Coverage so far
Let’s see if I can do this without pushing the whole site somewhere:
Baker for the Times
Hickey for the PI
SEATTLE — The so-called dream job that landed in John McLaren’s lap almost one year ago ended on Thursday morning when he became the latest victim to the Mariners’ nightmarish season.
Victim?
I’d link the AP piece on ESPN, but I refuse to link to AP stuff any more.
McLaren fired, Riggleman in
So says the hot rumor. I guess he got the predicted June 19th viking funeral after all.
11:30 press conference.
Was it the open letter on lineups? I was only trying to be helpful.
As Dave noted earlier, the reason to keep McLaren around would be to let an incoming GM pick their own candidate: if Riggleman does better the rest of the season, which should happen, then the thought is it’s harder to fire him. I’m not sure that’ll deter whoever takes over, of course.
Off day
We could certainly use the rest too. You’ve probably noticed, but we’re exhausted: we’ve done 24 posts since we got the news that Bavasi was being fired, some of them quite huge, and behind the scenes we’ve been dealing with crazy traffic which has kept me busy on the back-end too.
If you appreciate this kind of intense coverage and having USSM stay up through it, please consider tossing us a buck or two.
I don’t know if we’ll end up buying an entirely new server or what, but I’m going to do something here shortly. Anyway —
w/r/t yesterday’s lineup post, msb sent us this quote from McLaren, on batting Lopez third:
“We’re trying to just get a workable lineup. Lopez has been our best hitter, and that’s as good as I can put it.â€
Please, McLaren, read the lineup post.
Cuban Refugee Yuniesky Betancourt Prefers Castro To M’s Manager John McLaren
Open letter to McLaren on lineups
I know you said you’ve given up on reading things on the net, but I wanted to offer something beyond criticism in the hope that you’ll be able to use it. It’ll help your team score runs, and I think you’d agree that you should always take runs where you can find them. Please at least consider this.
There’s been a lot of research done on lineup construction. The most recent is the chapter in Tango’s “The Book” and there’s a good chapter on this in Baseball Between the Numbers (“Was Billy Martin Crazy” by James Click, now with the Tampa Bay Rays). The work they’ve done sits on research done since the early days of Bill James and Pete Palmer, but I’ll spare you the lineage.
But it’s not just a bunch of computer people running simulations: much of this comes from validating the philosophy of the best baseball managers, like Earl Weaver.
James Click found that the difference between the worst possible lineup and the best possible lineup (Click’s example is in an NL lineup, batting the pitcher first and the best hitters at the bottom) produced a difference of 26 runs. The difference between a major-league standard lineup (speed, OBP at #1, contact and bunting at #2, best hitter #3, 2nd best/power at #4, and so on) and the best possible one was about ten runs, but the details of how that works should be left to the book.
Here’s the thing. You’re running out a lineup that is close to that worst-possible one: you’re regularly batting a pitcher in the top spots. This is an easy fix you can start making Friday, and you can do it by applying a couple of easy principles that research has found. You can check out those two books, or I’ll try to summarize it really quickly.
The best hitters should go first. As the game goes on, each extra at-bat goes to those guys. Over the course of the season, that’s a significant number of plate appearances you can direct to your best hitters bu putting them at the top. Normally this isn’t a huge deal, but the difference between getting Raul an extra 20 at-bats this year instead of Vidro is runs on the board.
Stack by on-base percentage as much as possible. Not creating outs is the most important thing a hitter can do. I know you’re not going to want a slow OBP guy up top, and I’ll get to that.
Here’s how this applies to the Mariners. It might be helpful to think of this like a draft board. You’ve got your starting lineup and you want to pick the best available hitter with each pick, taking only as much consideration for handedness and skill as you have to.
I’m going to assume it’s a right-handed starter, so Reed’s in center.
Bat Ichiro first. He’s a great leadoff guy, you’ve got him stealing like crazy, it’s great.
Second, the pure OBP play here is Ibanez, but I’ll suggest that you play Beltre. You’ve seen him, he’s taking walks, hitting for a decent average, spraying line drives around even if they’re not dropping in.
Or take Reed. Like Ichiro, has some speed, can run the bases, takes his walks. The downside is you’ve got two lefties at the top of your lineup.
Lopez would be a decent third choice, but he’s not taking the walks you want out of a guy that high up in the order.
Let’s say you take Beltre for L-R. Then #3, you take Ibanez, he’s your best hitter and you’ve got two good on-base threats ahead of him.
#4, Beltre if you passed him up at #2. if you didn’t, and you’re determined to take a rightie here, go for Lopez or Betancourt. Seriously: they’re hitting for average and some power, you’ve got three good threats to get on-base ahead of them, and if Ichiro led off, he’s probably in scoring position by now.
If you’re willing to take a lefty, take Clement.
#5, take Clement if you passed him up at #4. He’s the best hitter on the board at this point no matter how you got here.
#6-7, you take Lopez or Betancourt if you didn’t pick them at #2 or #4
#8, you take Sexson, assuming Sexson’s playing first
#9, you put Vidro
And now a word on Vidro. He’s done. You must see this. If you have to play him, and I obviously don’t know your reasoning behind it, he’s the worst hitter on the squad, and batting him high in the order hurts the team. And the fans. Don’t do it. He’s not hitting for average, he’s not getting on base, he has no power. For whatever reason, he’s the worst hitter in the American League right now. Don’t hit him high in the order. Put the best lineup order you can out together, and that’ll push him down.
So here’s what you get going through this exercise v RHP, assuming you want to alternate handedness:
Ichiro-L
Beltre-R
Ibanez-L
Lopez-R
Clement-L
Betancourt-R
Reed-L
Sexson-R
Vidro-B
Or, if you don’t want to bat Beltre at #2 and still want to alternate handedness
Ichiro-L
Lopez-R
Ibanez-L
Beltre-R
Clement-L
Betancourt-R
Reed-L
Sexson-R
Vidro-B
And you can see how the same method works when building the anti-LHP lineup.
This simple change to how you’re ordering lineups is probably worth five, maybe even ten runs over the rest of the season. Ten runs is an extra win. Five runs over the course of the season is huge on its own. And it doesn’t require you to change players, positions, or anything. It’s absolutely worth doing.
If you can, I highly recommend checking out those two books. Baseball Between the Numbers is available used right now for $1, which may make it the best pure value in modern baseball research, and it’s full of information you can use to make the team better. Or drop us a line, and I’ll mail you my copy, compliments of USSM.
But if you can’t, at least consider using these well-known principles of how to construct a lineup to help your team out. And if you’re interested, there’s a whole set of fixes like this you can use to improve the team from here on out. Just let me know, and we’ll keep writing them up — and we don’t even have to make a big deal out of it, or be acknowledged, and we won’t mention you’re listening. I’m serious: I’m willing to back criticism with research and ways to make things better. Drop us a line.
Game 72, Marlins at Mariners
A game thread! Remember those?
Tucker v Dickey. 7:10. I’m sure all the lineup problems will be worked out.
Update: Yup! The worst hitter in the AL has been moved out of the three spot. Problem solved!
Pearlman’s Dave Fleming profile
I saw Seth point out a nice ESPN piece on Dave Fleming done by Jeff Pearlman. I’m a huge fan, if you remember my 2006 “Rise and Fall of Dave Fleming” piece, and I really enjoyed reading it.
Brief clarification on the M’s statheads, our wrongness
Okay, so, the wrongness first then the rest. We thought and have been telling people that Mat Olkin now worked for the Royals and not the M’s, which is not true, and we apologize for the error.
So I reached out, and here’s the scoop: Olkin’s an outside consultant for the M’s. As discussed earlier, they call him up, give him a problem, he offers an opinion. His contract has a limited exclusivity clause, and when he went to the pitching conference for the Royals, he hadn’t changed jobs or stopped doing work for the M’s.
I was under the impression that he was working only for the M’s, for a variety of wrong reasons including but not limited to assumptions about his role on the team (which as you can tell from my BP essay back in the day I really wanted to believe was influential). So when Olkin was at the pitching conference (and appeared in the Wall Street Journal as a Royals consultant) I thought he’d hopped jobs.
Now, to the other issue that’s caused some confusion, the difference between staff/consultants, and this is going to get even more boring. If you look at the Indians front office page you’ll see Keith Woolner, stathead extraordinaire, listed as “Manager, Baseball Research & Analytics”. On the Rays roster, a couple spots below Don Zimmer is James Click, “Coordinator, Baseball Operations”.
In my mind, that’s “staff”. I’d even consider formalized arrangements like the Cardinals’ committee. I wouldn’t count people who get sent research questions. And in the M’s directory, there isn’t anyone on staff doing this stuff. So when Lincoln says he has two people on staff, skilled in all aspects of sabermetrics, I don’t know if they’re counting Olkin’s consulting as a staff member and there’s also another, unknown person, or what. But you can go through the directory and there’s no one there, and so far as I know, they’re certainly not present at research meetings like the one the Royals hired Olkin to attend. So my questions about their assertion that they’ve got a staff of statheads remain unanswered.
Is this at all helpful? Too boring? Minutiae-fixated?
Hickey: why is Ichiro in right?
Hickey takes a minute to express his bafflement at Ichiro’s move.
It is weird: they’re moving Ichiro to right to make room for a WFB/Reed platoon, it looks like, so they’re displacing Wlad, who was hitting an anemic .196/.265/.346, with WFB, a career .258/.313./.323 hitter, and Reed, who with this year’s rally is still at .254/.316/.368. Now potentially, you replace Wlad’s bad glove with Ichiro’s good one, and get Reed, a competent center, in there a lot, that’s a wholescale outfield defense upgrade.
And maybe they think that all the running in center’s caught up to him and is taking a lot out of Ichiro’s legs, which has affected his ability to run out infield hits, harming his offensive game, and putting him in right you get good defense in right, happy Ichiro, and his average will go back up. We’ll see if that’s the case.
Stone on the M’s stathead-y-ness, Olkin’s still consulting
Larry Stone has an interesting piece up about the M’s direction which includes some meaty quotes with Mat Olkin, who it would appear is still consulting for the team.
“I feel safe saying Bill was always interested in having that perspective,” said Olkin, who remains on staff. “The thing I can’t speak to is how he weighed that against other voices he listened to. I think he would have been a fool to listen to only me, and not to a lot of the other very qualified men he had on board.
I’m happy to be wrong and a little surprised to hear this — Olkin was repping the Royals recently at a conference where the Lookout Landing guys were, and it would be unusual for someone with an ongoing consulting relationship to work for more than one team. Usually, team consulting gigs are, to oversimplify, “Be on retainer to answer questions about stuff” (as you see Olkin’s job is) or “We want you to run a study on defensive deterioration in free agent first basemen.” (this is usually quickly followed with “Pay? Why would we pay you? You should be happy to run a study for us!” and “No, you can’t publish.”)(I am totally not joking). The contracts of the first kind that I know of are generally team-exclusive or through NDA/limited non-competes manage to effectively limit the work to one team… but on the other hand, I’ll freely admit my knowledge of this kind of thing is a couple years old.
Olkin’s role, traditionally, is not so much resident stathead (and does consulting count as “on staff”?) but as he described it:
“Part of that was by design. Bill always tried to protect me by not giving me any more information than he had to. He wouldn’t say, ‘I want to do this, what do you think?’ He’d say, ‘I have option A, B, C or D. I’m not going to tell you which one I like. You tell me which one you like and why.’ He always gave me the feeling he was very interested in what I had to say.”
One of the examples Olkin gave before was “here’s a list of minor league guys we’re giving you for no reason, are any of them particularly interesting?” and then later you’d find out that was the list of possible players the M’s could get back in trade.
Which is to say, in the sense of organizational approach, not a lot of influence, but they did seek his opinion on particular decisions.
Anyway, I’ve got a line out to Mat, so we’ll see what he says, and I’ll update everyone if I hear back.
Baker on the next GM
Geoff talks about what he thinks the M’s need to look at in a new GM, plugging Cashman (handling the big budget is important) and Tony LaCava.
Remember his name. If you hear it again later, you can’t pretend to be surprised.
Or you know, earlier and earlier still.
He also discounts the Rays success for a while, saying they had no choice but to go with youth over the last six years, which is a convenient timeframe because it clips the seasons where the Devil Rays spent a lot of money on overpriced free agents before learning a valuable lesson and turning to building internally. In 2000 they were #10 in baseball. It also ignores the complete 180 the Tampa organization did after the firing of Chuck LaMar, and the top to bottom philosophical overhaul that began with the hiring of Andrew Friedman.