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This from BJOL.  

Before diving in, a couple of prereq light bulbs:  (1) James has demonstrated, to most people's satisfaction, that the current use of the super closer -- a great pitcher coming into a 5-3 game to blow away three hitters in the top of the 9th -- is inefficient.  

(2) James has demonstrated, to MY satisfaction, that the 5-man rotation was a clumsy way to reduce stress on pitchers' arms.  He shows that in a 4- or even 3-man rotation, you could have installed pitch limits and wound up with healthier pitchers and more effective staffs but "the five-man rotations stayed because it is very difficult to 'wind back' history.  What is done is done.  It's difficult to undo the course that history has chosen, merely because history proved to have made a poor choice."

He's talked about several of those very fundamental conventions that are probably wrong, so Patch Guy axed,

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So, if you became a baseball manager, what current orthodoxy would you go against. Use your closer like a 60's closer? 4 man rotation? Chocolate donuts in the dugout?

Asked by: patchguy32

Answered: 2/13/2013

Well, I don't really know, but maybe we could use your question to build up a little more understanding.   In the last three decades bullpens have expanded to such an extent that platooning is essentially impossible in the modern game.   You can't really platoon (ordinarily) with a 12- or 13-man pitching staff, because you just don't have room on the bench to keep two players to play one position.   The only way you can really platoon, with a 13-man pitching staff, is if you have a platoon player who can double up and fill some other role.  

 

I think this is a mistake.    The bullpens have essentially expanded to enable managers to bring in a left-handed pitcher to face a left-handed hitter.    But the real advantage of bringing in left-handed relievers to face left-handed hitters, calculated over the course of a season, is very small.    Let's say that the manager brings in a lefty reliever to face a lefty 200 times over the course of a season, which sounds like a lot; I doubt that any manager actually does that 200 times in a year, although, when you are watching the games, it certainly SEEMS like they do.   We're missing a data point:  How many times per year does that actually happen?

 

Anyway, let us say that it is 200.   But the difference between what a left-handed hitter hits against left-handers vs. right-handers is not that much.   A lefty hitter would typically hit. . .what, 30 points higher against a right-handed pitcher?   That's six hits.   All you're gaining by doing that 200 times is six hits.

 

Six hits and some number of them extra base hits, yes, and maybe a walk or two, and let us assume that these tend to be high-leverage situations, although they are not TERRIBLY high-leverage situations, but let's assume.   Let's assume it is 6 hits, 2 walks, 11 total bases. ..that is probably, what, four runs?   

 

Again, we're missing data points, and I'm trying to make it apparent where the missing data points are, so that we can work through this a little better.    We don't actually know how many runs you're saving by doing that; I'm saying four.   And we don't actually know what the leverage index is in those situations, but let's say that the four runs have the impact of five.   Let us say, to be generous, that it is six.   By making that move 200 times, you save six runs.

 

But what do you give up?   You've shrunk the bench to where you can't platoon.   I would argue that you can gain much, much more than 6 runs by platooning, in many cases.   Bobby Cox in Toronto was the last great platoon manager.   In 1984 he was platooning Ernie Whitt and Buck Martinez at catcher, Cliff Johnson and Willie Aikens at DH, Garth Iorg and Rance Mulliniks at third base, and he was really platooning Jesse Barfield and Dave Collins in the outfield (Collins in left, Barfield in right. . .George Bell would move to RF to allow Collins, who couldn't throw, to play left, and Barfield, who had a cannon, to play right.)  

 

Those were ALL, with the arguable exception of Barfield, just free-resource players at the time the Blue Jays acquired them--but the Jays got 19 homers and 77 RBI out of their catchers, a .291 average out of their third basemen, 25 homers and 85 RBI out of the DHs, near-MVP performance out of their left fielders (42 doubles, 17 triples, 15 homers, 198 hits, 59 stolen bases and a .297 average), and a .291 average with 24 homers out of their right fielders.   They had a nine-man offense, and they had pinch hitters out the wazoo.    

 

My view is that the Blue Jays were getting much, much, much more value out of platooning that any team ever got out of carrying two or three left-handers in the bullpen.  

 

Right or wrong, it is my opinion, until somebody can show me where I'm wrong, that carrying left-handers in the bullpen is a complete waste of time and resources.    You not only don't need THREE left-handers in the bullpen; you don't need one.    The 1994 Expos didn't have a left-handed reliever, and they had the best record in baseball and the best bullpen in baseball. 

 

I would even argue that platooning SAVES more runs than using lefty relievers, because when you have platoons one of the players will usually be better defensively than the other, so when you have a lead late in the game you can go with the better defender.   

 

Another way to state my essential thesis is that you can control the platoon advantage much more effectively if you control it from the offensive side than if you try to control it from the pitching side.     But. ...I can't convince anybody. 

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=== Kibitz ===

1.  We've talked before about the fact that MANAGERS feel more comfortable, less stressed out, when they are stopping the opponent rather than scoring themselves.  The ILLUSION of controlling the entire contest is less transluscent when a team is stronger on defense than when it is strong on offense.

You can use this psychological insight as a litmus test when coming to understand bloggers, sportswriters, and managers.  There are baseball scouts who insist on glove-first players everywhere they can.  There are bloggers who are more or less horrified by a bat-first defensive catcher; this speaks to their greater or lesser tendency to want to manage their environments.  There are writers who speak more in terms of pitching, and writers who speak more in terms of scoring runs.

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Geoff Baker, to take one example, is unencumbered by the defense-first thinking.  On a psychological level, he wants to take the fight to the other team, to score some runs himself.

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How psychologically "off kilter" is BASEBALL AS AN INDUSTRY, you ask?  The emergence of 13-man pitching staffs, and the shrill insistence on ALWAYS having a LOOGY available at every moment, is an indicator.  It is "defense first" to an absurd degree.

Dr. D sympathizes.  Sitting there in a baseball press box as GM, or in the dugout as manager, with 40,000 people watching, has got to be one of the great anxiety-inducing situations in the whole human experience.  You sympathize with the need for a feeling of security.

.......

Still:  you could achieve a competitive advantage by shrugging off this illusion.  The more that you can bring yourself to "take the fight to the other team," as Lou Piniella did, the more of an edge you can give yourself.  Baseball is about small percentages...

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2.  The 2013 Mariners are in a position to gain 10 or 20 or more runs from this hidden advantage.  

Notice the qualifying condition that James specified in the last sentence of his first paragraph.  Some bench players do allow you to platoon by virtue of their skill set.

a) If Jesus Montero is the starting catcher, and Kelly Shoppach is the only other catcher on the 25-man roster, with the 3rd catcher in Tacoma on 12 hours' notice ... then the Mariners have in effect a 26-man roster, and the ability to platoon.

b) Also!  If the M's 4th outfielder is a center fielder / hitter -- let's say Casper Wells or Michael Saunders or Franklin Gutierrez -- then you can rotate the outfielders and AGAIN have positioned yourself to platoon.  That's two separate issues.

c) Charlie Furbush can throw three innings in a game, as can Carter Capps.  The M's don't need 13 pitchers.  Neither do they need 12 pitchers.

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The day-to-day lineup flexibility is important, because the Mariners have hitters who have wide platoon splits, such as Shoppach.  Franklin Gutierrez slugs .479 for his career off lefties, and only .345 against righties.  Casper Wells slugs .489 career off LHP, .388 off RHP.

A good platoon doesn't have much problem slugging close to .500.  That's worth a whale of a lot more than having an extra LOOGY, and the 2013 Mariners are in a position to exploit this much more than most teams do.

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