Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1521: Managers (Used to) Do the Darndest Things

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley begin by discussing the financial impact that the pandemic and the postponement of the baseball season have had on FanGraphs and requesting reader/listener assistance. Then Ben and Sam review some of the worst mistakes managers made in World Series games of the 1980s and mull over why managerial […]

Singing high times ain't gonna rule my mind, brother High times ain't gonna rule my mind High times ain't gonna rule my mind No more Mama, no more Hello and welcome to episode 1521 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hey. And we are joined by our partner, Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. You are joining us for the beginning of today's episode for a little PSA, which will not be a surprise to anyone who has read Fangraphs today or followed us on Twitter and seen the plea that Fangraphs put out. But turns out, pandemic, not great for business. It is not great for business. Turns out when there's no baseball and no return date on the horizon that people decide to watch Tiger King. Can you just start blogging about Tiger King maybe? Have you considered it? Ben, I'm not going to lie to you.

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You folks are really amazing. You keep Fangrafts running. And I'm a little verklempt at the response so far. So we really, really appreciate it and hope that we can continue the good momentum until we have an opening day and I'll get to rally around enjoying baseball again instead of something kind of grim like this. Yeah. And I will say that thanks in part to your efforts, the site is still really good. So it's not like Meg is asking you to support the site because one day it will be good again. It's still good right now. If you go and go to Fangrass.com, there's still stuff that you will want to read, or at least there's stuff that I want to read, and not just the veterans that everyone

knows, the Jay Jaffe's and the Dan Siborski's who've been doing this for years, and David Lorela, et cetera, but guys like Craig Edwards and Ben Clemens who are great, and I learn something from them every time I read them, and I'm confident that they would still be entertaining me and teaching me things if there were no baseball for a year, which hopefully will not happen. But just saying, it's still good. And it is sort of striking to me just how quickly traffic patterns and consumption has changed during this pandemic, not just at Fangraphs and with sports and baseball specific sites, but just kind of across the board. Like when it comes to podcast audiences, I haven't actually checked to see how our downloads are doing because I don't know that there's anything we could do about it anyway if they're down. But from what I've read, it's kind of across the board. People are listening less and reading less and streaming more and playing video games more. And I've done those things too. But it's odd because you know that traffic is always at its highest when people are at work, which is kind of paradoxical because you'd think that that's when people are busy and wouldn't be

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and yet that's not exactly how it works, or at least the distractions or entertainments that they choose are not the same as they would be under normal circumstances. So it is strange and sort of disturbing. So everyone go please support Fangraphs, and thanks to everyone who has done so. So far, there are a couple of nice threads in our Facebook group with people exhorting each other to give to Fangraphs and even some of our Patreon supporters who are already sort of indirectly contributing to Fangraphs have emailed to ask how they can do more and

up their contribution. So that part at least is very heartening. Yeah, we really appreciate it. I can't finally find myself in a position where I don't have sufficient words. You all have done it. You folks have done it. So we really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Good luck. All right. Thanks, Meg. Talk to you later this week. Sounds good. All right. So we continue. What shall we discuss? All right. Well, I've been working on a project that involves going back and reliving or revisiting, restudying, familiarizing myself with old World Series, old being relative.

I've been looking at the 1980s World Series in the last couple of days. And that has involved reading a lot of game stories of 1980s World Series games. And when we do our own postseason podcasts or our writing, we both have commented in the past about what a huge percentage of the conversation tends to focus on like one or two managerial moves. The managerial moves really provide like half the conversation after a close postseason game. And what I forget, do you remember your explanation for why that is? Why we're so into a single pitching move in the sixth inning of a game that involved, you know, like 90-ish plate appearances? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's generally true that we focus on managerial moves

even during the regular season to a greater extent than they actually have an impact on the game because managerial moves are just voluntary and premeditated so you're saying i've thought about it and i've considered all the context and this is what i think the best move to make right now would be so if there's a an obviously suboptimal move, then you can really let loose and blame the manager because, hey, he had time to think about this. This was his whole job. It's just an unforced error.

Whereas with a player, you're trying to do something that requires incredible coordination. Someone is trying to actively prevent you from doing the thing that you want to do. And so players can make mental mistakes too, obviously, but there's maybe more pressure on them. They're trying to do this complex physical action at the same time. But if you just make a mistake as a player, I think people will let it slide or at least not blame you as a person necessarily because you were trying your best, right? And everyone screws up sometimes. Whereas with a manager, I think we all can put ourselves in the place of the guy whose whole job is to sit there on the bench and make a decision. And everyone is managing along at home and saying, here's the reliever I would put in right now. I would pinch hit for this guy right now.

And so if the guy whose whole job it is doesn't do that thing, and you were sitting there shouting at the TV to do that thing, then of course you're going to be quick to condemn that person, maybe not taking into account as much as you should that A, the decisions don't matter all that much. Usually you can make the right decision, it can backfire, you can make the wrong decision, and it can work out. So the average managerial move, even an important one really, doesn't swing your win expectancy by all that much. Plus it's harder to manage in real time when the game is going on and you're considering all sorts of factors that the fan at home is not.

And then there's also maybe some inside info that you might not have access to about so-and-so not feeling well or not having command of his curveball or having a nagging injury or whatever. So we probably give managers a harder time than we should. But, you know, that's why we focus on like lineup decisions and why would you bet that guy fifth or that guy third and ultimately it has almost no impact but it's just easy to criticize yeah that's all that all sounds exactly right and and you're right you you jogged my memory one of the reasons that we talked about why we make such a big deal about it as as though we're surprised that we're making such a big deal about it is that we generally don't do that for a game in may it really is once the postseason starts that we we shift and instead of thinking oh well a manager's job is mostly to rally his team and

get them through the grind and manage a complex clubhouse and all these things and so you know the the relatively small decisions about who to pinch hit in the seventh inning of a game in may might take a back seat to what he needs to do to motivate his players and keep them together and manage resources and all that. Well, when you get to game six of a series, maybe the importance of these things has flipped, and you assume that the players are all motivated, but you really do need to make the most of every opportunity.

And I think also, generally speaking, postseason games tend to be a little lower scoring. Lower scoring tends to be closer. Closer tends to be more likely to be affected by a single move that you make. Anyway, the point is that we make huge deal over strategic decisions in the postseason for various reasons. And so while I've been looking through these old World Series, it has been interesting for me to see that, well, unsurprisingly, the conversations about those games the next day was also frequently about

managerial moves and a little bit well i guess also unsurprisingly the situations that managers were being second guessed over were very different than they would be now the game was different and maybe while i'm unsurprised not surprised surprised that they are different, I have been in some cases surprised by what specifically they were. And I just thought it would be fun to talk about what managers were getting second guessed for in 1981 and what sorts of challenging decisions they had. Because in a lot of cases, they didn't have to make some of the challenging decisions that managers today have to because there is not an expectation that they are going to do X, Y, or Z, whereas today we have an expectation that they will do or at least consider X, Y, and Z.

On the other hand, back then, alternate X, Y, and Z were on the table, and they were expected to consider those things, whereas a manager today rarely expected to consider those things whereas a manager today rarely has to consider those things and so i'm gonna go over what managers in the world series from 1980 to 1987 were dealing with okay all right that's pre-history it is yeah although i'm uh i'm on i'm on 1988 right now so i'm now in the common era so we're going to start with 1980 this was a world series between the phillies and the royals and one of my favorite there were two big things going on in this series uh that i want to point out uh well i guess

neither one is all that big. I guess that's sort of the point of what we were just talking about, is these things don't seem that big, except in the moment they seem very big. So in game three, in the 10th inning, Dan Quisenberry gives up a single to Bob Boone to lead off the inning, and then there's a sacrifice. You knew that sacrifice was coming.

It's 1980. So they sacrifice him over to second. beginning and then there's a sacrifice you knew that sacrifice was coming it's 1980. so they sacrifice him over to second and then Dan quizzenberry who it was I I you know the you need to understand I mean you know Dan quizzenberry was very good for some period of time you need to understand that this is part of the period of time when he was very good he finished eighth in MVP voting that year fifth in Cy Young voting he was a already a superstar closer and he intentionally walks pete rose okay to face mike schmidt he intentionally walks pete rose to face mike schmidt who that year would win the mvp award twitter would not like that move today Win the MVP award.

Twitter would not like that move today. No. So there's two things going on here. One is that they intentionally walked a guy to face the MVP. The MVP of the league. Mike Schmidt hit it 48 homers that year. He led the league in homers and RBIs. He was a four-time home run champ and arguably the best player in baseball at the time and arguably the best hitter in baseball at the

time intentionally walked him the other thing that's going on there though that is interesting that i didn't realize was this common was closers used to intentionally walk a ton of guys and so in just in this game you had quiz and barry intentionally walking pete rose and you also the next inning had tug mcgraw intentionally walking george brett which makes a little bit more sense because tug mcgraw george brett was also the mvp but you know intentionally walking george brett and then the inning before you had dan quiz and barry intentionally walking gary maddox and i tend to not think of closers as being expected to intentionally walk many batters. So I did a query to see how common it was to have closers who saved at least 20 games

and then intentionally walked 10. And I think that the last one was like 2001 or something like that, whereas it used to be extremely common. Like almost every closer would have double digit intentionally walks. And I'm not sure if that was just a function of managers generally intentionally walking a lot more. And so all intentional walk stats are going to be affected by that or if it's that closers kind of I don't know they they maybe paradoxically they were overvalued in some way but also there was there was an appreciation that they were not shut down they were not as you know that they were not actually as good as uh the best starters and so they had them intentionally walk a lot of batters in order to, you know, prevent them from getting hit hard.

So there were 20 saves and 10 intentionally walks. There were five of those in 1983, five in 1982, five in 1980, four in 1986. So, you know, four or five pitchers a year would have that. And that's with fewer 20 save pitchers at the time. Whereas in the last decade, there was only one of those. Brandon Lyon for the Diamondbacks had one. And in the decade before that, the 2000s, there was also only one, Bobby Jenks. So the idea of having your closer intentionally walk batters has become much less common than it used to be.

And so anyway, they intentionally walked Pete Rose to face Mike Schmidt, and they kind of got lucky. Mike Schmidt lined out into a double play, and they ended up winning that game. Huh. All right. So I don't know what the equivalent would be. I guess the equivalent would be, I mean, you know, it's not like Pete Rose is nothing either. And Pete Rose, a single probably wins the game. And so maybe you're thinking, well, he's a higher batting average guy.

Although I'm looking, Pete Rose hit.282 that year and Mike Schmidt hit.286. Of course, you get the platoon advantage because Pete Rose was a switch hitter. So I guess I was thinking maybe the equivalent would be if you intentionally walked Altuve to face Bregman, although then you don't have the platoon advantage thing going on. Maybe if you had a righty and you intentionally walked Otani to face Mike Trout. Anyway, it would be crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's another thing I've written about specifically talking about managers getting criticized in the postseason is that it's gotten a little harder to do that with the same level of confidence that we used to do it with because now

teams know things that we don't know and we're kind of conscious of that and so back then in the 80s if a manager intentionally walked someone to bring someone else up you could be pretty confident or at least now we could be pretty confident that they didn't have any really special advanced info that would lead them to think that one matchup was more advantageous than another. If anything, they were probably looking at some tiny, small sample batter versus pitcher stats, or at that point, they may not even have had that on command. They may have just been going off intuition or gut feel or memory. But nowadays, there's all sorts of analysis where teams will look at how does this hitter perform against not just this particular pitcher, but against a cohort of pitchers like this pitcher, you know, pitchers who throw that hard or have a similar release angle or, you know, have the same mix of breaking pitches, let's say, comparable, similar pitchers determined using advanced data and that can actually be pretty

predictive so there aren't that many times when it would show you something really incredibly revealing where you'd say oh this great hitter actually is no good against this guy but there are certain times when a team might know something and managers have access to that stuff on their ipads or on a little cheat sheet or whatever that gives them projections for each matchup, each hitter versus each pitcher. And so it's a little hard to, with the same degree of confidence, and maybe we always were too confident about this sort of thing, but now it's kind of tough to say with absolute certainty that was the right move or the wrong move. So it's taken a little of the fun out

of it. Although the type of people who maybe are most vocal about criticizing managers are maybe not the most concerned about whether they're actually right to criticize them or not. It's just kind of taking out your frustration and asserting your own superiority. So that sort of thing, I guess, is still viable today. The other thing that happened in that series, by the way, was also involved Schmidt and not for some reason, recognizing that, by the way, I think a good comp would be if a lefty reliever intentionally walked Justin Turner to face Cody Bellinger last year. I think that the variables hold up in that analogy. All right. So in a later game, tie game, or maybe they were up by one.

The Royals were pitching up by one, I think. And Mike Schmidt came up again, and he got an infield hit off the glove of George Brett. And the reason that everybody, including George Brett, acknowledges that Schmidt got that hit is that Brett was playing on up on the grass, expecting Schmidt to bunt Mike Schmidt, the 48 home run MVP. They were expecting him to bunt. Now in their defense, Mike Schmidt had bunted for a hit earlier in that series and liked to bunt. Apparently at that period in his life, he liked to bunt for hits. So he sometimes had to. And so George Brett didn't always play up on him. But in that moment, he became convinced that this was a moment that Schmidt might bunt.

And so he played way up. Schmidt later said he had no intention whatsoever. Hit one to George Brett's left. Brett got a glove on it with a dive, but couldn't handle it. And that led to a big ninth inning rally as a lead turned into a deficit and a game turned all right the next one 1981 um the big one here we might have talked about this one this one felt sort of familiar to me but we might not have it might have been just a different start that was similar and involved the same pitcher so uh game three

fernando valenzuela rookie fernando valenzuela uh 20 year old rookie f, Fernando Valenzuela, rookie Fernando Valenzuela, 20-year-old rookie Fernando Valenzuela is pitching. And he's, you know, it's not his best start, but he gives up a couple runs early and then he gives up, well, he actually gives up four runs in the first three innings, but they leave him in there and he settles down and he gets in a pretty good little groove. But he's wild as maybe he sometimes was. And he ends up throwing 147 pitches in a complete game as a 20-year-old rookie. That's not even what I'm talking about here though. What's amazing to me is that he was allowed to finish this game, pitch count aside, the situations where he was allowed as a rookie with a high pitch count to stay in this game.

So he's leading 5-4. So this is not like he's not throwing a shutout. He's not dominating. He's just a pitcher having a good pitcher having a slightly off day. So up by one. By the way, this is game three, so they're down two games to none. If they lose this game, they're done. This is a must-win, 100% must-win game.

Up by one. Eighth inning, Fernando Valenzuela gives up a leadoff single. Oh, goodness. You might want to pull him there. The tying run is on base. Top of the order, in in fact is looming i think we're at the uh we are at as that was the number seven hitter so you've got the number eight hitter coming up and then you've got a pinch hitter and then you've got the top of the yankees order coming up all

right so they leave them out there gives up another single okay so now there's two on and nobody out in the eighth inning of a one-run must-win game. And they leave him out. And Bobby Mercer pinch hits. Bobby Mercer bunts into a double play. And Valenzuela gets out of it. All right. Every team was actively trying to lose at all times yes uh so then the bottom of the eighth leadoff hit fernando valenzuela comes up he's only up by one

run at this point and he's thrown 140 pitches and he's walked seven batters and they let him hit for himself and he grounds into a fielder's choice and now he has to run the bases they let him run the bases he doesn't get anywhere they don't score send him out to the bottom of the ninth where it's the two three four hitter in the yankees lineup all right-handed and they send out the lefty fernando valenzuela to face those guys and he he does it he finishes the complete game he wins the game i mean it's it is incredible so this is not he never faced the go-ahead run in the ninth but you know he faced close to the go-ahead run in the ninth and uh this just so happens to be a query that Lucas Apostolaris had been doing at Baseball Perspectives. And so he shared with me the spreadsheet.

And so if you look at starts where a pitcher faces the winning run in the ninth inning, those still occasionally happen. There were six of them last year, including our old friend Noah Syndergaard's true win. Also Madison Bumgarner. That's why I started to say Noah Syndergaardner true win. Also Madison Bumgarner. That's why I started to say Noah Syndergaardner because I was looking at a spreadsheet where those two names were right next to each other. So there were six last year.

In the year that Fernando Valenzuela had this outing, well, that was a strike-shortened year, and so it's going to be low. But all the same, in the strike-shortened year, there were 114. The year before that, there were 231 starts when the starting pitcher faced the go-ahead run in the ninth inning, which it's almost impossible to think of a situation where

the starting pitcher would face the go-ahead run in the ninth inning at this point. You basically have to have an ace level pitcher. And in fact, the six pitchers who did it this year, Darvish, Verlander, Bumgarner, Buehler, Syndergaard, and then Marco Gonzalez. And probably you need to have a tie game because if you have a lead and the pitcher allows a runner on, then you imagine the manager is going to come out and get him. But a tie game, maybe if he has a low pitch count, then you'll leave him out there. And he's probably only going to get one batter maybe where he gets a chance to face that batter.

So like Hugh Darvish was one of these six. And I was looking at the start that Hugh Darvish had this year where he did it. And it really was like, I couldn't believe that Darvish had been allowed to do it. He came out in his last start of the year for the ninth inning. It was a two to one lead that he had. He gave up a lead off triple. And I was sort of shocked looking at this box score that he was allowed to stay in. Then he gives up a sack fly, a single, a stolen base, a double, and now the lead is gone. And you think, wow, that's like a

box score out of 1985. And in fact, it is. That was common in 1985. You just left Fernando Valenzuela out there. And again, this goes back to what I was saying about the other thing. It's weird because the closers, the ace closer was such a part of strategy at that point. Like the ace closer was fairly new. They were high paid. Every team wanted one. They were used very aggressively. The same time though, the ace closer was sort of seen as not as good as the starter.

And so Tommy Lasorda after this game says Fernando Valenzuela is my best closer and so he just left him out there he had a closer but he'd rather go with Valenzuela at 150 pitches huh yeah I mean I guess in fairness to the Dodgers Valenzuela in 81 was rookie of the year Cy Young winner absolute phenomenon drawing huge crowds wherever he went, especially at home. So if you were going to leave someone in, that would be the guy, I guess, despite his age. So there's that.

He threw eight shutouts that year, a strike-shortened year, eight complete game shutouts in a strike-shortened year, which is incredible. Not that they were looking at times through the order splits at that point, but he was better his third time through the order that year than he was his first time through the order he allowed a 387 ops his fourth time through the order and later that year so when they did decide to let him go long he really rewarded them for that decision so you can see why that happened even though it shouldn't have happened

i mean just for safety's sake but also probably for trying to win the game's sake yeah and it worked they won that game and they were in fairness to to those dodgers we were having the same complaint about teams and managers up until what three years ago or so, something like that. I mean, within the lifetime of this show, we were regularly criticizing managers for leaving starters in too long in the playoffs and not observing the times through the order effect and not flipping the switch when it went from the regular season to the postseason, continuing to manage with the same level of urgency or lack of urgency. And so it's really only recently that some of these mistakes at least have actually been corrected yeah with the valenzuela start what really strikes me is

just that how many base runners he was allowing the whole time you you would not have i don't think you would have watched it and thought he is the best pitcher in the world and we're gonna stick with him because no one's touching him he he allowed 16 base runners in that game he walked seven that's a lot of walks all right 1982 brewers and cardinals and the this i'm i'm sort of speculating here all right so raleigh fingers was the ace closer that year for the for the brewers and in the eighth inning with the score tied, the Cardinals loaded the bases with one out and did not bring in Raleigh Fingers. Now, so Harvey Keene after the game said, yes, Raleigh was well enough to pitch. And no, I didn't consider using him. I've used Raleigh

Fingers when we're ahead, not in tie situations. So Raleigh Fingers, I'm freezing on this for one reason. I don't think Raleigh Fingers was actually well enough to pitch. Raleigh had been injured. He had not been pitching in the postseason. He would not go on to pitch at all in the post season, even in later save situations. And he would not pitch at all the next year he would have surgery and so i think that harvey keen was lying about why he didn't use raleigh fingers i don't think he wanted to give away that fingers was unavailable and so he he kept it a secret and he made up this story about only using him in with the lead in save situations and not using him in a tie. And I have not looked deeply into this,

but I'm here going to speculate wildly that this is the origin of not using your closer in a tie game, is that Harvey Keene made it up right then and there as fake logic and other managers latched onto it and thought we can't use our closer in a tie game and they never did again and it was all because of a lie that harvey keen was telling anyway he did not use raleigh fingers that day or any other day the other interesting thing that happened in this game in this series was game six the cardinals won a blowout they won something like 13 to 1 and their starting pitcher was a rookie at that point named john stupor and john stupor threw a complete game in that 13-1 game which is not that notable

except for one thing the game was twice delayed by rain for a total of nearly three hours and so john stupor rookie threw a five and a half hour complete game oh no just kept putting him back out there how many pitches you think he threw in the bullpen oh man did you see if like there was criticism of this no no it was like it it was not not none at all none at all wasn't even mentioned yeah it makes me wonder like what we are criticizing or failing to criticize now that 30 years in the future we'll look back and think boy were we dumb not to notice that at the time i would guess that whatever mistakes are being made now are not nearly as egregious or as actively unsafe as the ones they were making then. I'd like to think that

we've gotten a little bit smarter, but still do kind of wonder what are we not looking at right now that future podcast hosts or us on episode 10,000 or whatever, we'll look back and rue those mistakes. Yeah, I was wondering that too. And I don't know if, you know, it will be interesting to know how the future regards us. And I'm perfectly happy if this is what they end up second guessing 30 years from now,

that I'm perfectly happy to be second guessed. But I feel like what it be second guessed, but I feel like what it will probably be, and I don't have specifics in mind, but that there are strategies that are not currently in use because there is deference to player ego and player wishes and players claims of, um, you know, needing to be comfortable and needing to be like, like sort of, there are things where players would say that the strategy would unnerve them or not take into account their lived experiences as players. And so we accept that, that those strategies are not going to be used as aggressively.

And I'm happy. I think that's good. I like, I think that the state that we're in right now, the balance between listening to players when they tell us what they need to be comfortable and safe and what the technically optimal strategy is, is pretty good right now. And I would not surprise me if in 30 years, our descendants are criticizing and laughing at us for not being more ruthless in our strategy, if that makes sense. Yeah, that there will be a lot more, maybe that there will be more embarrassing of players in the future that it will not be that a player's pride will not be considered part of the of the decision making process. That's kind of what I think. That's what I think. I think in 30 years that they're going to just all be monsters. And they're going to like laugh at the notion that a player's pride has any role to consider in the calculus.

That's that's my that's my I'm sure a lot of old school baseball people would think we've already reached that point. But yeah, maybe there's more to go. Speaking of players pride. So 1983 is the Phillies and the Orioles. And in game three, the Phillies benched their number two hitter, their first baseman and number two hitter. And you know, he must be good because he bats the top of the lineup and he's a first baseman and he's Pete Rose. He's the hit King Pete Rose. And so they bench him because he'd been slumping and Pete Rose got very mad. And this was a big, this was a controversy for

24 hours because Pete Rose did not take it silently. He said, I'm hurt and embarrassed. Rose said, looking both hurt and embarrassed. There are 65,000 people in this stadium tonight. And the two most surprised and astounded people are Pete Rose and Tony Perez, who took his spot in the lineup. And I don't think that's the way baseball should even be played. He was hurt even more later when Owens sent him in to pinch hit in the ninth inning. He grounded out. Now, the next day he played. So this happens every once in a while. There was the A-Rod situation where the Yankees benched A-Rod for Raul Ibanez a few years ago,

and it's shocking, you know, like when a star gets shocked in the postseason. And Pete Rose. Yeah, well, that one, and maybe you're about to say this is similar. I'm about to say it. Okay. Well, I was going to say that one was shocking, not just because of the ego that was offended, but also because it just seemed like an overreaction and a small sample sort of mistake at the time. Okay.

So I'm going to say the opposite here. Ah, okay. It was shocking because of the ego. As for the small sample, Pete Rose that year. Pete Rose that year hit 245, 316, 286. Yeah. He slugged 286. As a first baseman.

His OPS plus was only slightly, slightly higher than 68. Yeah. You're not going gonna say it so he uh he got benched but i mean wow it really is kind of wild to just look at the end of pete rose's career and how much he was playing on good teams even in the middle of the lineup at a power position while putting up basically sub replacement offense not coincidentally he was managing those teams not yeah although not the phillies that year no yeah later on 84 yeah pete rose who got benched for game three but only game three they did bring him back because he was too valuable had negative 2.1 war that year all right so that's, Pete Rose. There was also a great moment in that series where

the Orioles managed to pinch hit four batters in a row, which is, I think, mathematically impossible in the modern game. Although maybe not, maybe it won't be this year. So that was probably pretty fun and it worked. They scored a bunch of runs that inning. The pinch hitters did their job. And all right. So yeah, four pinch hitters in a row. Let's go to 1984. This one, I guess is kind of a repeating about closers intentionally walking batters, but this is really an amazing moment in a post-season game where the Tigers were playing the Padres. They were up by one in the eighth inning, trying to clinch stadium is raucous, going crazy through a sequence. the Tigers end up with runners on second and third with one out, and Goose Gossage is on the mound. Kirk Gibson is coming to the plate,

and Kirk Gibson was an MVP candidate at the time, left-handed batter against the right-hander Gossage. The on-deck hitter was Lance Parrish, right-handed batter, not nearly as good as Gibson, and so the Padres manager signals for an intentional walk, which in this case, again, we have a closer intentionally walking, but I think this one makes a lot more sense. And Goose Gossage gets the news and he says, nah, I don't want to. And so he actually calls manager Dick Williams out from the dugout. Dick Williams comes out to the mound. They talk, they debate, they argue in reason. And Dick Williams says, okay, go ahead and pitch to him. So the pitcher actually talked

the manager out of the intentional walk. And on the second pitch, Gibson homered and Gossage never quite lived it down. And so I don't really even know what the strategy, I guess the strategy there is that we're talking about, or the manager decision there is kind of the Matt Harvey in the 2015 World Series thing, right? Where the manager had a plan and the player who is born and bred to be extremely confident, extremely aggressive, to believe that he can get anybody out at any time, to never back down from a challenge, to never decline a challenge, was allowed to talk the manager out of that strategy. And just like with Matt Harvey in the 2015 World Series, it totally backfired and Gossage gave up the home run and said, I feel responsible for the game.

Yeah. If you were a manager, would you ever even ask how you're feeling or what do you want to do? Well, I mean, look, there's two questions there. One is if you were the manager, would you ever incorporate that data into your decision-making? The other is, would you, would you ever ask and make the person feel heard? And I would, i think that i would definitely would let the player feel heard in whatever way you need to do that in a situation like that uh yeah i i mean what's the question the question is there's again there's different questions here one question is what do you think what do you want to do what do you think we should And in that sense, maybe you could say you're the manager. You're the one who's supposed to decide what you should do, what the strategy should be. But you also do want to know, in some cases, how the player feels. And so the question is, can you get an honest answer from the player? Will the player tell you honestly whether he's he's able to go out

there and that's tough yeah it'd be very valuable information if you actually knew how the player was feeling but you just can't ever be sure maybe if you know the guy really well and you've been managing him for a while and you can actually tell when he's being honest or maybe he would be open and honest about it it It seems like that would be a minority of pitchers who would actually own up to being tired at that point. And then you get weird situations like the Rich Hill, Dave Roberts episode, where Rich Hill seemed to suggest that he was maybe feeling a little fatigued and that Roberts could pull him if he got in any trouble. But then there was miscommunication about whether he actually wanted to be pulled. And that just worked out poorly for the Dodgers. But yeah, if you could use some of the data that's available now, like with Hawkeye, where you can actually see the arm angle of the pitcher or maybe analyze his mechanics in real time and his stuff and see if it's dropping off at all. And I don't know

whether someone in the dugout would have access to that information, because at least for now, you're not supposed to communicate with the analysts who would be looking at that. But if you could look at that, that would be very valuable information to have. It's just a question of whether you're actually going to get a straight answer from the player. And most of the time, you're probably not. This is unrelated. I'm not going to talk about this much but in 1986 game six of the 1986 world series roger clemens was pitching that game and he pitched he threw seven innings and then they pinch hit for him in the top of the eighth and i was reading an article from much later where roger clemens claims that he didn't want to get pinch hit for and was wanted to stay in and the manager of the

red sox that year who i believe was john mcamara is that right said that clemens quote begged out of the game and so that's a an odd situation too where you have uh i mean in a way if you're just gonna ask so that you can throw him under the bus for the decision later, that's probably not the best way to do it. But on the other hand, if Clemens is throwing you under the bus, then, ah. All right, 1985. Let's see. What do I have for 1985?

This was the Royals and the Cardinals. Oh, my goodness. This one's nuts. The Royals were leading 2-0 going to the ninth inning and charlie lebrant was the starter and again dan quizzenberry was the closer and at this point dan quizzenberry had i think finished top five in cy young voting four years in a row top three in cy young voting four years in a row third second second third and they did not use dan quizisenberry in the ninth inning up by two to start the inning and then as run after run scored they still didn't use dan quisenberry they left charlie lee brandt out there

to allow four runs in the ninth inning and lose the game willie wilson the royal center fielder was not kind to the decision after the fact. He said, on the record, anybody who knows anything about baseball knows what we should have done. So there's that. And then a few innings later, a few games later, I should say, they were in a fairly similar situation. This time it was the eighth inning, and Charlie Liebrandt was again pitching very well, and again had, well, I guess this was a tie game, 0-0. And LeBrant comes up in the eighth inning with two on and two out. They let him hit for himself and he strikes out, inning over. Ball game stays tied, 0-0.

And then the very next half inning with lebrant in the game the cardinals in a like sort of almost too obvious storytelling moment get the exact same situation two on two out in a zero zero tie and the pitcher coming up and this time they the cardinals do pinch hit for the starting pitcher who also had a shutout going and had also thrown seven innings complete they pinch hit for him the pinch hitter gets a single off charlie lebrant and the cardinals end up going ahead so that is a play uh that they just really like charlie lebrant in, in the game at that point. I guess so. All right. And then last one, 1986, I don't, I don't want to talk about 1986, particularly 1987 was the series of pitchers pitching on short rest. And it became a deal because Murray Chas noted

that the pitchers who were pitching on three days rest had all been quite bad. And the pitchers who'd been pitching on four days rest had all been quite good. So Murray Chass wrote an analysis of this, and as he put it, in the six games of the series, six starters worked on three days rest and six pitched with four days of rest or more. The well-rested starters have registered three victories and one defeat, have compiled a 2.6060 ERA and have allowed an average of nine base runners per nine innings. The not so well rested starters have one victory, four losses and an 8.56 ERA. They have permitted an average of 17 base runners per nine innings. So this was the 87 World Series. And in reading about the previous six World Series, there were various pitchers going on short rest throughout those series.

And I did not see any controversy over it in any of those. It would be noted that a pitcher had thrown a complete game on short rest or that he was coming back after three days rest. But it wasn't controversial. It wasn't seen as even something that there was much doubt over. If it was your ace and you needed him back there for the win. You just did it. So I don't know if this series inaugurated the tradition of second guessing that decision, which is, I think, generally proven not to be a great decision to do. But it turned out to be a really important factor because as the series went to game seven, the twins went to Frank Viola,

their ace, one of their aces, and he was starting on short rest. The Cardinals manager, Whitey Herzog, could have gone to Danny Cox on short rest, but instead he chose to go with Joe McGrain, who had started a week earlier and had not pitched since, and so he was fully rested. so you really have this situation where both um where the managers made polar opposite decisions based on the situation and the i don't know maybe the data and so viola ends up pitching extremely well despite being on short rest and so the twins are justified and there's the cardinals pitcher joe mcgrane also pitched pretty well but remember they would remember how he didn't go to Danny Cox,

his best pitcher because Danny Cox was on short rest? Well, he pulls Joe McGrain in the fifth inning and brings in Danny Cox. And so Danny Cox, this is what Danny Cox does. This is his line that day, the play log for him. Kirby Puckett double. Gary Gaiety walk. Puckett caught stealing.

Okay. Danny Cox gets an out. Don Baylor single. Gaiety out at home. So Danny Cox gets an out. So he's faced three batters they all reach. He gets two gift outs. Next inning, Tomernanski walk

kent herbeck walk and danny cox leaves so he faces five batters doesn't technically get any of them out and the cardinals end up they they had a two-to-one lead when they pulled joe mcgrane and they leave with what will ultimately be the winning run on base. Wow. Boy, they weren't very good at baseball in those days. In some ways, they were really, it was only, you know, 120 years old at that point. They were still figuring it out. It's really sort of shocking just the pace of change and I guess improvement or optimization in managing just, I mean, things were still happening in the 80s or even the 90s that had happened for all of baseball history.

And then all of a sudden they sort of stopped happening and all these things went away. Sack punts and intentional walks and hit and runs to some extent and pitch outs and leaving pitchers in forever. to some extent and pitch outs and leaving pitchers in forever. These things were part of baseball to varying extents for most of its history. And then just within the blink of an eye in baseball standards, they all kind of just went away. And it was really a product of different types of people running teams and not players running teams who were used to things working that way and then them hiring people who were not going to do things that way.

And it really does make you wonder, we've talked about this before, I think, but the idea of how good would your team be if you could go back right now and be the GM of a team in the 20s or the 40s or the 60s or whatever, just a regular person knowing what we know now, how good would we be at running a baseball team? And I think in a lot of ways, we'd still be pretty bad at it. And I think in general, the greatest advances when it comes to winning more games have been in player evaluation and then player development more recently. So finding out which players are the best, going to get those players, making players better, I think those are where the greatest gains have come. And yet, when you recount all of these very simple and possibly costly errors that were really routine, I mean,

you're just reading the World Series ones, but this was happening all the time. It really makes you wonder if you just went back and didn't manage that way. If you just managed the way that a team today manages with the same personnel and everything, how much better would you be? Would that be enough of an advantage to just go from average team to good team

or bad team to average team, at least? It's like the baseball analyst Phil Birnbaum once wrote, you gain more by not being stupid than you do by being smart. Yeah, the hardest thing I think for me to make, if I went back and tried to manage these teams, is that I have a very hard time looking at these players and figuring out which pitchers were actually good because none of them was really striking anybody out.

And they were all walking a bunch of guys. And so you have all these, like you have these opening day starters who had, like Danny Cox, for instance, was the Cardinals ace. I think at that point, he struck out 4.6 batters per nine and walked 3.2 batters per nine. And I just, in my head,

don't really have a way of making those numbers into a good pitcher i'm so used to the types of pitching that we have now that i don't even know what i would look for if i were exposed to a danny cox type pitching line and been told to figure out whether he was better than joe mcgrane and so i'm constantly looking at like some pitcher who was the staff ace and i'm clicking over to see how good he was that year. And it's like 4.8 strikeouts per nine, 3.9 walks per nine, 2.12 ERA. Where are these outs coming from? Of course, it made sense at the time, and they hardly ever allowed home runs.

And there were a lot of things going on. And a lot of those walk rates were severely goosed by intentional walks and probably by a lot of semi-intentional walks. But it's just hard for me to look at the pitchers in CA. Like I don't have my easy heuristics, you know? Yeah, right. That's a good point. And we wouldn't have the data at our disposal that we do now. If we just went back in time. We'd have to suffice with what they had at the time. I guess we'd be able to discount certain things and look at certain things that maybe they were ignoring then, but you didn't have baseball reference or fan graphs and WRC plus or projections or anything. So you'd have to calculate that stuff yourself or

figure it out on your own. And a lot of the data that goes into the stats that we have now was just not being collected then, obviously not in automated form, but not even in manual stringer assisted form. So you'd be sort of flying blind to an extent too. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway, I'll let you know what I find out about 1989 and so on. All right. We got a good amount of feedback to our discussion last time about baseball in the age of social distancing.

Meg and I discussed whether and how baseball could be played while ensuring a minimum of six feet distance between players and other personnel. Here's one good email we got from listener Brennan, who came up with two ways to possibly fix baseball, quote unquote, during the COVID pandemic. Number one, different parallel bases for runners and fielders. So this is something Meg and I were talking about how you would handle force outs. And Brennan says, obviously this would be a hot mess, but potentially an entertaining one. Robot umps or Hawkeye would monitor the arrival of the ball and runner to parallel bases and would automatically signal the result of the play using a light or sound visible to everyone on the field of play. I presume we'd want to give the base runners the longer of the two base paths, as all ties would go to the runner in this scenario.

Alternatively, we could switch each inning which team used the outer bases. A variety of problems come to mind, but again, is this better than no baseball? I think so. So this would be sort of like the extra runner's bag in softball, except instead of having that second bag attached to the main bag, it would just be six feet apart. Brennan's other point here is scrap baseball, do derby. Ben and Sam's discussion of home run derby as a sport last season now seems oddly prescient. How does derby become a sport? It suits up and subs in for baseball during a pandemic. So we have a traveling MLB Derby League broadcasting from great iconic American sites, the Grand Canyon, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Capitol Mall, Mount Rushmore, etc. It could be structured as an ongoing points-based league or an elimination tournament, or ideally both, a regular season followed by a postseason. If we want to really go for the

video game gusto, each site could have a special rule emphasizing the unique geography or history of the location, providing bonus points. Is this baseball? No. Is this better than not having baseball? Definitely. Thank you, Brennan, and for further consideration of baseball in a social distancing world, you can head over to Fangraphs where Ben Clemens did a whole post about what that could possibly look like. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks for listening, and thanks again for supporting Effectively Wild and Fangraphs. I see that some of you have signed up to support us on Patreon or have upped their existing contributions. That definitely helps because Fangraphs does pay for the podcast hosting costs, as well as Dylan Higgins' editing assistance. And of course,

some of the proceeds of our Patreon go to Meg, who has been financially affected by the cutbacks. So we thank you again, and you can also support Fangraphs directly by purchasing a membership. You can go get an Effectively Wild t-shirt from the Fangraphs store if you're interested, as long as supplies last. There's a link to that merch at the bottom of the episode summary of every episode of Effectively Wild. And I know that a lot of members of the Fangraphs staff have been very touched by the support that people have shown so far. Fangraphs is just invaluable to the lives of so many of us. So many great writers are currently there or have gotten their starts there. It's a wonderful oasis on the internet, and they're very happy to have your help to keep it

that way. The latest sign for me that things have changed just showed up this morning right before we started to record. For those who don't know, I live in New York, very close to the Hudson River, kind of overlooking the midtown docks where the cruise ships typically come in and go out. And you may even hear them sometimes on this podcast because they will very rudely interrupt and blow their horns when they're coming in or leaving. And if it's a Disney cruise ship, it will sound the whole When You Wish Upon a Star Disney theme song with no warning. For obvious reasons, those cruise ships have not been coming and going the way that they normally would in the past couple weeks, much to the dismay, I would imagine, of Twins reliever Zach Littell, cruise ship enthusiast

who we discussed recently. So those docks have been empty for a while now, and there's not been the usual nautical traffic there. But just this morning, in one of those berths where a cruise ship usually goes, the Navy hospital ship Comfort arrived, just a giant ship, which some of you may have heard Trump describe as the big white ships with the Red Cross on the side. That's pretty accurate. Fact check true. So that giant ship with a thousand hospital beds is parked right outside my apartment. I can see it from my window as I record this podcast, or I could if I didn't put the shades down to cut down on the echo in the room. So that's just a constant reminder that even though I personally have been lucky thus far, and neither my health nor my employment has been directly affected by the

pandemic to this point, many other people, particularly in my area nor my employment has been directly affected by the pandemic to this point. Many other people, particularly in my area, have been hit hard, and some of them are on that ship, hopefully getting some comfort. And I'm reminded of that every time I look out the window as I work, and that just makes me more grateful for the people who have shown their support for the podcast. So again, you can go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. I will also provide the link on the episode summary to where you can sign up for a Fangraphs membership. And the following people have just signed up or upgraded their Patreon memberships for the show. Zach Wadd, Michael Rosen, Andrew Fraker, Sean Muir, and Timothy Cullen. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to all aforementioned Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. If you're looking for reading material, the paperback edition of my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, comes out next week, April 7th. It is an expanded edition with a new afterword that was not in the hardcover copy, so you can preorder that now if you're so inclined. So we'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you soon. Being drawn along by it Carried under, carried away By its long-term membership