Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 333: How Teams Are Bridging the Gap Between Front Office and Field Staff

Episode Date: November 20, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the new kind of coach being hired by big-league teams this offseason.

And every day we can play on the Milky Way, and if that don't do, then I'll try something new. Good morning and welcome to episode 333 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. I would prefer to pitch for the Giants or Padres. Did you see the report that Josh Johnson, who just signed with the Padres, called and let the Giants and Padres know early on that they were his first choices? That would always be my move if I were a free agent pitcher. I would always want to go there.

I guess it's partly because he lives in Las Vegas and he wants to be close to there, but I don't know. I'm sort of surprised that the Padres haven't had an even greater advantage in signing free agents. And maybe they have, and it's just that they haven't wanted to pay for them. But there's so many guys who are coming off a down year or an injury or just a fly ball pitcher who have reason to want to go there. And the weather's not bad either. Seems like it would be an advantage. It is interesting i mean we always at least i always wonder why extreme ballparks don't show uh advantages that

you know with situations like this where you can uh kind of squeeze extra value out of them and the giants for years complained that their park uh made it impossible for them to get hitters. But the flip side would seem to be that it would be really easy to get pitchers. And that wasn't really the case. They didn't really do very well getting pitchers that they imported, generally speaking. San Francisco and San Diego would be two of my top three major league cities to live in too so uh so that's nice but um i mean it seems it seems fairly transparent for josh johnson to to go to san diego you have to wonder who's gonna really be you know who's really gonna be fooled right yeah i i have wondered that too because we've gotten to the point now where I don't know whether general managers are actually fooled by a fly ball pitcher doing well in a really big ballpark with the else because of success in Petco.

Maybe we should probably look into that and see whether people have managed to parlay that into big contracts elsewhere or whether it's just staying with San Diego. If people are, if GMs are really that dumb or if, you know, if hitting in Pac Bell or AT&T Park really is that, you know, if batters think that it's going to cost them that much money, then really what it should have been is that right-handed batters should have all been trying to go there because it was basically a neutral park for right-handers for as long as I knew it. And so if you're carrying this stigma, or not the stigma, the bonus, I guess, of playing in a park that people think is killing your offense and you're you know right-handed hitter you should go like look super

good yeah but of course nobody's that stupid i i'm fairly sure that gms are not tricked that's a shame well when i'm a free agent i'm gonna let the padres know that they're my first choice i mean we've we've also noted the rockies have never signed a uh you know a a true power hitter you know like a true massive power hitter uh so i don't know you would think that if if you i mean baseball careers are so long that you think you just get bored and want to do some some you know like basically like uh you know changing the settings on a game or something so that you know you you some you know like basically like uh you know changing the settings on a game or something so that you know you you can you know see see the outer limits i would think if i were a power hitter i would want to go to cores and if i were um you know if i were if i were kershaw or something

or if i were you know cliff lee i might take a one-year deal in san diego just for fun sure just to just to see what crazy numbers yeah wouldn't it be fun to have like one 1.3 era because because clearly i mean you know 70 years from now nobody's gonna remember that petco was a pitcher's park and even now we're talking about general managers being really smart but the typical baseball fan maybe is not quite at that level and so you you'd fool a lot of people you'd fool a lot of people. You'd fool a lot of people. It would be fun.

And I mean, players are always talking about, well, they hate it when we say things like, oh, batting average doesn't matter. You know, we try to park and just, you always see players complaining. So they probably don't care that much. They probably would love a phony 1.3 era yeah all right uh so it's my topic today that was not it um i want to talk about a new kind of baseball coach that we've

been seeing hired lately um and i might write about this too i don't know i don't like to double dip but uh some people prefer the the written lindbergh word to the spoken so i might i might do both but uh i do me too um so there's a new type of coach who is sweeping dugouts across the nation uh and it's it's it's it goes by different names, but the Tigers have hired a defensive coordinator, I believe is the actual title. It's Matt Martin, who is a coach that Gabe Kapler advocated hiring in a guest piece at BP earlier this year. So they've hired him as a defensive coordinator. His duties will include coordinating video and advanced scouting reports and working with the infielders and outfielders on defensive positioning. But he will be, you know, a real coach in the dugout in uniform and everything.

And he is not the first guy. I don't know whether it was the whether this was the first of this trend or whether I just missed it happening, but when Matt Williams was hired by the Nationals early this month, beginning of this month, he brought a guy with him from the Diamondbacks, Mark Wiedemeyer, who will serve as the Nationals' new defensive coordinator and advance coach. will serve as the Nationals' new defensive coordinator and advance coach. And he's going to create advanced defensive reports and presumably do the same sort of thing that Martin will do in Detroit. He will also be in the dugout as an extra coach. And his background, he was with the Diamondbacks before that, and he was a special assistant to the GM

and an MLB advance scout. So he was doing the same sort of thing but was in the front office. And then I guess the most recent hiring in this trend just on Tuesday was the Angels hiring Rick Eckstein as sort of a— Friend of the podcast, by the way. Yeah? Favorite of the podcast. Okay. Didn't we have a Rick Eckstein episode?

We did talk about him. Why did we talk about him? Because I love him. Oh, we did a whole thing on batting instructors, and he never played higher than college. Oh, right. Right. Okay. So he's going to be the Angels player information coach is his title.

Hire information coach is his title. Sort of similar, but as I understand it, he's not actually going to be in uniform in the dugout. He's just kind of going to be a coach. I'm reading off SB Nation's summary of the hiring. He'll help coaches with defensive alignments and hitting preparations before the game, then move up to the box seats to serve as an eye in the sky as the action takes place, which is what Alden Gonzalez reported at MLB.com. So a little different from the other two guys

in that he presumably won't be in uniform in the dugout during the game, but he'll be doing the same sort of thing. So I think this is an interesting trend. I would expect it to continue. And I guess it's kind of, I guess it's what teams are doing instead of hiring the second hitting coach to be in uniform now. Like you can't do both because there's a finite number of coaches you're allowed. So they've decided that this is the high priority thing. that this is the high priority thing.

And I'm actually kind of surprised that we didn't really see multiple pitching coaches before we saw multiple hitting coaches, did we? Couldn't you have, I mean, how many hitting coaches do you need in uniform? It seems like you could have hitting coaches that don't sit in the dugout, it seems. I mean, I know the hitting coaches work with the players in the dugout and all that. I mean, you definitely would have to have one, but if it seems like, uh, like one in uniform and one out of uniform would be like 97% of the value of two in uniform. Yeah. Uh, I'm surprised we didn't really see that with pitching coaches just because you'd think that if, if one

of those two roles was going to expand, would be pitching coaches right because they're more pitchers than there used to be there aren't really more hitters on a team than there used to be but they're they're fewer of them they're more you got your bullpen coach yeah you've got people but you know there's the whole i mean there are more pitches out there today and more pitches on each team and and the whole biomechanical aspect of everything. And you'd think you'd maybe want a specialist there more than you would with Henning. But anyway, maybe teams are going away from hiring just another guy who does the same sort of thing. And they've just created this completely new position, or at least they've shifted the responsibility of this position sort

of from upstairs to downstairs. And I thought there was an illuminating quote in the Detroit Free Press from Brad Ausmus. And he said he was very quick to, I guess, to anticipate what could be a backlash to this hiring of a defensive coordinator and said, uh, he's a baseball guy. He's not a number crunching guy. His background is playing and coaching in the minor leagues. He's not a saver matrician. Can you, sorry, I, can you repeat which one are we talking about? We're talking about Matt Martin.

Matt Martin. This is an Osmus coach. So while this is true, he's – I mean he is a baseball guy whose background is playing and coaching in the minor leagues and he's not a saver-matrician. It almost felt overly defensive. Like – Yeah. You know, like it's sort of sad sad almost that and i don't blame him for saying that because why subject the guy to any extra scrutiny or you know you don't want

some columnist to be writing about the guy and saying oh he's just a numbers nerd in the dugout or whatever you don't need that kind of attention but it's almost sad that you have to say that today just to head off that kind of complaint because you know what if he were a number crunching guy what if he were a saving nutrition that wouldn't wouldn't be such a bad thing um and i guess it's it's also kind of selling him to the players if any of the players don't know him and are uncomfortable with this new coach being there then it's like, you know, reassuring them, telling them, hey, he's one of us. He's not one of those upstairs guys in the suits.

But I mean, it seems like the purpose of this new position is sort of to bridge the gap, right, between the front office and the dugout. and this is something i've been interested in and i've written about and maybe we've talked about before is that you have these really smart front offices who are doing all this innovative research and have all this new data available to them but they're still kind of hiring the baseball guy as the coach and the baseball guy isn't necessarily receptive to those things or at least he's not as well versed in those things. And so there's this gap. And when I was an intern or when I speak to front office people, sometimes it seems like there's sort of a frustration about that, or maybe people are

mostly just resigned to it. But, you know, like you make a big binder for the coaching staff and you'll put all these advanced information in there and all these tendencies and the heat maps and everything. And there's just sort of an acceptance that no one is going to look at those things that, you know, if they look at anything, they'll probably look at the wrong things. They'll look at like the small sample matchups that they want in there and they won't actually look at the predictive stuff. And so there hasn't been a great way to bridge that gap because you want to avoid the perception that the front office is just pulling all the strings and, and usurping the field staff's authority. But you,

so you can't stick a, you know, a sabermatrician in the dugout who can just know these things and tell the players themselves. You need a conduit of some sort, some former player who's acceptable to everyone and has this background in playing and scouting and coaching and advanced scouting and positioning and can kind of incorporate all. What in the world? I don't know. what was the last my computer my computer went my computer went black on conduit and then it just popped back super weird uh okay so what was i saying when you cut out you said i said conduit um i don't remember what I said before and after that. Well, it doesn't matter if I get cut out, right? Yeah, no, I guess not.

Okay. So whatever you stopped on. Okay. So you need this guy with the background in scouting and playing and coaching and being around players and being a player himself to kind of convey this information from the front office to the players. And I guess this is the solution that teams have hit on, that you put a baseball guy and you just, you say he's doing advanced scouting and he's he's doing defensive positioning and and obviously it's a it's a a reflection of how important teams think shifting is and and how they think there's an advantage to be gained there and and by studying opposing players tendencies and all the new data that's available and everything um what i what i guess i'm curious about is how much of what these guys do is going to be based on their own observations as opposed to information that they're getting from upstairs, right? Because if they're sitting in the dugout, they're not following all the other teams on the road, so they're not doing what a traditional advanced scout does where he sits on a series and writes down everything every player

does and then puts it into a report. He's seeing the same thing that all the other coaches and players are seeing, but he is the guy responsible for knowing what the other team does. So I guess that implies that he's going to be in pretty close contact with the the data people right passing that on to him i would think and and i mean you can't you can't do defensive positioning really based on what you see because you you have to see what a player does when you're not seeing him to know where he's going to hit the ball um so i would guess that you would have to have a a pretty information friendly person to put in this role yeah you said it ben you said everything about that topic nailed it you did stuck the landing and everything uh it'll be uh i mean yeah no i i it does seem like a pretty uh even if it's not

it seems like a very obvious Trojan horse. And Gabe talked about this when we had him on the show back – I don't know. What was that? Like 230? What do you think? What episode do you think that was? I have no sense of when we did anything if it was more than a week ago. He taught – I mean we specifically – one of the questions we asked was about how you get them to start listening.

And he said you basically – you find the baseball guys who are willing and you use them. You find one of them. 249. So they're your evangelists. You can't – it's like – so my sister's husband teaches in a seminary in Kiev, in Ukraine. And, you know, the idea is that it's sort of like missionary work, except it's kind of like not that useful to be a missionary in a foreign country and tell them your strange, weird views and tell them to change their lives. So you train the people in that country and then they go do it in their own culture and in their own way and in a way that's sort of culturally sensitive and so this is basically that this this seems to be uh going out and training a ukrainian to be to be us to be to be a minister

now um the interesting thing to me is that um this is not a job that existed two weeks ago for most of these teams. And so it's going to be really easy for this job not to exist in a year if they don't want it to, which basically means that the guy in the job has no leverage at all. And the club has insane amounts of leverage over them compared to the way that they, you know, compared to the amount of leverage they have over a hitting coach or a manager. I mean, it's not easy to fire a hitting coach. You know, it's a news story. It's like, you know, you start talking about, you know, whether he did a good job and all that. Whereas with this guy, if you don't like what he's doing, you just, you know, you just get rid of the position.

Nobody will even really notice. It'll be like a, you know you just get rid of the position nobody will even really notice it'll be like a you know a blurb um so from the manager's perspective it might be hard to see this guy as anything but a plant from the front office well other guys i mean other coaches are pretty expendable too right they're only not expendable in that they are the manager's guy right so you you don't want to break up his staff because that could cause problems with your relationship with him but otherwise i don't know i mean i i think it's the difference between being you know a contract worker and being an employee uh you know if you're an employee uh then your boss never like necessarily wakes up one day and goes today's the day I'm going to get rid of that guy, unless you're doing something wrong.

You just sort of get in this inertia of having this job, and something has to really happen to shake up that situation. Whereas if you're a contract worker, once a year, your boss thinks, should I renew this guy? It's like a different thing. Your boss thinks, oh, should I renew this guy? It's like a different thing. It's like there's nothing – there's not quite the same rhythm that keeps the job perpetually active. So I don't think it's quite the same as a hitting instructor. I think you have to decide to fire the hitting instructor. You can really very easily get rid of Eckstein though at this point.

So Eckstein knows he's working for his job and, you know, every, every day he's working for his job. It seems like, uh, he's going to be, um, you know, potentially much more deferential to the front office than a lot of, than anybody else in the coaching staff is likely to be. And that's possibly the point, but it might be a dangerous thing if you're expecting him to be an equal in the, in the the coaching staff and if you're expecting the coaching staff and the players to take him seriously as part of the coaching staff. Yeah. And it seems it's hard to tell exactly what the impetus was for hiring these guys or whose idea it was, because like in the MLB.com story, which is mostly about hiring Matt Williams as the manager, it spins it

at least as Williams totally orchestrating this himself. It says Williams has already put his stamp on the team, hiring Mark Wiedemeyer from the D-backs to serve as a defensive coordinator. Like, you know, he either, it doesn't say whether it was his suggestion to create this position or whether that was dictated to him and this was his choice for the person to fill that position. We don't really know how that happened, but this is his guy. I mean, someone that he worked with in Arizona and he brought on, which is often how we see coaches hired. he brought on, which is often how we see coaches hired. But it's not as clear in the other stories, you know, like the story in the L.A. Times about Eckstein just says the Angels hired former Washington Nationals hitting coach

Rick Eckstein. And then there's a team-issued press release with a Mike Soha quote, but it doesn't make it sound like it was Sosha's guy and he pushed for this position. And that's sort of the case with the Tigers too. I mean, it's a new manager and he's bringing in a whole new staff and it's not really clear whether this was more of a front office hire or more of a managerial hire. So maybe that differs by organization. And I guess the, the organizations that are, that are spearheading this are maybe not the ones that you, that you would expect. I, you know, would you, would you expect, you you know some stereotypically sabermetric

analytical team to to be the first to do this like the a's or the indians or the rays or one of those teams that sort of embrace tiring stat heads early you know because the the tigers really don't have that reputation they they have like one stat guy who was hired fairly recently and the Nationals have a – I guess more of an analytics department but not a huge one. And then the Angels, you know, Socha is a pretty old school guy. a fault i'm sort of looking at this through the angels filter because it really does fit into this narrative where they have a very stat friendly front office and a very stat unfriendly coaching staff and it's been a source of tons of tension between them and so you can't help but see this hybrid quasi hybrid position as anything but a power struggle but that's because everybody sees everything as a power struggle in Anaheim right now.

That might not be what it is, but that might be coloring my view of this. And you're right, it doesn't, like from the Tigers lens, knowing what we've always thought about the Tigers, Right. We don't expect them to be the front office that's like, you know, the vanguard of, you know, sabermetric on the field, you know, power grab. Yeah. Right. I mean, I would have guessed that Ausmus, I would have probably guessed that Ausmus was more stat friendly than their front office, perhaps. Uh-huh, yeah. And I don't know whether it's, I mean, it's kind of, maybe that's because the analytical teams feel like they can just hire analytical coaches and don't need the go-between.

You know, because if your manager is Joe Madden, then you don't need to sneak a guy in there who will pass on stats. You have Joe Maddon and he's perfectly happy to look at your stats and implement them. So I don't know whether they just prioritize hiring a stat-friendly manager or coaching staff so much that they don't feel like they need this extra position or whether that has anything to do with it. And, and it's not like these, it's not like these guys that they're hiring, like you wouldn't expect them based on their background to be any more stat friendly than, than the coaches these teams already have.

Right. I mean, Eckstein has been a coach for almost a couple of decades. He's been a hitting coach for the past five years. I mean, he doesn't really have an atypical background. I mean, if he were hired as any other kind of coach for this team, it wouldn't raise an eyebrow. So I guess then once you hire the person for this position, then maybe you find yourself back in the same position where you're having the same position where you're having the same difficulties just with a new person. Or I don't know. I mean, if you're

hiring this person to do this job, then presumably one of the prerequisites is that they be willing to listen and be enthusiastic about the information that you're providing. But since they are sort of the typical coaches, as far as background goes, it's not like there's anything about them in particular that would make you think that they are better suited to using this information than the coaches you already have. Which makes me think that maybe you could just sort of skip this step and hire an analytical manager who has this background. I'm like 96% sure we're overthinking this by 96%. Probably. That's what I do.

Which I think that means that we are overthinking it by 92%. Well, that's the name of my column. So that's what I tend to do. fun well that's the name of my column uh so that's what i tend to do so anyway we're uh we have our finger on the pulse of the baseball world this is the new thing that's happening so i wanted to discuss it excellent do you think how long do you think it'll be called defensive coordinator and i mean do you think that that's a name that is going i know it's not it's not like the but but do you think that in five years that that will be the the de facto term or not the official term for all these guys or will it be completely disregarded as a wrong sport yeah i don't know if that'll catch on it's too

it's too limiting right because if you're also an advanced scout then you're not just a defensive coordinator so at like in football apparently there's a position sort of analogous to this and it's just called a quality control coach which is kind of an interesting name so maybe that will be the crossover title i don't know um but i mean all three of these guys i guess have different titles right now, so there's no standard. When I was a teenager and thought that I was much smarter than I later learned I was, I had this idea that I wanted to be a – I wanted to be what I would call a logic coordinator. And I would simply – like people would hire me in any situation and I would simply provide them logic so that I can make good decisions. And that's actually a terrible idea for me but a great idea for a job if you're actually an exceptional person.

And probably every team should have a logic coordinator who just sort of floats around and says, that's a dumb decision. just sort of floats around and says that's a dumb decision yeah i always think uh tv shows writers rooms should have one of those people yeah just kind of a guy who watches tv like a regular person and is bothered by all the implausible stuff that happens and just says that's not a good thing yeah not not bogged down by having to be creative right or having to you know having to to do um you know employee reviews or any of the things that kind of eventually ruin us as employees just floats around giving good opinions i guess that's what forcing logic that's what a consultant is right i always wonder what a consultant is i don't it is a lot of what a consultant is. It is a lot of what a consultant is, yes. Okay.

Do you know if any team has ever hired McKinsey? I don't. No, I don't know. All right. All right. So that's that. We'll be back tomorrow. And, again, listener email show is on Friday, so send us some at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.