trades in the last… uh, forever… have a good point. As much as we can say that the Garcia-for-Reed trade looked great at the time (and we did, you can look it up), or they got good value dumping guys off left and right during the last three seasons, the total of everything they’ve received in trade is Mike Morse, Jeremy Reed, and Jon Huber. As a group of trades, you’ve got to look at that and wince.
I still think that given the circumstances he was working under, Bavasi got great value for Garcia. And I don’t think there was a lot of value to be milked out of the other guys he shipped off, and he did a fine job there, too.
And I’m going to pretend that this off-season didn’t happen, because I’ll just start yelling and that’ll stop reasonable argument.
There’s no evidence that we should be hopeful that they’ve got a particularly fine eye for spotting hidden talent in other organizations, that they’re picking the “live arm” to get back that has an above-average chance to turn into something interesting, or insisting on getting the unremarkable prospect the owning team secretly covets.
As the team must, even without talking about it even among themselves, be tossing over scenarios where Ichiro’s traded, there’s reason to hope, because they’ve seemed to do well when pressed into these situations, and to worry, as the record of results has not been impressive.
Cult of Doyle update
Snelling hit *two* home runs today off Chan Ho Park and a double off Jorge Sosa to go 3-5 with 3 runs scored and four RBI.
Snelling’s spring training line is now 8-26, 2 doubles, 3 HR, 10 RBI, 19 total bases, 3 walks, 6 K.
.307/.379/.731
Spring training stats don’t mean much, of course.
M’s with more than 20 ABs in spring training and higher rate stats:
AVG: Bloomquist (.500!), LaHair, Vidro, Ibanez, Ichiro!
OBP: Bloomquist, Ibanez, LaHair, Vidro
SLG: —
If Snelling were still in Seattle and had an open shot at the job, well… he’s not.
Go get ’em, Chris.
Cult of Doyle update
Game-winning 3-run home run in the eight off Adkins to beat the Mets 9-6.