Kenny Rogers cheating with pine tar
Yesterday, Kenny Rogers was caught with a brown substance on his pitching hand, across the heel of the palm. After the first inning, according to Tony LaRussa, at least two of the five Cardinal hitters told him they’d seen the ball doing strange things, and LaRussa complained to the umpires, who talked to Rogers, Tigers manager Leyland, umpire supervisor Palermo, and when Rogers went back out for the second, his hand was clean.
I spent the last couple of years writing “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball” (pre-order now! $11!), so you can imagine my glee.
After the game, Rogers claimed that it was a clump of dirt he hadn’t noticed. This is a transparent lie. We would have to believe that he’s the only pitcher not concerned and meticulous about the condition of his pitching hand, and that he also didn’t notice at any time during the inning that there was dirt getting on the ball when he turned it in his hand to grip it.
Asked how he could have not noticed it, Rogers said “”It was dirt and rosin put together. That’s what happens when you rub it up. … I just went and wiped if off. I didn’t think it was an issue. After the first inning, it was fine. I felt I was pretty comfortable after that.””
Uh huh.
It’s pine tar. You’ve seen pine tar, it’s the sticky brown stuff hitters use on their bats, which you’ve also seen smeared on their helmets, batting gloves, and uniforms. Steve Palermo, the umpire supervisor, said the umps saw dirt, but that there was no inspection.
This is not the first time pine tar use by a pitcher in a playoff game has been controversial, either. Just in 1988, Dodger pitcher Jay Howell was caught with pine tar on his glove in the 8th inning of NLCS Game 3 on October 8th, facing the Mets, and was ejected after facing only one batter. The National League suspended him for three days.
Pine tar’s illegal. This is why you can’t admit you had pine tar on your hand. So the question “was he cheating?” is clearly yes. There have been many pitchers tossed out of games for having pine tar on their person.
But use of pine tar by pitchers is more of a long-tolerated practice, as long as they’re using it to get a better grip on the ball. When Brendan Donnelly was ejected in 2005 for using pine tar, he said
“I don’t have anything to apologize for. Pine tar is used the same way resin is used. People think you’re loading up the ball, but it keeps your fingers dry. I’m not trying to cheat or doctor the ball. Just to get a grip. Nothing more, nothing less.â€
Todd Jones, who is now Rogers’ teammate, wrote after Donnely’s ejection that he’d used pine tar every time he pitched at Coors Field because it the ball was so slippery there.
The hitters’ view is surprisingly lenient. In my book, Craig Counsell said in an interview that
“They’ll come up with anything if they think they can get a better grip on the baseball. You’ll see the bill of their hat is black, the rest of the hat’s red, and you’re saying to yourself ‘that’s not sweat.’ If something is done just to get a better grip on the baseball, that’s no big deal to me. But if they’re loading the ball up with saliva or whatever, and their pitches don’t do what normal pitches do, then you start to wonder.â€
If Rogers was only using it to get a better grip in what were clearly difficult conditions to pitch in, this might be nit-picky. But LaRussa said his hitters complained of unusual movement. How would that have worked?
Any foreign substance on the ball affects its flight. A strategic scratch or artifically smooth surface (say, by coating the leather with Vaseline) can make the ball move a great deal. If you scuff a ball on the side and throw a normal fastball, the ball will move away from the scuffed side as it approaches the batter. This is the complaint of the Cardinal hitters: that Rogers was putting enough pine tar on the ball that it was moving more than it should have given a natural delivery.
Moreover, the word is that he’s been doing something to the pitches all year while at home. Thankfully, Nate Silver wrote a nice article analyzing the possibility at SI.
His conclusion is that Rogers has enjoyed a slight, but noticeable, advantage while at home that isn’t enough to say he’s doing anything, but is certainly enough to make you suspicious.
I’ll argue the con side: if Rogers is doctoring balls, he can do it using clear substances, and he can better conceal them, or if he’s scuffing or trying to create more air resistance on one side by loading it with tar, there are a lot better, sneakier ways to go about this (there’s a huge section on this in the book, by the way). Running around with a big smear of pine tar on his hand is just asking to be caught.
The most likely explanation here is that Rogers was using pine tar to get a better grip on the ball in the poor conditions, and went without (or went to something else) after the umpires told him to clean it off. That’s not a huge deal, and certainly not enough to make his performance less impressive.
(Also, if you find this kind of thing interesting – what the difference between minor rule-breaking and full-on cheating is, the history of ball doctoring and how to do it, you should buy the book, The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball” because it’s all about this stuff)
Evaluating Managers, Again
For those of you interested in research in trying to quantify a manager’s effect on a team’s won-loss record, you’ll enjoy this article by Chris Jaffe, the third part in a series of extremely long articles he’s written on the subject. Building off work by Phil Birnbaum, he’s taken steps to try to evaluate managers in historical context, and today’s piece takes a shot at attempting to evaluate active managers.
His methods are a bit crude, but probably in the ballpark of being useful. Essentially, he’s taken a huge sample of statistical simulations from three different projection systems and compared expected team performance to actual team performance. Now, there’s a lot of reasons a team can underachieve or overachieve a statistical projection, with injuries and flaws in the projection systems being two of the big ones. But managerial impact is at least part of the difference, and Chris is right that the noise should begin to be filtered out when looking at a decent sample. He’s using six years of data for this piece, which may not be as much as we’d like, but is enough to avoid cries of small sample size.
Anyways, that’s enough talk about the methods. What you guys care about are the results, right? Thirty four managers worked in at least three seasons, qualifying them for the study. I won’t put the whole list here (you should read Chris’ piece anyways), but here are the parts Mariner fans care about:
#1: Lou Piniella, +49
#28: Bob Melvin, -13
#34: Mike Hargrove, -28
This data needs to be taken with a grain of salt or ten, but according to the data, the Mariners replaced the best manager over the last six years with the 7th worst, then replaced him with the worst of all. In addition to the numbers, Chris wrote a little blurb on each manager. Again, the relevant parts for Mariner fans:
Mike Hargrove.
Well, someone’s got to come in last. His only really bad year was 2005 when the Mariners were 13 games under their projection. From 2000-6, exactly 60% have scored at least a –2 in their projections. Hargrove’s been –3 or worse four times in six years. Only one of his six clubs have exceeded expectations. That was 1992 when the O’s scored a big +2. He was –12 with the Orioles, and –16 with the Mariners. I’m glad he’s not managing my favorite team. The Birnbaum database likes him through 2001 putting him around +175 runs, which was almost entirely built up by his Pythagoras W/L record.
Bob Melvin:
He actually scores well in three of his four seasons, but the 2004 Mariners were 21 games under projection. All four of their main starting pitchers fell apart. Most disturbingly, both their young studs, Gil Meche and Joel Pineiro, collapsed. I don’t know if he overworked them the year before of if there’s something else going on. Looking at it, Meche wore down considerably in the second half of 2003, and Pineiro couldn’t get anyone out that August. Now in Arizona, history’s not repeating itself with Brandon Webb. In fact, ChadBradfordWannabe thinks Webb’s mechanics have improved since 2004.
Lou Piniella:
I can’t believe he’s as good as this system claims he is if for no other reason than I have too much respect for some of the other managers to think Piniella could dominate them so much. Then again, I think enough of this system that I have to think he’s done a real wing-dinger of a job over the last couple years. As mentioned earlier, he’s the best at orchestrating immediate dramatic improvement since the death of Billy Martin. His score of +49 wins here is off the charts. How the hell did he do that good? Well, the 2001 Mariners didn’t hurt his mark. They’re the biggest overachieving team under study here, at +29 games. They’re also the biggest overachievers in the Birnbaum database. Take that away from him and he’s “only” sixth best. That’s not a fair comparison, however. Let’s take everyone’s best season away from them and see how they compare. Here’s the top five without their best season:
1. Lou Piniella +20
2. Ron Gardenhire +17
3. Mike Scioscia +13
4. Ozzie Guilen +11
5. Bobby Cox +10He’s still the king, and only one man is within two-thirds of him. Piniella’s aided by only having one negative year, a mere –3 in 2005. Guillen has no negative years, but he’s only been around 3 years. Gardy has two. Granted, they’re only –2, and –1, but he hasn’t managed as much.
The Birnbaum database didn’t like Piniella at all. In part two I explained why I disagreed. Anyone who can capture a ring with the 1990 Reds and win 116 wins in Seattle has to have something going for him. I’m amazed how much this system likes him, though.Piniella scores +36 with Seattle and +13 with Tampa Bay. Maybe it’s easier to exceed projections when you’re supposed to win as few games as the Rays are always calculated at, but the other Tampa managers are a combined –19 wins. Perhaps he’s not as good as he once was. The aging patterns info works against him, but he’s earned the right to show if he still has it.
Anyways, like I said, the idea is interesting, but the methods are so blunt that you can’t take the results with any kind of precision, and even the general conclusions reached have to be tempered a bit. Lou Piniella comes out looking great, but 2001 was obviously a huge part of his big positive addition, and while he certainly deserves some credit for that season, I’d imagine this system is overestimating his abilities quite a bit.
So, yea, even the projection systems think Mike Hargrove is pretty lousy.
Moyer re-signs with Philadelphia
Well, the talk of Jamie Moyer returning to Seattle in the offseason can officially end; he signed a two year extension with the Phillies today, with the total value being $10.5 million.
Leave it to Pat Gillick to sign a guy to a two year deal that will expire after his age fourty-five season. Jamie was still an effective enough pitcher last year, but man, 2 years, $10 million for an 82 MPH fastball in that park?
Good luck, Jamie. And Philly fans, you have my sympathies. At least you know that Gillick won’t stick around very long once the team starts showing it’s not that good.