Walkoff losses and the use of Francisco Rodriguez
by dontstopbelieving on Jul 28, 2010 11:53 AM EDT
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PrintThe Mets have 12 walk-off losses this year. These losses have had a major impact on their record; had they won, say, even one third (4) of those games, their playoff position would look dramatically different (and better) than it does today. In the MSM, writers use the walk-off losses to bemoan the Mets' lack of "clutch" hitting or "fire." In the stats-based community, on the other hand, close games like these are often chalked up to randomness - indeed, David Biderman of the Wall Street Journal recently noted, discussing the Mets, that "sometimes this walk-off loss statistic is nothing more than a product of bad luck" (emphasis added). Stats like Pythagorean Record are used to estimate what a team's record "should" be, based on runs scored and runs surrendered, and it is normally expected that a team's eventual winning percentage will be close to its Pythagorean winning percentage once the luck evens out. The Mets' Pythagorean Record right now is 54-46, three games better than their actual W-L record, suggesting that they've been a bit unlucky in this regard.
But of course, close games like walk-offs are also where managerial decisions can contribute much more heavily to wins and losses. And if a manager is pursuing a particular close-game strategy consistently, and wrongly, then there's less reason to expect that the team's performance in such games will improve. With that, this FanPost (my first!) examines the Mets' 12 walk-off losses and the use - or lack thereof - of Francisco Rodriguez in those games. Very little of this is likely to surprise anyone here, but I thought it would be useful to actually lay out the evidence.
Here's a link to each Mets' walkoff loss with a brief description:
April 14, 2010 - Ianetta homer off Mejia
May 3, 2010 - Nix homer off Acosta
May 5, 2010 - O. Cabrera homer off Feliciano
May 13, 2010 - Nieve WP
May 18, 2010 - Wright throwing error after IF single off Mejia
May 28, 2010 - Hart homer off Igarashi
June 2, 2010 - Gonzalez homer off Valdes
June 29, 2010 - Uggla single off Feliciano
July 1, 2010 - Zimmerman sac fly off Igarashi
July 3, 2010 - I. Rodriguez single off F. Rodriguez
July 21, 2010 - Snyder single off Nieve
July 24, 2010 - Loney homer off Perez
Examining each box score, Francisco Rodriguez pitched in 3 of those 12 games. In 2 of them (June 2 vs SD and July 3 vs WAS), he had entered the game in a save situation and blew the save - in the SD game, the Mets went on to lose later; in the WAS disaster, K-Rod lost the game himself. In the other (June 29 vs FLA), he was brought in the game in a low-leverage situation (aLI: 0.18) in the bottom of the 8th to "get work" - he was dominant, retiring the side on only 11 pitches - but because his spot was due up in the 9th, he was pinch-hit for (by Carter, whose double keyed a game-tying rally). Feliciano, attempting to run the gauntlet of the Marlins' righties in the bottom of the 9th, failed and lost the game. Although his use there is debatable, I'll give Jerry a bit of a pass on that one - regular work for a pitcher is important, and based on the lineup situation, there was no double-switch Jerry could have made when inserting K-Rod in the 8th that would have allowed him to potentially pitch 2 innings without taking out one of the Mets' better players. (The last Mets' batter retired in the top of the 8th was the #4 hitter.)
That leaves 9 games, all walkoff losses, where K-Rod, ostensibly the Mets' best reliever, didn't pitch at all. (Small note: actually, to this point, the Mets' best reliever is Parnell, based on both FIP and xFIP, but that's subject to small sample size warnings, and Parnell wasn't available for use until the last month or so. In any event, K-Rod is at least the Mets' 2nd-best reliever according to FIP and xFIP.).
All 9 of these games involved high-leverage situations (the lowest aLI for the Mets' final pitcher, for Acosta in the May 3 game, was 2.03), yet the Mets lost each game with an inferior pitcher - sometimes a vastly inferior pitcher (e.g. Perez, or Feliciano against good righties) - on the mound instead of their ace reliever. We don't know, of course, if the Mets would have won any of these games had K-Rod pitched, but we do know that they lost them, and a pretty reasonable conclusion is that playing inferior players over better ones increases a team's chances of losing. Again, out of these 9 games, imagine if the Mets had won even a third (3) of them. They'd be 3.5 out of first instead of 6.5. They'd be 2.5 out of the wild card instead of 5.5. A substantial difference in their chances of making the playoffs.
As we learned a few days ago, the Mets apparently don't plan on changing their approach to using Rodriguez in tie games on the road, with Dan Warthen saying this approach is "standard across baseball." Of course, standard doesn't mean it's actually a good idea, in this case, it clearly isn't.
This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions, reasoning skills, or attention to grammar and usage rules held by the editors of this site.
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Look at the pitchers in each situation
A LOOGY giving up hits to right-handed batters, a sub-replacement reliever who was just DFA’d, a rookie and a bunch of spare parts.
It’s Jerry…if you are going to get beat, get beat with your best.
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but Jerry abuses the privilege.
The value of the manager is at the margins
The old rule about managers is that you fired the manager because you couldn’t fire the players. That used to make sense.
For sake of discussion, let’s say I’ve been following the Mets since 1983, which seems to push the envelope a tad, but whatever. From 1983 until 1993, inclusive, the first year of the Wild Card, the number of NL playoff spots determined by five or fewer games? Nine. Less than one per year. Only one or two were decided by one game. The odds of a manager being able to cost his team a playoff spot — or get them one — by virtue of his managerial skills is small, at best.
But in the decade-and-a-half since? In 2000, the Mets won the WC by 6 games. In, literally, every other year, at least one NL spot has been up for grabs in the last week of the season.
We’re in a new world of managerial effects. Managers who give up games at the margin, even if it’s only one or two, cost teams championships. If Jerry Manuel is at 2 this year - and he may be there, if not worse — and Bobby Cox is at +1, that’s half the gap right there.
Of course, the hard part is
quantifying all of this. Much easier done in these small samples (e.g. walkoff losses) than in the aggregate.
by dontstopbelieving on Jul 28, 2010 6:41 PM EDT up reply actions
This is a great point...
I remember in the 80s you generally knew who was going to win the pennant in August.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 29, 2010 7:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Excellent FanPost.
I particularly like analyses such as yours that look at specifics rather than generalizing about things such as the randomness of one-run or extra-inning games.
I wonder if a comprehensive study like this, done across the entirety of the majors over, say, five seasons, and comparing situations where a manager did and did not use his best reliever(s) atypically, would demonstrate how much more valuable it is to teams to use their aces in situations other than those a dull, plodding manager typically uses them in. Occasionally such studies change the game.
Differences in managerial abilities will very likely, once again, make all the difference in who makes the postseason. I don’t doubt a top manager would have the Mets leading the wildcard race. The number of managers who can cost (or win) their teams ten games over the course of a season is extremely small. Manuel is one such manager.
It’s dismaying that Warthen is parroting the company line. Obviously he can’t really say, “You’re right. Manuel’s handling of the bullpen has been atrocious and has cost us games.” I wonder what he really thinks.
For comparative purposes
How many walkoff losses have the other teams had this year?
What's the score, boys?
What did Bugs Bunny do?
What's with the Carrot League baseball today?
OK now at least there's some perspective. Thanks.
What's the score, boys?
What did Bugs Bunny do?
What's with the Carrot League baseball today?
Jonathan Papelbon has been in 6 tie games on the road in the 9th inning or later
over the past 2 seasons. The Red Sox’ record in those games is 0-6.
I counted 4 times that Brian Wilson came in in that situation in ‘09 and ’10 (I was using Baseball-Reference.com as my guide; I’ve seen other sources that said 5, but I could not find a fifth). The Giants are 1-3 in those games. The one win came when Wilson had 5 days of rest.
So I guess how well you do when you bring your closer in not to close depends on who else you have on hand, as much as anything else.
Also, for whatever it’s worth, when he was with the Mets, Bobby Valentine usually let his pitching coach make the pitching changes. He almost never went out to the mound himself. So the bullpen management then was very similar to what it is now, very paint-by-numbers. Maybe a lot of it depends on who your pitching coach is, too.
Bobby let Wallace go to the mound
But I assume he called for the changes himself, no?
Do you know how Papelbon and Wilson did in those games? I.e. did their teams lose because they pitched poorly, or simply because their teams failed to score runs?
Obviously, any of these things (including the Mets’ losses this year) are vulnerable to small-sample-size criticisms. The bigger point, in my view, is that in a high-leverage situation, there’s no reason to go with a worse pitcher when a better one is available (particuarly where, in the Mets’ situation, the worse pitchers are often much worse).
by dontstopbelieving on Jul 29, 2010 9:54 AM EDT up reply actions
That sample size is miniscule. It's interesting, but it tells us literally nothing.
Something that might be useful would be to note every example over the last decade, adjust for players’ and teams’ stats, compare the results to how teams otherwise fare in tie games on the road, and whatever other adjustments that need to be made.
Perhaps so
but since people around here were comparing the number of times Wilson and Papelbon being brought into tie games on the road from the 9th inning on to the number of times Frankie was used in that capacity over the past two seasons, that is what I focused on.
And in case you care, in 2000 Armando Benitez was used in that situation exactly once (he won), and in 1999, neither Benitez nor John Franco was used in that situation at all.
My best recollection is that BV usually deflected any reporter questions
about bullpen management to the pitching coach, whether it was Apodaca, Wallace, or Hough. (I am trying to find linkage to corroborate this.) Of course, that doesn’t mean his fingers weren’t in everything; I’m sure they were.
Papelbon: Took the loss in one of those games, in the others the pitcher immediately following him in the next inning did so. Sox didn’t score in extra innings in any of them.
Wilson: One loss (not charged to him) was truly bizarre; the game went 14 innings, with the Giants scoring 3 runs in the top of the 14th and the Rockies scoring 5 in the bottom. Wilson pitched the 9th, 10th, and part of the 11th. Another (also at Colorado), he pitched the 13th inning and the Giants lost in 15, with the pitcher immediately after him (Guillermo Mota!) taking the loss. The third, similar deal: Wilson pitched the 11th and 12th, and they lost in the 14th, with the pitcher immediately following him taking the loss. In the last two, the Giants didn’t score in extra innings.
So out of those 9 team losses, 8 of them were coughed up by the pitcher immediately following the closer.
I agree with the gist of this post
However, the blame can’t fall entirely on Jerry. The Mets’ terrible record in extra-inning games has to also be blamed on…
1. Omar’s inability to assemble a decent bullpen.
2. Omar’s inability to assemble a decent bench. Mets pinch-hitters are batting .222/.277/.285 this year!
I found it
here. The Mets are pretty bad in this category. The bullpen stats are not that bad though
This reminds me of a principle once articulated by the judge Learned Hand.
A company tried to defend it’s practice as not being negligent by stating that the entire industry operated in this way. Just because everyone does it, does not make it the right was to proceed. And I think all indications point to the fact that Jerry and Warthen seem to think that the “baseball way” of doing things trumps good management. And that makes .500 teams.
Bing-diddly-oh.
This isn’t incredibly difficult stuff to figure out, and the vast majority of meaningful work has been done—it only needs to be assimilated, then, not invented from scratch. A lot of General Managerships are going to stats-savvy, college-educated guys. No reason the same can’t be true for the position of Manager. The difference between a stats-oriented manager and an old school manager—all other things being equal—is going to be several games, a number for which teams routinely pay ten million dollars and more.
Yep, pretty much.
Does anyone else feel like we keep retreading the obvious in the hopes that perhaps someone will see the obvious for what it is? I think the true frustration comes from the feeling that it’s so damn clear what the right course should be and yet nothign happens. Oh well. I guess if we didn’t accept frustration we’d all be Yankees fans.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 31, 2010 1:36 AM EDT up reply actions
Who, though, is this great, innovative field manager
you want to get? Do you have a name? I already established up above that even Bobby Valentine (and his pitching coaches) conformed to the norm when it came to managing the pen. I doubt Bob Melvin would be any different, either. Even Mike Scioscia “pitches to the save” (check out Halos Heaven for confirmation of this).
Let’s face it, field managers who are too “mavericky” aren’t really trusted by team owners or players, until they’ve had postseason success. Even Tony La Russa was pretty conventional starting out.
Give someone else a chance.
That’s all there is to it. Better to have an unknown than a bad known.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 31, 2010 1:37 AM EDT up reply actions
That's how we wound up with Jeff Torborg, Dallas Green, et al
Think about it — since the death of Gil Hodges, EVERY Mets manager except for interim fill-ins, up until Jerry has gotten shitcanned — with the exception of George Bamberger, who bailed before it could happen to him. Even managers who won pennants and series, were judged eventually to be massive piles of suck and run out of town on a rail, while people chanted, “Anyone’s better than this POS! Anyone!” Over and over and over again. I would like the next manager to be a little more carefully evaluated than that, thanks, especially given this ownership’s reluctance to eat any more bad deals.
The solution?
Reanimate Gil Hodges.
"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.
by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Jul 31, 2010 1:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Agree to a degree.
But the problem has not been with replacing crappy managers, but replacing them with even crappier managers. Everyone suspected that Art Howe, Jeff Torborg, and Dallas Green were going to be terrible. This is why I would not want to dump Jerry for Bob Melvin, my bravado above aside, but for someone who has proven himself to be a winner. But I think this argument fails to account for the fact that managers don’t typically get fired after success—they get fired after failure. So I think that managers tend to get shitcanned more than most because they go in bad situations, not good. Let’s put this into perspective, Buddy Harrelson was 74-80 when he was fired, Davey Johnson was 20-22 (fielding a gutted team), Bobby V was 75-86, Willie was 34-35 (and let’s not forget the previous season’s collapse), Jeff Torborg was 13-25, Joe Torre was 41-62, Frank Howard was 52-64, and ole George Bamberger sported a less-than-stellar 16-30 record before he walked.
I agree that Mets fans can have a short fuse and can demand managerial changes (and player changes) without letting things take their course. I think this is a serious problem in many respects. But at the end of the day each of these changes was precipitated by poor performance, and in many cases horrid performance. I think your point is that the team should hire the right person, not whoever is available, and I agree with that. I just think that there are some attractive options who should get shorter-term, performance based contracts rather than extensions for tepid performances.
And if you can't find a genius then, for crying out loud, simply
find someone competent. Someone who will look at, you know, stats. Who, unlike Manuel, doesn’t work on his intuition through the all-star game in order to figure out whether Jeff Francouer can hit righthanded pitching, but is capable instead of figuring that five years of consistent numbers are probably enough to go on so that we can stop losing games for perfectly obvious, predictable reasons.
A merely competent manager would have the Mets in the thick of the divsion race, and neck and neck with Atlanta.
This
In so many ways, this. You need not be a genius to be competent, you merely have to be diligent and humble in your approach.
AMEN to this
This bit of Conventional Managerial Wisdom has always driven me completely insane, and I’m glad someone has finally written something about this. I’m more surprised that any team (apparently Red Sox and Giants, from examples in comments) used their relief ace on the road in non-save situations than the overwhelming numbers that would never consider it. It’s been only a few seasons it seems that managers figured out that they could use their closers in a tie game at home once the game hit the 9th inning. You’d figure after countless losses in extra innings where Jerry (or almost any other manager) waited for the save situation that never happened that someone might think to change strategies.
Which is funny to me...
Because the concept of “closer” is only slightly more than 30 years old. Stats-based decision-making as we now know it only predated Bill James by a few years, and so the “baseball man” ethos surrounding it does not have the weight of other accepted SOP. Before that relief pitchers were relief pitchers because they were not good enough to be starters.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 31, 2010 1:40 AM EDT up reply actions
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