Monday, September 29, 2008
Part II: In Which Corporate Cargo Cults
Bruce & Batter Starting Pitchers
As I told you in Part I, I’d try to illuminate the second reason San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins’ lovely feature (supporting his idea that pitchers should go the distance as pitchers in the 50s and 60s did) is a romantic fantasy that's eviscerated by the facts.
Just to remind you, I addressed briefly the more difficult to quantify reason, injuries, in Part I. Part II addresses the better and more reasonably measurable issue: in general, starters perform less well the 3rd and subsequent time through a line-up than they did the 1st two times. While we look at the stats of the great workhorse pitchers of the 50s and 60s with awe, not just for their complete game and innings-pitched numbers, we also have to be impressed with their overall quality compared to the league.But I’m going to illustrate here, using the very workhorses that Bruce Jenkins cited, that they were not the same pitcher in the 3rd and subsequent time through the opposition lineup as their overall stats indicate. In fact, you’ll see that more often than not, not only is the best reliever preventing more offense than the workhorse’s 3rd and subsequent time through, but the 2nd-best reliever is generally better at stopping offense, too.
#1 – Overall, starters aren’t as good the 3rd & subsequent time through the line-up as they are the 1st and 2nd time.
I’ll use two stats to illustrate this for you.
As a measure of performance, I’m using OPS (a stat that summarizes both the frequency batters get on base through hits or walks, combined with the frequency of power hits such as doubles and home runs they get) as a measure of what offense a pitcher yields. To compare RELATIVE performance in different situations (through the start and middle of a game versus the later-in-the-game times managers normally need to think about using a reliever to finish off the start’s efforts), I’m using TOPS+.
TOPS+ is the ratio of what the pitcher surrendered in specific situations relative to his overall performance. As an example, if a pitcher overall gave up an OPS of .759, but gave up an OPS of 626 the first time he faced a batter in a game, he’d have a TOPS+ of 94 when facing batters the 1st time (100 is the pitcher’s average performance, lower is better pitching performance, so a TOPS+ below 100 is better than his average).
So, to repeat from Part I…
Times Facing Opp. in Game (Major League Composite, 2008)
LOWER IS BETTER
Measure 1st time 2nd time 3rd+ time(s)
TOPS+ 94 104 113
OPS .726 .765 .800
In 2008 to date, in general, starters as a whole are less effective in a batter’s 2nd plate appearance than in the batter’s 1st, and less effective still in the batter’s 3rd and subsequent appearances against them in the game.
I won’t go into the reasons some advantage shifts to the batter as the game wears on – it’s a well-trodden area worth an essay of this length.
To reiterate, Starters IN GENERAL aren’t as good the 3rd & subsequent time through the line-up as they are the 1st and 2nd time.
#2 – Jenkins’ Workhorse heroes have roughly the same pattern of declining performance in 3rd and subsequent times through the line-up as less illustrious starters do.
So let’s look at Bruce Jenkins’ poster dudes for whom we have data (Baseball-Reference has the numbers going back to 1956). I’m omitting Bob Feller because his career ended too soon for Retrosheet's tracking data. Warren Spahn & Robin Roberts get an asterisk for having a significant portion (the entire first half) of their careers unfolding before the era that Retrosheet has tallied for by-appearance stats. Jim Kaat gets an asterisk because he worked almost 9% of his innings as a reliever, juicing his 1st-time-through-the-line-up numbers in a way that would punish Jenkins’ assertion unfairly.
WORKHORSES' Career TOPS+ (100= average for that pitchers; lower is better for the pitcher)
Pitcher 1st time 2nd time 3rd+ time(s) Marichal 78 100 119 Seaver 94 100 107 Ryan 100 93 107 Spahn* 87 96 116 Roberts* 92 94 113 Kaat* 94 97 111 2008 All Starters 94 104 113
The Great Workhorse pitchers Jenkins cited share, with one exception, the pattern that the entire pool of 2008 starting pitchers do: they are most effective the first time through the lineup. They are measurably, but not alarmingly, less effective the second time through, and significantly less effective the third and subsequent times through. The biggest visible difference between the Workhorses and the 2008 generic hoi polloi is the generic pitchers of 2008 lost more effectiveness in the second time through.
You already saw the exception is Nolan Ryan. While he’s still less effective the 3rd+ time through, he’s actually better the 2nd time through. The difference is wholly in allowing fewer walks the 2nd time through. Another factor that makes Ryan an interesting outlier.
BTW, I scanned through these numbers for all the starters who led their league in complete games at least twice from 1950 through 1969, and the ones who had at least half their career stats in 1956 or later matched the pattern shown as normal in the chart above. There were no more outliers.
OKAY… so even The Great Workhorses are lesser pitchers the 3rd+ time through the line-up, but (Bruce and his BITGODS are asking now) ¿Surely a great pitcher’s relatively weaker effort still trumps a reliever’s normal effort, yes?
On to…
#3 – How do relievers’ efforts (in general) compare to starters efforts the 3rd+ time through the line-up (in general)
Here’s the 2008 data for all major league starters’ 3rd+ time through compared to all relievers’ efforts.
LOWER IS BETTER
Avg OBA SLG OPS
All 2008 Starters 3+ .283 .347 .454 .800
All 2008 relievers .254 .333 .397 .730
In the general case, relievers as used in 2008 were more effective than starters-in-their-3rd+ - time through the lineup.
As far as the datums are concerned, the BITGODs are wrong. They would say, though, “Well, that’s because these 2008 starters are babied; if they were like they guys Back In The Good Old Days, their performance would exceed that of their relievers. Which brings us to …
#4 - What’s the difference between a Great Workhorse pitcher’s 3rd+ time through compared to the relievers who came in to give them succor?
To answer this question, we need to use a different method, because there’s no data I can grab that would summarize all the data for relievers who were used in significant innings to relieve Great Workhorse starters over the Workhorses’ entire careers.
To see if there’s a trend, I’m going to take the “most average” season I can find for each of Jenkins’ Workhorses, and compare their seasonal marks for 3rd+ time through the line-up against the relievers who could have come in to take over. If the starter’s less-effective 3rd+ time through are still more effective than the relievers who worked with them that season, it’s an argument the manager frittered away an advantage. But if the reliever’s mark is better than the starter’s less-effective 3rd+ time through, it’s an argument
Here’s Marichal’s impressive career line:
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+-----+ 1960 22 SFG NL 6 2 11 11 6 2.66 3.50 132 1.07 1961 23 SFG NL 13 10 29 27 9 3.89 3.83 98 1.24 1962 24 SFG NL 18 11 37 36 18 3.36 3.78 113 1.23 1963 25 SFG NL 25 8 41 40 18 2.41 3.19 132 0.99 1964 26 SFG NL 21 8 33 33 22 2.48 3.57 144 1.08 1965 27 SFG NL 22 13 39 37 24 2.13 3.61 169 0.91 1966 28 SFG NL 25 6 37 36 25 2.23 3.71 167 0.85 1967 29 SFG NL 14 10 26 26 18 2.76 3.34 121 1.17 1968 30 SFG NL 26 9 38 38 30 2.43 2.99 123 1.04 1969 31 SFG NL 21 11 37 36 27 2.10 3.53 168 0.99 1970 32 SFG NL 12 10 34 33 14 4.12 4.01 97 1.30 1971 33 SFG NL 18 11 37 37 18 2.94 3.44 117 1.07 1972 34 SFG NL 6 16 25 24 6 3.71 3.53 95 1.34 1973 35 SFG NL 11 15 34 32 9 3.82 3.85 101 1.29 1974 36 BOS AL 5 1 11 9 0 4.87 3.88 80 1.30 1975 37 LAD NL 0 1 2 2 0 13.50 3.42 25 2.66 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+-----+ 16 Yr WL% .631 243 142 471 457 244 2.89 3.55 123 1.10 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+-----+ 162 Game Avg 17 10 34 33 17 2.89 3.55 123 1.10
His Career ERA+ average was 123 (ERA 23% better than the league average). If you look, you’ll notice that in 1968 Marichal had and ERA+ of 123, the exact same as his career composite. 1967 is pretty close; we can look at that, too.
He’s pretty impressive, even at 9% worse relative to his overall 1968 average, he’s yielding an OPS of only .613 in what is admittedly a pitcher’s year. How about the bullpen behind him? The two relievers with the most use were Frank Linzy & Joe Gibbon. Here are the equivalent lines for their relief work to compare w/the starter's:
1968 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+----- Marichal 3rd+ 37 561 530 41 130 13 3 10 19 .245 .275 .338 .613 Linzy 57 340 304 38 63 9 3 1 25 .207 .265 .266 .532 Gibbon 29 154 128 12 30 2 0 3 17 .234 .331 .320 .651
So Linzy is clearly better than Marichal. And Gibbon, the second-best reliever is about as good, though not quite. Herman Franks, one of the fathers of modern bullpen usage, wisely noticed Linzy was better than Marichal the 3rd time through the line-up and that Gibbon, his second best, was about a good, if you could absorb Gibbon's higher walk rate.
Franks, btw, also had a swing man he used as a reliever in 15 games, Bobby Bolin. Here’s the fireballer’s 1968 line:I Split G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+---- Bolin 15 155 143 9 30 7 1 2 10 .210 .261 .315 .576
Bolin was their long relief guy (15 games, 155 plate appearances, meaning he was facing about 10 batters per relief appearance). His OPS at .576 was better than Marichal’s .613 in Juan’s 3rd+ time through the line-up, too.
In 1967, Marichal had his next-closest to average year (OPS of 121, a little less great than his career 123). Here’s Marichal’s line in 1967 the 3rd+ time through the line-up, as well as stats for the closer, Linzy, and a couple of other available relievers that year:
1967 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS ------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+ Marichal 3rd+ 26 343 317 40 88 6 1 8 19 .278 .320 .379 .699 Linzy 57 378 332 21 67 2 1 4 34 .202 .273 .250 .523 McDaniel 38 249 226 25 55 7 2 4 17 .243 .300 .345 .645 Bolin 22 192 162 16 38 4 0 2 25 .235 .337 .296 .633 Gibbon 18 141 121 13 24 6 1 1 15 .198 .292 .289 .581
Another year of performance for Marichal close to his career average , and another year that Linzy (and at least one other reliever) was good enough to be his equal at the end of a game. While the team also had some relievers who underperformed Marichal’s 3rd+ time through performance, Marichal’s teams didn’t have to suffer when they relieved for him. Relieving Marichal helped his overall performance AND his team’s performance.
TOM SEAVER
Here’s Tom Terrific’s career
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 1967 22 NYM NL 16 13 35 34 18 2.76 3.38 122 1.20 1968 23 NYM NL 16 12 36 35 14 2.20 3.02 137 0.98 1969 24 NYM NL 25 7 36 35 18 2.21 3.63 165 1.03 1970 25 NYM NL 18 12 37 36 19 2.82 4.01 142 1.07 1971 26 NYM NL 20 10 36 35 21 1.76 3.40 193 0.94 1972 27 NYM NL 21 12 35 35 13 2.92 3.35 115 1.11 1973 28 NYM NL 19 10 36 36 18 2.08 3.63 175 0.97 1974 29 NYM NL 11 11 32 32 12 3.20 3.59 112 1.16 1975 30 NYM NL 22 9 36 36 15 2.38 3.45 145 1.08 1976 31 NYM NL 14 11 35 34 13 2.59 3.30 127 1.06 1977 32 TOT NL 21 6 33 33 19 2.58 3.87 150 1.01 1978 33 CIN NL 16 14 36 36 8 2.88 3.58 124 1.18 1979 34 CIN NL 16 6 32 32 9 3.14 3.78 120 1.15 1980 35 CIN NL 10 8 26 26 5 3.64 3.61 99 1.18 1981 36 CIN NL 14 2 23 23 6 2.54 3.56 140 1.11 1982 37 CIN NL 5 13 21 21 0 5.50 3.68 67 1.61 1983 38 NYM NL 9 14 34 34 5 3.55 3.64 103 1.24 1984 39 CHW AL 15 11 34 33 10 3.95 4.16 105 1.17 1985 40 CHW AL 16 11 35 33 6 3.17 4.32 136 1.22 1986 41 TOT AL 7 13 28 28 2 4.03 4.25 106 1.33 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 20 Yr WL% .603 311 205 656 647 231 2.86 3.64 127 1.12 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 162 Game Avg 16 10 34 33 12 2.86 3.64 127 1.12
Seaver’s career ERA+ is 127 and the seasons he finished closest to that were 1976 (127) and 1978 (124). Here’s his breathtaking line for 3rd time through in 1976, with parallel lines for some of the relievers Mets manager Joe Frazier had in the bullpen: Skip Lockwood, Bob Apodaca & Daffy Sanders.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS
----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+-----
Seaver 3rd+ 34 438 401 37 88 14 2 8 32 .219 .280 .324 .604
Lockwood 56 375 333 31 62 6 2 6 34 .186 .265 .270 .535
Apodaca 40 292 251 20 51 14 0 1 25 .203 .280 .271 .551
Sanders 34 202 180 16 42 8 0 4 15 .233 .291 .344 .636
The most- and second most effective relievers were more effective than Seaver, and the third most effective was definitely not as good, but no slouch either.
How about 1978?
Here is Seaver the 3rd+ time and his relievers that year. Doug Bair was the fireman Reds' manager Sparky Anderson used to close games. Manny Sarmiento was used as the next-best reliever, Tom “The Scottish Skeptic” Hume was a swing man, and Pedro Borbon, Sr., was the mop-up pitcher, meant to absorb punishment when the team got blown out early.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS
+-----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+-----+
Seaver 3rd+ 35 405 362 34 89 18 4 12 34 .246 .308 .417 .725
Bair 70 416 369 23 87 8 2 6 38 .236 .305 .317 .622
Borbon 62 418 372 56 102 23 1 6 27 .274 .324 .390 .713
Sarmiento 59 443 386 56 92 15 3 14 43 .238 .311 .402 .713
Hume 19 135 124 11 31 3 2 2 8 .250 .293 .355 .648
All of them, even the mop-up gent, equaled Seaver’s 3rd+ time effectiveness. In average Seaver years, relieving Seaver wasn’t hurting his team’s chances of winning games.
WARREN SPAHN
Half of Spahn’s career is outside the range of Retrosheet’s detailed stats, so we’re going to miss the season that’s the closest match to his career average (1954), but we still get to look at 1959, a close, but slightly better ERA+ season.
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+-----+ 1942 21 BSN NL 0 0 4 2 1 5.74 3.31 58 2.29 1946 25 BSN NL 8 5 24 16 8 2.94 3.45 117 1.13 1947 26 BSN NL 21 10 40 35 22 2.33 3.90 168 1.13 1948 27 BSN NL 15 12 36 35 16 3.71 3.84 103 1.22 1949 28 BSN NL 21 14 38 38 25 3.07 3.80 124 1.22 1950 29 BSN NL 21 17 41 39 25 3.16 3.85 122 1.22 1951 30 BSN NL 22 14 39 36 26 2.98 3.68 123 1.24 1952 31 BSN NL 14 19 40 35 19 2.98 3.62 121 1.15 1953 32 MLN NL 23 7 35 32 24 2.10 3.94 188 1.05 1954 33 MLN NL 21 12 39 34 23 3.14 3.75 119 1.22 1955 34 MLN NL 17 14 39 32 16 3.26 3.76 115 1.27 1956 35 MLN NL 20 11 39 35 20 2.78 3.47 125 1.07 1957 36 MLN NL 21 11 39 35 18 2.69 3.49 130 1.17 1958 37 MLN NL 22 11 38 36 23 3.07 3.52 114 1.14 1959 38 MLN NL 21 15 40 36 21 2.96 3.55 120 1.20 1960 39 MLN NL 21 10 40 33 18 3.50 3.42 98 1.22 1961 40 MLN NL 21 13 38 34 21 3.02 3.71 123 1.14 1962 41 MLN NL 18 14 34 34 22 3.04 3.78 124 1.12 1963 42 MLN NL 23 7 33 33 22 2.60 3.22 124 1.11 1964 43 MLN NL 6 13 38 25 4 5.29 3.54 67 1.47 1965 44 TOT NL 7 16 36 30 8 4.01 3.54 88 1.34 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+---- 21 Yr WL% .597 363 245 750 665 382 3.09 3.65 118 1.19 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+-----+-----+----+---- 162 Game Avg 17 11 36 31 18 3.09 3.65 118 1.19
You know the drill by now.
I Split G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+----- Spahn 3rd+ 34 490 458 45 126 22 2 7 22 .275 .309 .378 .687 McMahon 60 356 310 26 81 10 2 5 37 .261 .338 .355 .693 Rush 22 202 187 12 41 6 2 2 11 .219 .265 .305 .570 Jay 15 119 102 14 23 3 0 3 13 .225 .322 .343 .665
BTW: Spahn’s 1959 performance was better the 2nd time through the lineup than the 1st time through, though he still decayed the 3rd+ time through.
Manager Fred Haney used his #6, #5, #4 and even his #3 starters in relief more often than most, in part because his #1 and #2 (Burdette and Spahn) started so often.
The marquee closer on this team was Don “Man on a White Horse” McMahon, and his OPS is a tad less good than Spahn’s, certainly not a big shear-off. Bob “I’m Just Lookin’ For Some” Rush and Joey Jay, both of whom got a decent number of starts, were somewhat better in relief than Spahn the 3rd time through.
In 1954, the Braves had three relievers with ERAs lower than Spahn’s but without the stats to support it, and given the unreliability of using ERA as a way to measure reliever effectiveness, we can’t draw any conclusions for that year.
Given the data we have for the second half of Spahn’s career, there’s no support for the idea that the Braves needed Spahn to pitch complete games if they wanted to win the games he appeared in.
NOLAN RYAN
Here’s the career of the most distinctive outlier in Jenkins’ pile.
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 1966 19 NYM NL 0 1 2 1 0 15.00 3.61 24 2.66 1968 21 NYM NL 6 9 21 18 3 3.09 3.02 98 1.25 1969 22 NYM NL 6 3 25 10 2 3.53 3.63 103 1.26 1970 23 NYM NL 7 11 27 19 5 3.42 4.01 117 1.39 1971 24 NYM NL 10 14 30 26 3 3.97 3.40 86 1.58 1972 25 CAL AL 19 16 39 39 20 2.28 2.92 128 1.13 1973 26 CAL AL 21 16 41 39 26 2.87 3.52 122 1.22 1974 27 CAL AL 22 16 42 41 26 2.89 3.41 118 1.27 1975 28 CAL AL 14 12 28 28 10 3.45 3.52 102 1.43 1976 29 CAL AL 17 18 39 39 21 3.36 3.31 99 1.32 1977 30 CAL AL 19 16 37 37 22 2.77 3.91 141 1.34 1978 31 CAL AL 10 13 31 31 14 3.72 3.63 98 1.41 1979 32 CAL AL 16 14 34 34 17 3.60 4.06 113 1.27 1980 33 HOU NL 11 10 35 35 4 3.35 3.28 98 1.29 1981 34 HOU NL 11 5 21 21 5 1.69 3.28 194 1.12 1982 35 HOU NL 16 12 35 35 10 3.16 3.32 105 1.21 1983 36 HOU NL 14 9 29 29 5 2.98 3.38 114 1.19 1984 37 HOU NL 12 11 30 30 5 3.04 3.31 109 1.15 1985 38 HOU NL 10 12 35 35 4 3.80 3.45 91 1.29 1986 39 HOU NL 12 8 30 30 1 3.34 3.58 107 1.12 1987 40 HOU NL 8 16 34 34 0 2.76 3.92 142 1.13 1988 41 HOU NL 12 11 33 33 4 3.52 3.32 94 1.24 1989 42 TEX AL 16 10 32 32 6 3.20 3.97 124 1.08 1990 43 TEX AL 13 9 30 30 5 3.44 3.96 115 1.03 1991 44 TEX AL 12 6 27 27 2 2.91 4.06 139 1.00 1992 45 TEX AL 5 9 27 27 2 3.72 3.83 103 1.31 1993 46 TEX AL 5 5 13 13 0 4.88 4.16 85 1.41 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 27 Yr WL% .526 324 292 807 773 222 3.19 3.56 111 1.24 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 162 Game Avg 13 12 34 33 9 3.19 3.56 111 1.24
The seasons closest to his career averages are 1979 and 1984.
1979 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+-----+ Ryan 3rd+ PA 29 359 303 32 61 11 1 6 47 .201 .311 .304 .615 Clear 52 481 398 48 87 8 1 6 68 .219 .333 .289 .622 La Roche 52 373 328 52 104 15 1 12 32 .317 .375 .479 .854 Barlow 35 378 338 54 106 13 4 8 30 .314 .373 .447 .820
The best reliever of the bunch was the closer, Mark Clear. He’s not quite as good as Ryan. I’ve shown the most-used arms out of the ‘pen; there are others, but they are worse.
In 1984, Ryan reversed the normal pattern, with his performance improving each time through the line-up.
1984 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+-----+ Ryan 3rd+ PA 24 240 220 21 44 4 3 4 16 .200 .255 .300 .555 Dawley 60 402 351 24 82 13 4 5 35 .234 .298 .336 .635 DiPino 57 329 285 32 74 9 0 3 36 .260 .343 .323 .665 Smith 53 304 280 22 60 6 3 5 20 .214 .268 .311 .579 LaCoss 21 170 146 16 35 5 1 1 20 .240 .331 .308 .640
Again in 1984, Ryan was just plain better in his 3rd time through than any reliever you might send in for him. Not that this group is bad…they’re a pretty good group (and it wasn’t just playing half their games in the Astrodome that built their stats). They’re just not as good as Ryan the 3rd time through.
This is the case Bruce Jenkins has been waiting for – where the Great Workhorse is actually better at the end of the game than anyone in the bullpen even when they’re fresh.
ROBIN ROBERTS
Like Spahn, we don’t have Retrosheet data for the first half of Roberts’ most excellent career:
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 1948 21 PHI NL 7 9 20 20 9 3.19 3.95 124 1.42 1949 22 PHI NL 15 15 43 31 11 3.69 3.96 107 1.34 1950 23 PHI NL 20 11 40 39 21 3.02 4.06 135 1.18 1951 24 PHI NL 21 15 44 39 22 3.03 3.84 127 1.10 1952 25 PHI NL 28 7 39 37 30 2.59 3.66 141 1.02 1953 26 PHI NL 23 16 44 41 33 2.75 4.20 152 1.11 1954 27 PHI NL 23 15 45 38 29 2.97 4.03 136 1.02 1955 28 PHI NL 23 14 41 38 26 3.28 3.96 121 1.13 1956 29 PHI NL 19 18 43 37 22 4.45 3.73 84 1.23 1957 30 PHI NL 10 22 39 32 14 4.07 3.80 93 1.15 1958 31 PHI NL 17 14 35 34 21 3.24 3.95 122 1.19 1959 32 PHI NL 15 17 35 35 19 4.27 4.10 96 1.17 1960 33 PHI NL 12 16 35 33 13 4.02 3.88 96 1.22 1961 34 PHI NL 1 10 26 18 2 5.85 4.07 70 1.51 1962 35 BAL AL 10 9 27 25 6 2.78 3.69 133 1.13 1963 36 BAL AL 14 13 35 35 9 3.33 3.45 104 1.07 1964 37 BAL AL 13 7 31 31 8 2.91 3.59 123 1.25 1965 38 TOT 10 9 30 25 8 2.78 3.43 123 1.05 1966 39 TOT NL 5 8 24 21 2 4.82 3.51 73 1.44 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 19 Yr WL% .539 286 245 676 609 305 3.41 3.86 113 1.17 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 162 Game Avg 15 12 35 32 16 3.41 3.86 113 1.17
You’ll notice that for the first time, we don’t have a tidy single season to use as an exemplar for his career. In 1957-59, he was close in several ways, not in ERA+, but fairly close in baserunners per inning (WHIP in the table). Of those three years, Roberts’ strongest relative 3rd+ time through was 1957 (better performance than the 2nd time through), and 1958 has the weakest bullpen, so I’ll show them both. In both, Turk Farrell had the linchpin role and Jim Hearn and others backed him up.
1957 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+----- Roberts 3rd+ 30 371 346 53 89 15 3 17 17 .257 .291 .465 .757 Farrell 52 353 305 29 74 7 4 2 36 .243 .324 .311 .635 RJ Miller 31 235 215 17 56 9 4 4 14 .260 .302 .395 .697 Hearn 32 217 202 22 50 10 1 5 11 .248 .290 .381 .671 Morehead 33 221 194 26 53 15 3 1 19 .273 .338 .397 .735 1958 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+----- Roberts 3rd+ 32 458 429 47 120 20 4 17 20 .280 .310 .464 .774 Farrell 54 401 345 41 84 13 5 7 40 .243 .320 .371 .691 Hearn 38 302 269 43 80 10 6 6 26 .297 .357 .446 .803 Meyer 32 248 217 17 47 4 2 2 25 .217 .299 .281 .580
In 1957, manager Mayo Smith had plenty of effective bullpen options to go to for Roberts. In 1958, Smith and successor Eddie Sawyer had a couple of more effective choices (and some scary implode-o-rama Human Hand Grenades).
As with Spahn, given the data for the second half of Roberts’ career, there’s no support for the idea that the Phillies needed Roberts to pitch complete games if they wanted to win the games he appeared in.
JIM KAAT
Here’s Kaat’s marathon career
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 1959 20 WSH AL 0 2 3 2 0 12.60 3.94 31 2.20 1960 21 WSH AL 1 5 13 9 0 5.58 3.95 71 1.58 1961 22 MIN AL 9 17 36 29 8 3.90 4.27 109 1.34 1962 23 MIN AL 18 14 39 35 16 3.14 4.09 130 1.18 1963 24 MIN AL 10 10 31 27 7 4.19 3.67 88 1.30 1964 25 MIN AL 17 11 36 34 13 3.22 3.59 111 1.19 1965 26 MIN AL 18 11 45 42 7 2.83 3.56 126 1.24 1966 27 MIN AL 25 13 41 41 19 2.75 3.61 131 1.07 1967 28 MIN AL 16 13 42 38 13 3.04 3.46 114 1.18 1968 29 MIN AL 14 12 30 29 9 2.94 3.13 106 1.11 1969 30 MIN AL 14 13 40 32 10 3.49 3.70 106 1.34 1970 31 MIN AL 14 10 45 34 4 3.56 3.79 107 1.31 1971 32 MIN AL 13 14 39 38 15 3.32 3.54 107 1.23 1972 33 MIN AL 10 2 15 15 5 2.06 3.22 156 1.00 1973 34 TOT AL 15 13 36 35 10 4.37 3.98 91 1.30 1974 35 CHW AL 21 13 42 39 15 2.92 3.77 129 1.17 1975 36 CHW AL 20 14 43 41 12 3.11 3.90 125 1.31 1976 37 PHI NL 12 14 38 35 7 3.48 3.58 103 1.19 1977 38 PHI NL 6 11 35 27 2 5.39 4.03 75 1.56 1978 39 PHI NL 8 5 26 24 2 4.10 3.58 87 1.29 1979 40 TOT 3 3 43 2 0 3.92 4.03 103 1.38 1980 41 TOT 8 8 53 14 6 3.94 3.72 94 1.37 1981 42 STL NL 6 6 41 1 0 3.40 3.56 105 1.45 1982 43 STL NL 5 3 62 2 0 4.08 3.64 89 1.36 1983 44 STL NL 0 0 24 0 0 3.89 3.64 93 1.67 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 25 Yr WL% .544 283 237 898 625 180 3.45 3.71 107 1.25 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++-----+-----+----+---- 162 Game Avg 12 10 40 27 8 3.45 3.71 107 1.25
There are five years that are close enough for (inhuman) hand grenades or horseshoes. I’m going to use 1970 and 1971 to exemplify seasons that are close to “average” for Kitty’s kareer.
In 1970, manager Bill Rigney had a great bullpen. And it shows in the way he used the durable Kaat – allowing him to go the distance only four times. In 1971, Rigney’s bullpen ace, Ron Perranowski turned into a blancmange, the much of the ‘pen was shaky, and Kitty went the complete game 15 times.
1970 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB BA OBP SLG OPS +-+------------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---++-----+-----+-----+----- Kaat 3rd+ 32 279 251 36 83 9 2 13 20 .331 .379 .538 .917 Perranowski 67 471 417 38 108 6 3 7 42 .259 .325 .338 .664 S. Williams 68 456 408 34 85 11 2 8 32 .208 .271 .304 .575 T. Hall 41 317 275 27 47 8 5 6 36 .171 .268 .302 .570 Zepp 23 136 130 10 28 4 1 3 5 .215 .243 .331 .573
1971 G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB I BA OBP SLG OPS +-+-----------+---+----+----+---+---+--+--+--+---+------+-----+-----+-----+ Kaat 3rd+ 35 409 386 40 104 18 2 8 14 .269 .297 .389 .686 S. Williams 55 381 318 43 72 13 2 5 45 .226 .336 .327 .663 T. Hall 37 257 217 19 40 7 1 4 35 .184 .295 .281 .576 Perranowski 47 290 241 49 76 7 4 4 31 .315 .396 .427 .824
Even in the wobbly 1971 bullpen, the second-most effective reliever was an improvement over Kaat’s 3rd+ trip through opponents’ line-ups.
NOTE: If anyone wants to crawl through Kaat’s other close-to-Kaat-average seasons and see if there are counter-examples where he’s better than the second-best reliever, feel free to do it and let me know what you find.
Kaat, interesting informant to intelligent sportswriters everywhere, is yet another one of Jenkins’ Workhorses who undermine The BITGOD Prescription for which he campaigns.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSION
There are no measurements or statistics that support the idea that getting pitchers to go the distance more will help their teams or the quality of their own performances. Even ignoring the possibility of injuries or wear-ünd-tear(no mean oversight), teams with ordinary bullpens don’t risk losing more games than they would by letting their better pitchers-who-are-not-the-reincarnation-of-Nolan-Ryan pitch a gaggle of CGs.
Most pitchers who are relievers are not as good as most pitchers who are starters, and certainly the average reliever is far inferior to the top-ranked starts. BUT that doesn’t mean a decent reliever won’t outperform in his first handful of batters compared to a Great Workhorse in the latter’s 3rd+ time through the line-up.
I’m not suggesting that no young starter will ever again be an outlier in the direction of Nolan Ryan. It might turn out that Tim Lincecum (who was better his third time through the lineup than the second time through both this year and last) is the next possible one. But you can’t turn someone into Nolan Ryan by wishing or by running most young starters through a protocol that will turn most of them into the Steaming Rubble of a Brandon Duckworth career.
The BITGOD Prescription is a patent medicine, a intoxicating tonic for the nostalgic. Love it if you will, but stop pretending it’s a prescription that will make teams more successful. There’s just not evidence to support it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Corporate Cargo Cults:
Bruce Jenkins, The Duke of Moral Hazard &
His Young Pitcher Slaughterhouse
These are the dark ages of pitching. It is a time of cowardice and fear, oblivious to the lessons of history. If there's a bond among starting pitchers of the pitch-count era, it's that they were born too late. One of life's great truisms is to finish what you start.
It's what you tell your kids, your surgeon, your contractor. This once applied to baseball, with precision, but now there's a new law:
Just quit. Let somebody else finish the job. You did your part, now go be a cheerleader.
Pitch counts have destroyed not only the elements of pride and accomplishment among starting pitchers, but the art of winning. If one thing characterized the great pitchers of the past, from Bob Feller to Warren Spahn to Tom Seaver, it's that they learned how to win.
You don't get that from a "quality start" and a nice, early shower. It's when you understand the difference between a breezy sixth
inning and a stressful ninth, when you brought that victory home, and can't wait to do it again. – Bruce Jenkins
Every line of work has its own cargo cults, a set of energetically-pursued methods based on a mass delusion. When they get institutionalised as S.O.P., they can be really scary. When San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Bruce Jenkins campaigns for Baseball’s most resilient Cargo Cult, it’s downright Resident Evil: Apocalypse scary (truly heart-pounding but at the same time so patently ridiculous you can’t believe anyone would bother wasting their craft on it).
We’ll get back to Jenkins and baseball in a minute, but first a little more about Cargo Cults in general.
AIRSTRIPS CREATE AIRPLANESThe best known Anthropology example of the Cargo Cult are some post- WWII Pacific islander religions.
During the war, outsiders had built airfields to land or transfer supplies to support the war, and some of the material goods got skimmed off for the residents. The war ended, the shipments stopped coming through.
That ended the goodies. The residents wanted to goodies back. Having noticed that air transports followed air fields, they presumed, therefore, that air fields generated cargo planes, so they built rudimentary landing strips they assumed would generate the traffic that provided the material goods.
Like native cults, Corporate Cargo Cults are rarely fabricated out of nothing – they’re usually based on an historical success or failure of remarkable proportion.
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* “Less regulation is always better than the amount we currently have”
* “No one ever lost their job buying Microsoft system software”
* “Real estate is the one investment you can never lose money in”
“Leadership” tends to institutionalize whatever response seemed to work in the crisis moment even if the causality was questionable.
Later, when the crisis has passed, people forget the context of the response and merely repeat their past behavior.
As a species, we generally benefit from automatic responses (not rethinking from scratch every response to every stimulus). So, it’s easy to take a general tendency and assume that it’s going to work in all cases, regardless of context. That’s the easiest path to walk hard.
Worse than the absurdity of the Cargo Cult, one of its critical attributes is that it actually undermines the chances for organizational success.
THE DUKES OF MORAL HAZARDThere aren’t many Cargo Cults in Baseball – there are superstitions and irrelevant rituals, to be sure (a pitcher not stepping on the line when walking from mound to dugout after a half-inning, or a player not changing undershirt during a hot streak). But such quirks rarely affect performance for better or worse.
Baseball, unlike Banking or Real Estate or most finance or service endeavors, is relentlessly focused on performance right now and how actions affect performance in the future, and Baseball management relentlessly focuses on facts to fine-tune behaviors. In Baseball, unlike corporate or academic or non-profit arenas, decisions are almost always measured, and decision-makers almost always held accountable. So in Baseball, Cargo Cult adherence tends to take one out of the pool with pretty good certainty and usually with some whoop-axe alacrity, too.
Baseball’s worst Cargo Cult has been on the wane for about a decade, the religion built around the value/virtue of starting pitchers throwing complete games (sometimes also the value of having a pitcher be a 20-game winner, or throwing 250 innings for a season).
The practice was changed because of belief, substantiated heavily as the general case, that heavy use of a pitcher leads to more injuries and, in many cases, prematurely ends more careers than more regulated use does. More scientific front offices and pitching coaches followed the vanguard of data-equipped, fact-based leaders like the Oakland Athletics’ and New York Mets’ Rick Peterson and started rebuilding the protocols of when to pull a starter, especially a young one (because the effects of wear vary by many factors, but most markedly by the experience (functional age) of the pitcher).
And as the adherence to the practice has been on the wane, the Cargo Cult’s diminishing number of adherents seem, as the hangers-on to any shrinking ideology or religion do, more strident and entrenched, more sure they are right. Instead of being about team wins, the argument sounds more like an exhortation to some moral imperative, as though pitching 7 strong innings and yielding the mound to a fresh arm was un-manly (cue The Four Feathers).
Bruce Jenkins, one of the more insightful and readable columnists around, has been on a Starters Should Pitch Workloads Like They Did Back In The Good Old Days (BITGOD) crusade for a while, and his recent masterwork was a pair ‘o big features (August 26 - 27) about the lost art of the complete game.
Fun, interesting, well-written, and completely eviscerated…not by examples he omitted, but by the very examples he damningly included. His citations generally make the case AGAINST using pitchers more often and for longer outings.
I recommend you read the whole piece, but here are what I consider the essential points (after the exhortationalistic epigramme at the top of this entry).
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* Pitchers from previous eras consider regulating starters’ outing length by pitch count is absurd.
* By definition, most relievers are generally not as good as starters (if they were as good, they’d be starters).
* Pulling a starter and replacing him in the late innings with a lesser pitcher undermines team accomplishments.
* Back in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, pitchers could go complete games because it was expected of them and they were conditioned to go the distance. The reason they don’t anymore is because they’re not trained to nor expected to. Jenkins: “If your job security depends on finishing a game - with 160 pitches, if that's what it takes - then you don't think twice about it, nor does your manager, general manager or owner. The act becomes as mundane as covering first base or laying down a bunt.”.
* Contemporary marquee starters such as Tim Lincecum, Carlos Zambrano, Dan Haren and Scott Kazmir should be notching complete games at the historical, not contemporary rate, but the new practice is depriving them of that opportunity, and perhaps they enjoy the game less, and perhaps should be respected less for their accomplishments as a result.
* If teams not only expected more complete games, but moved from a five-man to a four-man rotation as Jenkins suggests (loading the expectation of 20% more outings per season for each starting pitcher), middle relievers would pitch less and those relievers are “pretty much a joke on many teams”.
* Teams should launch a Counter-Reformation against the pitch count reforms and start training pitchers to go the distance. It will benefit the pitchers physically and emotionally and the teams with better potential performance, and injury rates won’t be much different from today’s pitch count-driven results.
There were some great examples of BITGOD workhorses: Robin Roberts, Warren Spahn, Juan Marichal, Tom Seaver, Bob Feller. And Nolan Ryan and Jim Kaat, both heavily-worked pitchers who worked well into their 40s. A sidebar featured pitchers less known to fans who achieved great feats of game endurance, such as Joe Oeschger and Leon Cadore who both went the distance in a 22-inning game back in 1920, and Tom Cheney, who tossed a 166-pitch (thanks, 'Neck) complete game in 1962.
THE REALITY OF THE DUKE OF MORAL HAZARD’S EXAMPLES
The reality of the pitchers he cites generally (not universally) makes a powerful counter-case to his religion.
Here’s why.
Some of those pitchers broke down because of their heroic workloads. All the others for whom we have Retrosheet data generally pitched late innings less effectively than the relievers who replaced them. That is, while a great starter’s composite performance was/is better than a merely decent reliever’s, a great starter’s late in the game (the time a reliever would generally replace the starter) performance is inferior to that of a decent reliever from that team. We have, thanks to Retrosheet.Org and Baseball Reference, detailed game-by-game and seasonal statistics for teams’ starting pitcher outings from 1956 through the present. Where I have such statistical data, we’ll look at it.
In this, Part I, entry, I’m going to cite some explanation of the pre-1956 careers of some of the workhorses Jenkins cites. In Part II of this entry, I’m going to go through all the 1956- and on pitchers Retrosheet and Baseball Reference document whose efforts Jenkins uses to support his beliefs and comment on each one.
METHOD NOTES: To compare starters with their relievers, I’m going to use ERA+ (pitcher’s ERA relative to the league average) as an indicator to determine a season that was “average” for that starter. So, for example, if Jim Kaat’s career composite ERA+ was 107 (seven percent better than the leagues he pitched in), I will find the full season he had with the ERA+ closest to 107.
Then, I’m going to find the 2nd-best reliever on the starter’s team that year. I’ll choose based on a mix of science and art – I’ll generally look over a pair of relievers: the marquee reliever and then the best from the remainder of relievers who pitched serious innings. Of that pair, I’ll choose the second best performer.
I’m choosing the second best because unlike a Strat-O-Matic tussle, a real manager has imperfect knowledge of the statistical probabilities of each individual’s success or failure. The manager finds out about effectiveness in a range of relief situations in an ongoing small-sample experiments through the season. So we need to saddle the manager with a good, not the best, choice, to relieve the great starter, a more “known” contributor.
I’m going to use the stat OPS (On Base Plus Slugging Average) as an indicator of effectiveness, of what a pitcher gave up to opponents. I’m going to compare the 2nd-best reliever’s OPS to the OPS of the subject starter’s performance facing batters in batters’ 3rd and subsequent plate appearances.
To reiterate, it doesn’t matter to the team’s overall effectiveness whether a starter’s performance the first two times he faces batters is better than a reliever’s performance; a reliever almost never replace a starter who’s cruising early in a game. But by the 3rd or 4th time in a game a starter is seeing the batter, the pitcher is more likely to have some fatigue, and the batter more locked into the pitcher’s stuff.
I’m also going to refer to TOPS+, the ratio of what the pitcher surrendered in specific situations relative to his overall performance. As an example, if a pitcher overall gave up an OPS of .759, but gave up an OPS of 626 the first time he faced a batter in a game, he’d have a TOPS+ of 94 when facing batters the 1st time (better than his average).
MISSING THE STRIKE ZONE
The complexity of analyzing Jenkins’ proposed initiative is that his argument aims at one cause and then presumes a pair of different
effects.
The BITGODs aim for more complete games, and moral virtue issues aside, assume that pitcher injuries won’t increase. These, I’ll call
the Injury and the Moral Rectitude issues.
He also believes that the teams would surrender fewer runs/win more games if good starters both worked longer and started more often (The BITGOD Prescription). Again, Jenkins suggests that if you replace reliever innings with incrementally more great starter innings, you get better composite team pitching performance. This, I’ll call the Team Performance issue.
I’m not going to try to take on the full scope of the injury question. I think it’s a major factor, but injury data is as hard to nail down as a gyrating sea cucumber addicted to crack and hosed down with extra virgin olive oil. And Retrosheet and (even the miraculous) Baseball Reference keep no stats on Moral Rectitude, so, for now at least, I’m only going to deal with it in this Part I, and only a little.
Let’s focus for now on Team Performance. ¿Would a team’s overall pitching benefit from The BITGOD Prescription? The question should be: “Is a fresh reliever worse than a great starter by batters' 3rd and later plate appearance against that starter?” The vast majority of starters are less effective the 3rd and subsequent plate appearances against a batter than they were in the 1st plate appearance they face the batter.
Times Facing Opp. in Game (Major League Composite, 2008) I Split OPS tOPS+ +-+------------++-----++-----+ 1st PA in G .726 94 2nd PA in G .765 104 3rd+ PA in G .800 113
source: Baseball-Reference.Com
In 2008 to date, in general, starters as a whole are less effective in a batter’s 2nd plate appearance than in the batter’s 1st, and less effective still in the batter’s 3rd and subsequent appearances against them in the game. Okay, so that’s true IN GENERAL.
But the BITGODs aren’t suggesting human punching bags like the Orioles’ hapless Radicalhams Liz pitch complete games and go every fourth start; how about the great (mostly Hall of Fame) workhorses Jenkins cites? And how about the contemporary marquee starters he hopes will be the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation leading us all back to the Chef’s Salad Days of Infinite Virtue and World Series Hardware? We’ll take a quick look at Lincecum and his cohort, too, in Part II.
SOME FACTS: PITCHERS CITED AS HEROIC
For the purpose of addressing the injury issues a little, let's look at the career trajectories of
starters called out in a sidebar by Jenkins as heroic performers.
Jenkins writes:
In 1904, a 30-year-old Yankees pitcher named Jack Chesbro led the American League with 48 complete games.
Let’s take a quick look at Happy Jack Chesbro’s career.
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG IP ERA *lgERA *ERA+ +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++------+-----+-----+----+ 1899 25 PIT NL 6 9 19 17 15 149.0 4.11 3.81 93 1900 26 PIT NL 15 13 32 26 20 215.7 3.67 3.62 99 1901 27 PIT NL 21 10 36 28 26 287.7 2.38 3.25 137 1902 28 PIT NL 28 6 35 33 31 286.3 2.17 2.75 127 1903 29 NYY AL 21 15 40 36 33 324.7 2.77 3.11 112 1904 30 NYY AL 41 12 55 51 48 454.7 1.82 2.70 148 1905 31 NYY AL 19 15 41 38 24 303.3 2.20 2.91 133 1906 32 NYY AL 23 17 49 42 24 325.0 2.96 2.96 100 1907 33 NYY AL 10 10 30 25 17 206.0 2.53 2.79 110 1908 34 NYY AL 14 20 45 31 20 288.7 2.93 2.46 84 1909 35 TOT AL 0 5 10 5 2 55.7 6.14 2.52 41 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++------+-----+-----+----+ 11 Yr WL%.600 198-132 392 332 260 2896 2.68 2.96 110 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---++------+-----+-----+----+ 162 Game Avg 18-12 36 31 24 272.0 2.68 2.96 110 source: Baseball-Reference.Com
Happy Jack was built up as a young pitcher to take increasing workloads, not unlike an early version of the BITGOD Prescription. Then, at age 30, he pitched the 454 innings, going 41-12 for the Highlanders/Yankees. He had an ERA+ of 148 (an ERA 48% better than the league as a whole).
Don’t imagine for a second that even with the Manliness build up, 454 innings and 48 complete games didn’t affect his career. The following year, he had 25% fewer starts (38) and while still an excellent pitcher, his superiority waned to an ERA+ of 133 (an ERA 33% better than the league). The year after that, increased starts, lesser performance yet, and the year after that, at age 33, his last useful year, significantly fewer starts and an ERA+ of 100 (that is, league average). And he became Crappy Jack for the next two years and was out of the majors.
Chesbro is in the Hall of Fame, by the way, and that supports Jenkins a tad, though to be fair, Chesbro’s installation is all about his durability over a medium length career and what he did in that single 1904 season.
It looks like his magnificent record year took a toll and he was never the same pitcher again. We can’t prove it was cause=workload and effect=diminished performance. But since Jenkins cited his heroism and something Lincecum should be admiring, it’s worth looking at what Chesbro’s career trajectory was and asking the question “Is that a good career trajectory for Lincecum?”
Jenkins writes:
In a 16-inning, complete-game win against Baltimore in 1962, Washington's Tom Cheney threw 228 pitches.
Here’s Cheney’s career (nice Jeff Merron narrative on him):
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS IP ERA *lgERA *ERA+ +--------------+---+----+---+---++------++-----+-----+----+ 1957 22 STL NL 0 1 4 3 9.0 5.00 4.00 80 1959 24 STL NL 0 1 11 2 11.7 6.94 4.22 61 1960 25 PIT NL 2 2 11 8 52.0 3.98 3.76 95 1961 26 TOT 1 3 11 7 29.7 10.01 3.90 39 1962 27 WSA AL 7 9 37 23 173.3 3.17 4.05 128 1963 28 WSA AL 8 9 23 21 136.3 2.71 3.74 138 1964 29 WSA AL 1 3 15 6 48.7 3.70 3.70 100 1966 31 WSA AL 0 1 3 1 5.3 5.06 3.47 69 +--------------+---+---+---+---++------++-----+-----+----+ 8 Yr WL% .396 19 29 115 71 466.0 3.77 3.88 103 +--------------+---+---+---+---++------++-----+-----+----+ 162 Game Avg 6 10 42 25 170.3 3.77 3.88 103 source: Baseball-Reference.Com
By the way, after that magnificent September 12 start, he came back six days later and couldn’t get out of the 4th inning, and then rested for twelve days, and pitched a very good start.
In Cheney’s next season, 1963, he started with four complete games, all great performances, on as little as three days rest. And at age 28, that was basically the end of his starting career. The rest of the season he had 17 starts, going 4-9 and performing around the league average. He broke down in August. While his season ERA+ was his best, if you subtract those first four starts, he was average.
And he was never a regular major league starter again.
Cheney (while he will always have a place in my heart for graciously giving me the second ballplayer autograph I ever got, a swell childhood memory) is not a support for the heroic complete game as a career-builder.
Jenkins writes:
-- New York Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity, known as "Iron Man," didn't start pitching in the major leagues until he was 28. Five times, he pitched both ends of a doubleheader. He worked an astounding 434 innings in the 1903 season, and over his 10-year career racked up 247 wins and 314 complete games. Get this, though: Wandering through the minors until he was 52, collected 204 more wins.
AndNolan Ryan, known as much for his walks as his strikeouts, routinely surpassed 150 pitches as his career progressed (27 years, 222 complete games and 5,386 innings pitched). In 1974, according to beat writers in attendance, Ryan threw 259 pitches in a 12-inning win over Kansas City.
These two Hall of Fame pitchers support The BITGOD Prescription, though it’s also worth noting each was a once-in-a-generation freak of nature. Both pitched forever and had very good ERA+ marks. But note that Iron Joe didn’t have a particularly good major league season after the age of 35 for either quantity or quality. Ryan was very good even though age 44, though his game was predicated more on durability and pure strikeout power than on excellent ERA marks.
By the way, I don’t know if those beat writers Jenkins mentioned were remembering the wrong year, but Ryan didn’t go more than 10 innings in any game against the Royals in 1974. They may have been thinking about a 13 inning game against Boston where Ryan walked ten and struck out 19. An historical note -- my man Cecil Cooper, leading off for the Bosox, struck out six times in his eight at-bats that game against Ryan; what do we call that...a Golden Cust?
As freaks of nature, we can recognize that pair of iron men are figures to be respected and (ideally) emulated. But as freaks of nature, we also need to recognize their success, especially Ryan’s, might be significantly genetic, and not something coaching, nutrition or pilates can reify.
Jenkins writes:
It's remarkable enough that on May 1, 1920, Brooklyn and Boston played a 1-1 tie that lasted 26 innings. Incredibly, pitchers Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger each went the distance. Historians estimate that Cadore threw 345 pitches, Oeschger 319. MBB NOTE: The game ended as a tie.
Here’s Leon “The Caddy” Cadore’s career:
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG IP ERA *lgERA*ERA+ +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 1915 24 BRO NL 0 2 7 2 1 21.0 5.57 2.77 50 1916 25 BRO NL 0 0 1 0 0 6.0 4.50 2.67 59 1917 26 BRO NL 13 13 37 30 21 264.0 2.45 2.78 113 1918 27 BRO NL 1 0 2 2 1 17.0 0.53 2.79 527 1919 28 BRO NL 14 12 35 27 16 250.7 2.37 2.97 125 1920 29 BRO NL 15 14 35 30 16 254.3 2.62 3.23 123 1921 30 BRO NL 13 14 35 30 12 211.7 4.17 3.89 93 1922 31 BRO NL 8 15 29 21 13 190.3 4.35 4.10 94 1923 32 TOT 4 2 9 5 3 38.3 4.46 3.88 87 1924 33 NYG NL 0 0 2 0 0 4.0 0.00 3.67 inf +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 10 Yr WL% .486 68 72 192 147 83 1257 3.14 3.33 106 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 162 Game Avg 13 14 38 29 16 252 3.14 3.33 106
We don’t have game-by-game stats for 1920, but if you look at his ERA+ progression, The Caddy looked like a pretty fine young pitcher.
That is, until 1920, the year of his 300+ pitch outing. He never again notched an ERA that equaled or bettered the league average.
Here’s Joe “The Big Ouch” Oeschger’s career:
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG IP ERA *lgERA *ERA+ +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 1914 22 PHI NL 4 8 32 10 5 124.0 3.77 2.92 77 1915 23 PHI NL 1 0 6 1 1 23.7 3.42 2.74 80 1916 24 PHI NL 1 0 14 0 0 30.3 2.37 2.64 111 1917 25 PHI NL 15 14 42 30 18 262.0 2.75 2.81 102 1918 26 PHI NL 6 18 30 23 13 184.0 3.03 2.98 98 1919 27 TOT NL 4 4 17 12 6 102.7 3.94 2.98 75 1920 28 BSN NL 15 13 38 30 20 299.0 3.46 3.04 88 1921 29 BSN NL 20 14 46 36 19 299.0 3.52 3.67 104 1922 30 BSN NL 6 21 46 23 10 195.7 5.06 4.02 79 1923 31 BSN NL 5 15 44 19 6 166.3 5.68 3.99 70 1924 32 TOT NL 4 7 29 10 0 94.3 4.01 4.21 105 1925 33 BRO NL 1 2 21 3 1 37.0 6.08 4.18 69 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 12 Yr WL% .414 82 116 365 197 99 1818 3.81 3.36 88 +--------------+---+---+---+---+---+------+-----+-----+----+ 162 Game Avg 9 14 44 23 11 219.7 3.81 3.36 88
The Big Ouch must have been a pretty decent prospect. The Phils (not a doormat in that time) brought him up at age 22. He was middling in accomplishment up until the legendary 300+ pitch game, had his best season the following year, but was never more than a spot starter after that. I don’t see Oeschger as either supporting or undermining the Jenkins Protocol; he was middlingly useful and inconsistent before his Phyrric Tie and equally so after, the Mike Morgan of the Post-Great War Era.
Jenkins also wrote about Allie Reynolds in the hero sidebar, but while he was a great performer, he wasn’t particularly heroic. In an era where many starters pitched every 4th game, he started less frequently, but was available as an occasional reliever, so he pitched over 220 innings most years. I suspect the copydesk messed up Jenkins' assertion, but I can’t decode what that would be from what’s left.
CONCLUSIONS…AND MORE NEXT TIME
I see no clear pattern within Jenkins’ cited heroes. A couple of freaks of nature (durability outliers), a couple of guys whose careers
crapped out pretty soon after their heroics, and one guy who seemed as middling after as before.
Jenkins certainly can’t use the data as a convincing support for his Prescription as a standard approach.
Look, what if you were paying Tim Lincecum, and you wanted the maximum value out of him? What if you could have 32 starts limited to 100-105 pitches a year but with an alternative; what if you could have him for 40 starts a year, but there was one in five chance he’d break down as a result and have a Leon Cadore career? Or what if it was a one in ten chance or a one in three chance.
Knowing that Lincecum is an outlier in many respects (his mechanics, his power-to-size ratios, his intellect, his past training), perhaps he’s an outlier in durability, as well. At what odds do you take the chance of having him be the next Kerry Wood or Mark Prior (outliers who didn’t transcend fatigue and whose starting careers imploded like neutron bombs, leaving no survivors to mourn)? Good question, and one I leave to you to answer.
But this just addresses Injury and Moral Rectitude issues. What about the Team Performance issue – how much better off is a team leaving in the great starter?
In the next entry, I’ll answer that by examining each of Jenkins’ cited workhorses, all of whom had lengthy careers that survived or thrived on BITGOD workloads, and compare their performances to the relievers their teams might have deployed in their steads.Monday, September 08, 2008
Planning the Intentional Walk: Succession Theory Baseball-Style
I got a few interesting questions on my last entry about the Tampa Bay Rays' manager, Joe Maddon, intentionally walking Josh Hamilton with the bases loaded and a small enough lead that it put the winning run to the plate, a move that goes against a hundred years of standard operating procedure.
One question that first struck me as uninterestingly obvious was actually grist for MBB-thought.
"When an intentional walk is called for and the manager intends to pull the pitcher and replace him, why is it always that the first pitcher throws the four intentional balls, and not the replacement?"
Baseball has some conventional wisdom about this close-to-universal practice, some of which I think is just bullspittin', much of which is solid reasoning, and some of which is a valuable lesson for managers beyond baseball.
Management will frequently replace a failing team member with a new talent at the wrong moment, getting the new person to drag a late or inadequate project over the finish line. This can be even wrong-er when the replacement is a manager.
Let's look at the standard Baseball arguments for letting the pitcher who's getting replaced issue the walk.
#1 - It preserves the effort of the next pitcher, saving pitches for the person who's going to be doing more serious work. #2 - It potentially gives the incoming pitcher a little more time to get warmed up (not universally needed, and sometimes an additional increment of time that's a negative). #3 - It puts the E.R.A. accounting for that runner on the pitcher who got the team into the jam, not the subsequent pitcher, who's trying to rescue the incumbent. #4 - Controlling your best stuff is tough for most pitchers at the easiest of times.So in trying to work out of a jam, why would we start the new pitcher's effort with a sequence of throwing not-strikes?
The various objectives of the s.o.p. involve the statistical/historical, the building or dimunition of morale, and, most importantly, the implications for execution.
BEYOND BASEBALLA new client I had known only a little brought me in to help fix a department that was in a long-term morale morass that cascaded into attitudes that undermined performance. When I nosed around a little and started gathering people's stories and tales and myths about the history of the department, I came to suspect that the problem was a pair of really sorry management practices that combined to make a difficult situation almost impossible to get untangled. If they'd followed Baseball's intentional walk model, they'd have had a lot better chance to solve it. The department had had three different managers in the previous 34 months.
I could discern easily from employee evaluations he'd written and meeting minutes that the first of the three was a person who had craft skills in the department's area, but zero management training that took and was emotionally and intellectually disengaged from the requirements of running the department. He pushed the department into an accountability-free zone; people were almost never given feedback about good work and blame was assigned only when things got awful (denial being practised until other departments screamed in pain loudly enough). When the executive team decided to get rid of the failing manager, they hired a big-time consulting practice to audit the department and make staffing recommendations. The result targeted the manager and five of the eleven staff as underperformers who should be replaced. Ironically, the report used as a key element of the evaluation the employee evaluations of the useless manager (how masterful is that? And those guys charge 7x what I do).
Having paid the enormous pelf the big-time consultants charged, the executive team were bound to the results, though they skipped one piece of the execution. One of the targeted staff had been with the company from the beginning and no one wanted to lay her off though they were committed to laying her off. And they didn't want to lay off the others, leave her in place, only to have to lay her off later (creating multiple "layoffs"). So they made a sub-optimal decision to lay off the manager, recruit another and let the new manager execute the staff layoffs.
Manager number two lasted about eight months, and I'm pretty confident she would have worked out if not saddled with the staff layoffs. She hesitated to execute them until she'd had a chance to examine the files and see the individuals in action, and this accountable approach actually worked against her, because the executive team didn't want to relent a micron on the pre-fab decision and by the time she delivered the pink slips, the deed was associated with her. The remaining staff assumed the purge was her design, and did nothing to cover her back. Performance indicators hinted that process ran tighter, but morale just swirled the bowl.
Manager number two lasted a few months, but had little staff support, a reputation as a loser in the overall corporation, and, demoralized herself, left with zero notice (she told them Friday she would not be back Monday - a classic "at will" consequence) when she was recruited by an out of town rival who didn't care about her reputation but did care about her knowledge of my client's inner workings.
Manager number three was shipped in from another country, a star from a related company. And he was a star. But in the six weeks it took to bring him on, he was pre-victimised by a classic big-organization ploy; a peer manager saw the power vacuum as an opportunity to move a troubled worker with management aspirations herself into the demoralized & adrift department. By the manager number three arrived, the toxic ambition monster had asserted her right to boss everyone around and his first ten weeks were spent not addressing morale or performance issues, but cutting through the unofficial wall of silence about how Toxie was on his roster (the manager who done the dump was well-established with a lot of loyalty from peers and the executive team). Then he had to corral and then cut Toxie out of the herd. I could give you the whole Trail of Tears, but you can see how it inevitably all went downhill and why.
If you've been in the working world for a few years, you have seen some or all of these pieces on display yourself. Planning for succession (and success) is much weaker in the business and academic and non-profit arenas than in Baseball.
Baseball knows you don't dig a hole for the successor if you can avoid it. You do everything reasonable to make sure the successor doesn't carry apparent responsibility for the incumbent's jams. In Baseball, they try to give you adequate time to suss out the situation and get warmed up for it.
Why can't non-Baseball management emulate the National Pastime's s.o.p and let the incumbent issue the intentional walks?
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