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(Full disclosure dept:  This article contains a section that tilts at saber windmills.  If such discussion tends to annoy you, please view our alternate ending.  

This great sabermetric article argues that "pitch framing" is a skill worth +20 to -20 runs per season.  

The value of "pitch framing" was concluded to be worth as much as having a "pitcher friendly" umpire vs. a neutral umpire.)

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Q.  How do you predict the output of a machine that has 25 moving parts, no one part of which you can confidently predict?

A.  Geoff Baker's Sunday "my bad!" is a terrific article even by his own lofty standards.  Dr. D learned long ago that you can't predict a team's season in advance, because you can't predict even one player's season in advance ...

Baker absolutely buried the M's in March, mistakenly as SSI saw it then.  So did almost everybody else  But Baker (along with LL today) does something wicked cool:  he sits down like Garry Kasparov and tears the position apart, asking, "What was wrong with my thinking process--- > that I can get right next time?"

He concludes that this was the fatal move in the chess game:

 

... it looks like I was still wrong. I misjudged this offense and its potential to change.

And in doing so, I broke one of my cardinal rules about looking at only stats and not considering the human element to ballplayers.

Now that I've had several more weeks to study Brendan Ryan and Olivo up close, I see the intangibles that I'd missed. These guys have it. Ryan began seriously impressing me about a month ago and hasn't stopped. The Mariners have not had a player with his energy level in the five years I've been here. He's given this club a dimension it did not have before and it's come at a time when the M's needed a boost at the top of the order.

Olivo is a bit quieter, but he's a warrior. He goes out there prepared to leave it all on the field every day. It's not a cliche. He really does. The Mariners have not had players like Olivo since their glory years. He is the leader of this team. Kennedy might be next in the leadership department, squeezing every bit of talent he has into the four games per week this club can risk playing him.

Just so!

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Q.  Is that "offensive potential for change" the actual key to the 2011 pennant race?

A.  In March, as you are well aware, SSI pencilled in Michael Pineda and the 21-months-rested Erik Bedard for huge ML impact in 2011.

And since the offense was Stars & Scrubs fungible, the logic was there for a lot of upward mobility.

Of course, I've predicted 101-loss teams for upward mobility too :- ) ...

... but we're just sayin'.  Now, say (1) the M's had lost -101 last year, and (2) their rotation consisted of Batista-Silva-Washburn, if they'd been stuffed with aging Civics, we'd have  .... well, taken up roost at Cheney Stadium this year.

But the offense indeed had S&S fungibility ... what we're not used to is the GM Committee actually fung'ing it mideseason.  Only with a single yachtsman at the helm do you have the agility to tack the boat quickly.

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Q.  What's Geoff's idea about "considering the human element?"

A.  Few sabermetricians have noticed a very common phenomenon in baseball:  a lot of baseball teams have 25 guys all put up good years together, and a lot of baseball teams have all 25 guys put up bad years together.

Not all 25, of course, I know, Egbert.  But this phenomenon occurs.  Sabermetricians wish that it didn't, and they resist the idea, because it lessens their authority.  :- )

Many sabes expressly confess that they HATE the idea of baseball phenomena that they can't measure with the numbers (1, 2, 3, .... ).

Non-measurable factors, if real, imply that sabes don't have 950 of 1,000 light bulbs on --- > and therefore might not have the right to audit GM's in quite the way they do.

***

Geoff Baker asked Bill James -- who is on Theo Epstein's team, gentlemen -- about this unnatural conflict:

 

Q: WHAT'S YOUR ATTITUDE THEN, WHEN YOU CAN'T QUANTIFY STUFF? I'VE READ AS RECENTLY AS THIS MORNING, ONLINE, SOMEBODY WROTE SOMETHING LIKE "THE STUFF THAT WE CAN'T QUANTIFY, WE MUST LEARN TO IGNORE". AND THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE PRETTY KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT BASEBALL AND STATISTICS AND STUFF LIKE THAT.

A: That's exactly backward.

You don't learn by studying the stuff you know. You learn by studying the stuff that you don't know. So, if you divide the world into (crap) that you know and (crap) that you don't know, and you study the stuff that you know, then you're not going to learn very much.

All of the progress comes from studying the stuff that you don't know. So, that's really what's interesting. And that's where most of your focus should be. Studying stuff that you can't agree about.

...

... one of the questions people ask me all the time is "What's the next frontier of sabermetrics?" Maybe that's it. I don't know.

Maybe somebody will try to figure out a way to classify personalities and quantify the impact of those. I don't know. I doubt that's going to happen in my career. But maybe the next one.

At bottom, James is a curious man.  He's interested in pushing frontiers ... as opposed to getting certified as "Dr. Got It Solved" and then stigmatizing people who think outside-the-box as idiots.

Some people hate dissension.  Others are stimulated by it.

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Q.  Who are the Mariners guilty of the human-element pennant race in Seattle in 2011?

A.  Geoff is saying that he should have seen that Miguel Olivo, Brendan Ryan, and Eric Wedge -- those three guys -- would cause that macro push of the "LET'S DO THIS THING" button in Seattle.

I don't know that he should have seen that.  But now that it's occurred, recognizing it is critical to understanding the 2011 M's season.

If you're too painfully narrow-minded and locked into your own wOBA specialty to --- > perceive the leadership effect brought by Wedge, Olivo, and Ryan, you will never truly understand the 2011 Mariners season.  We mean it in a good way.

It's not a 2D being's fault that it can't perceive a 3D environment.  But who would choose that fate?

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Q.  Are those the right three guys to credit?

A.  What do you say we include Jack Zduriencik as a 4th in this bridge party.  The message starts Top Down.  

Capt Jack is the one who powerflushed Milton Bradley, who chose a strong manager, who brought Pineda north from Arizona, who wined and dined Bedard for two years, who chose Justin Smoak over low-minors hype jobs, who empowered Wedge to cut Figgins down to size, etc.

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Q.  Can you give us a few pictures of "chemistry" seasons, in lieu of 1,000 more words?

A.  The 2009 season you watched, Don Wakamatsu, Mike Sweeney, and Ken Griffey Jr. managed to hit the "ON" button on the "LET'S DO THIS THING!" machine.

The fact that Griffey and Wak didn't accomplish this in 2010 .... well, life's complicated.  It takes dozens of variables clicking, to create a winning attitude.  That doesn't mean you don't attempt one.

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When he wrote Win Shares, James noticed a Macro pattern to Cinderella seasons in baseball history.  Two or three team leaders had big seasons and "then everybody else got caught up in the excitement and had UP years."

***

Those two or three team leaders having big seasons, in 2011, were --- > our starting rotation.  They carried the M's through two months of offensive Fangorn Woods out into the sunny Shire of pennant contention.

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Q.  Leaving our Lesson Learned as what?  What's the light bulb?

A.  Mike Scioscia's teams always have the "LET'S GO DO THIS!" button on.  Lou Piniella's did, in those cases it was humanly possible.  Tony LaRussa's do.

Some managers can hit that button.  Billy Martin did it for six different teams, improving them by an average of about 20 games each in his first seasons there.  I don't notice that Bobby Cox' teams ever laid down and died the way Mike Hargrove's often did.

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The bad news is, saber-brethren, that some teams are "on" due to chemistry, and some teams are "off."

You'll need a manager (or other dominating leader) ... he'll need Assistant Leaders ... you'll need a certain minimum watermark of talent ... and you'll need other things.  But hitting the "ON" button was the invisible key to the seasons of the 2009 and 2011 M's.

Somebody told you that sports psychology doesn't exist, and that you're not allowed to include it in your sports-watching experience.  Just don't listen to them.  Just tell them, "Sorry, I disagree.  I believe that sports psychology is important."  And then enjoy Leadership in sports when you see it.

***

The good news is, guess what.  We get to watch a team with the button "ON."

Once you relax about sabermetric dogma for two seconds, it's massively fun to watch Miguel Olivo and Brendan Ryan lead this team into battle.  Thunder and lightning (and we're not just talking about passing kidney stones durring ballgames).  

What's not fun about watching Brendan Ryan live and die with every play, "crouching with his head buried in his hands after an out", and watching the M's dugout stare at him as he does so?  What's not fun about watching the Mariners lined up all the way across the dugout rail in a game they're down three runs?

***

Bill James remarked, concerning Billy Martin, that he was worth more than any single player in baseball.

BABVA,

Dr D