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The Cult of GM
New fangled stats
and guru General Managers in MLB
by CSF
Staff
12-12-2006
It really started with Billy
Beane and the book about him, Moneyball. There was already a fan
club of sorts that followed his every move in Oakland. He had
assembled a great young one-three pitching staff. Young being
the key word there because the cost conscious A's could not
afford the good older veteran types of pitchers. The 2001
Oakland A's had four pitchers with ERAs under four, three of
which were the youthful Tim Hudson (26), Barry Zito (23), and
Mark Mulder (24). Mulder and Zito were 1st round draft picks.
Hudson was a 6th rounder in 1997.
So it was not surprising that the
Detroit Tigers ended up in the World Series in 2006 with a
similar type of starting staff. It included: Kenny Rogers (41),
Nate Robinson (28), and Justin Verlander (23) with ERAs under
four - and Jeremy Bonderman (23) at 4.08.
Notice the similarity between the
two clubs? Both had three starters with ERAs under four. They
also had good/stable bullpens. The good starting pitching though
is one of the surest signs of a winner throughout MLB history.
In fact, a similar trait is noticeable the last time the
Cleveland Indians won a World Series (1948). Gene Bearden was
the ERA (2.43) champ that year. Bob Lemon wasn't far behind at
2.82. Someone by the name of Bob Feller chipped in with 19 wins
(3.56).
So somebody decided to write a
book about the A's Beane because his club had multiple years
of success on a tight budget. Not only that, the book is about
the supposed genius of Beane in that he looked for and exploited
market inefficiencies. Basically, the theory is that he looks
for what is under priced in the baseball market in regards to
skills and buys heavily into this area. At first it was OBP (on
base percentage). More recently it is supposedly fielding
defense that is under priced.
I do give credit to Beane for
rightfully stressing the importance of OBP in scoring runs and
even more so, not being so beholden to scouts, which has led to
many mistakes in talent evaluation over the years. On the other
hand, if it wasn't for those same scouts, teams would not take
chances on high school players, particularly pitchers. Just
using the A's as a recent example, it was Bean's scouting
director Grady Fuson that selected a high school pitcher in the
1st round of the 2001 draft - Jeremy Bonderman. Beane was
dead set against it. To make matters worse, Beane eventually
used Bonderman as the infamous PTBNL (player to be named later)
throw-in in a trade involving New York & Detroit. The return?
Ted Lilly. I don't think there are many GMs around baseball that
would take Lilly over Bonderman at this point. Especially if you
consider that Lilly is costing the Cubs $40 million over the
next four years and Bonderman is about to face salary
arbitration for the first time.
While it is true that OBP is
significant & was and probably still is not valued like it
should be, this has led to all kinds of craziness amongst owners
in their hiring of GMs and the fans who follow said GMs. It
seems like we have just gone through a period where young, stats
types, and better yet Ivy Leaguers are the most sought after GMs
by owners.
The fans themselves are not only
fans of the game and players now. You have what I call GM
groupies running around ruminating about the genius moves of
their guy. This leads to insane arguments such as:
Jason Johnson is an excellent
pickup for the Cleveland Indians because he has so many quality
starts per year.
Jason Johnson is a ground ball
pitcher and if the Indians had any decent fielding defense his
record would be a lot better.
Now that Jason Johnson is with
the best fielding defensive team (Boston) you will see his
record improve.
None of these statements proved
to be true, by the way. These were just the various arguments
that were made by, in this instance, the Mark Shapiro GM
groupies to defend his acquisition of Jason Johnson. Bad
pitching is bad pitching. This is one of the biggest arguments I
have with the new stats/GM people. This obsession with what I
call the non difference making stats. Some examples:
fielding defense
counting a .500+ SLG as a sign of
good power when the player has a high batting average. This is a
common mistake when evaluating young players. It sometimes
happens that a player in the minor leagues will have a non
repeatable batting average (extremely high), which is a factor
in SLG as each single counts as a base.
quality starts - this is usually
defined by if the pitcher can get through 6 IP and give up three
runs. That is an ERA of 4.5 and unless a team's bullpen is
lights out the team will lose a lot of games this way unless
they have a great offense. And then there is the problem of wear
an tear on a bullpen that is in games by the 7th inning too many
times.
overvaluing platoons - this is
where the stats people do all sorts of calculations hoping to
get the same production from a combination of players that a
team would get from one real one.
There are even entire web sites
now devoted to taking the simple equations that make up the most
used pitching & hitting stats, converting them into a more
complicated mathematical equation, and calling them something
new. Maybe it's my simple mind but math is math. There are many
ways you can get to the sum of 50 (or any other), including
complex (not normally used by the general public) processes.
Let's be clear: the only useful statistics in baseball are those
that clearly measure meaningful on field production. They
include: ERA, WHIP, K/IP, OBP, BB/K. Most of the others, while
interesting at times, are unnecessary. At best, they tend to
muddle the issues. At worst, they give too much value to things
that are not primary factors in winning baseball games.
If you notice, all of the
examples above (quality starts, platoons, etc.) are very useful
to teams with limited spending ability. Most of these teams have
hired these younger GMs. Why wouldn't a cash deprived owner not
want one? They are not only cheaper but offer
the promise of a contending team on a shoestring budget due to
their supposed special knowledge or innovative thinking. You never see
big spenders like the Yankees or Red Sox putting an emphasis here.
The Yankees whole problem in recent years is the injuries to
their veteran starters. Oh yea, that pitching issue again.
Doesn't matter if it is 1948 or 60 years later, it is THE most
meaningful skill in regards to putting a winning team on a
field.
The fact is, if the A's had not
drafted well in a relatively short time period, which afforded
all three of the above named pitchers to be hitting their stride
in 2001, I doubt a book gets written about Mr. Beane. If the
book doesn't get written and become very popular a lot of
current GMs would not have high profile jobs in MLB. If the
fans, who really are looking for hope with their low dollar
teams, don't hook onto these savior types you don't end up with
the constant barrage of stats for even the smallest of minutiae
in MLB.
Want to know if your team is
going to contend this year? Ask yourselves one question: are
there three starters that are above average - say possibly
achieving an ERA under four? Nope? Then no amount of fielding
defense, platoons, quality 4th & 5th starters, intangibles
(that come free) etc. are going to
put them there. Yes, it is simplistic. And yes, it is still
possible to be competitive with such a team - just not likely.
The best bet for a team with average or below starting pitching
is to be in a weak division.
So what does that mean for the
Indians? They have one starter that has proven to be above
average - C. C. Sabathia. They've got three middle to back of
the rotation types in: Jake Westbrook, Cliff, Lee, & Paul Byrd.
Then they have one pitcher that is a question mark because he
basically is a rookie still in Jeremy Sowers. Their bullpen? I
would not use the word stable in reference to it. I guess if
everything falls right (sheer luck) with the pitching and the
other experiments (platoons) on offense all work out, it is
possible for them to be competitive for a playoff spot. No
amount of playing with numbers or hoping the magic of Mark
Shapiro will have a positive effect would get me to put money on it
though.
The only hope I see is if the
teams that finished in front of the Indians in 2006 have a run
of bad luck. Detroit still looks strong. Minnesota will be hurt
by losing Liriano. Chicago's pitching is not much better than
the Indians. All three of these teams have better bullpens
though. And Detroit added Gary Sheffield, a significant signing
that will make a middle of the pack offense much better.
As a long suffering Indians fan,
I've had it up to here with the new theme that is used for
marketing purposes every five years it seems. This last one was
that Mark Shapiro was a believer in building from within and
being smarter at evaluating talent - hint hint, like those other
smart young GMs. You're kidding right? Other than a couple of
trades of veterans for prospects, he's been one of the worse
talent evaluators Cleveland has seen.
And I've got a sneaking hunch
that Shapiro is really not a stats based GM but enjoys the
reputation as one because he is well educated and young. If you
knew nothing about him other than his title and analyzed his
acquisitions over the years you would think he is totally
dependent on scouting as the way he evaluates talent. How else
could it be explained that he saw something in Aaron Boone,
Ramon Vazquez, Jason Johnson, Guillermo Mota, and a slew of
other scrap heap veterans? This doesn't even get into the
managerial area where he doesn't value experience whatsoever,
hiring a minor league manager in Eric Wedge as an example. Which
is pretty ironic given he is at the point where he doesn't want
to trust his young on the field talent anymore. It all starts to
feel like a big scam after a while.
Here is the best general manager
in the game: Terry Ryan of the Minnesota Twins. He has steered
the Twins to four Central division titles in the last five
years, two years of which the division was very strong. His
teams have won 90+ games in each of those years. There is none
better in the game when it comes to evaluating & developing
young pitching talent, having acquired two of the best on the
cheap in recent years in Johan Santana (rule 5 draft) and Nelson
Liriano (trade for AJ Pierzynski). He also picked up a good
closer in the latter trade. Minnesota is also every bit as
financially challenged as teams like the A's and Indians, and an
argument could be made even more so. It appears it didn't take
Ryan following the reinventing of the wheel when it comes to
running a MLB team. He just followed history - construct a good
pitching staff with a strong 1-3 as the anchor, a stable
bullpen, and start filling in from there. He never buys high
priced veteran free agents and trusts his evaluation skills,
proven by the fact the Twins have no qualms about playing their
young talent. The results speak for themselves.
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