A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
- Matthew 13:57
Let me start by saying something so obvious that I don't see any need to defend it, though I will anyway: you will always be able to find hometown fans who think their manager sucks, no matter how successful he appears to be. I had a friend who moved to Houston in the late '90s looking to score in the Internet boom who became an Astros fan while he was down there and was absolutely convinced that Larry Dierker was a horrible manager, despite a record of four division titles in five seasons with the same talent that finished second in the division every year under Terry Collins prior to Dierker's arrival and finished second in the division every year under Jimy Williams after Dierker's departure. Heck, I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find a long comment explaining how Joe Torre is a cruddy manager, and was even during the so-called 'Yankee Dynasty' of the late '90s.
It is with that intro that I turn to the Twins manager, Ron Gardenhire.
The Twins blogosphere has a definite love-hate relationship with Gardenhire; though perhaps a better description of that would be tolerate-hate. I understand that the same is probably true of every big-league manager, but of course I don't read as much of other teams' blogospheres as I do that of the Twins, so that's what I know. Local bloggers used to refer to Gardenhire as 'Gardentool', (example two) and though they've eased up on the ad hominem name-calling, they haven't stopped trying to convince others that they're right.
Case in point: on Monday, July 7, Ron Gardenhire brought reliever Brian Bass into a scoreless tie with the Boston Red Sox, in Boston, in the eighth inning. Bass gave up a ground-rule double to Dustin Pedroia, got J.D. Drew to ground out, then gave up the go-ahead run on a single by Manny Ramirez in a game the Twins eventually lost 1-0. The Twins went on to lose all three games in the Boston series, and to read the blogosphere you'd have thought the sky was falling. Local blogger Stick & Ball Guy mentioned the appearance in a Joe Posnanski thread praising Gardenhire; local-boy-made-good Aaron Gleeman mentioned it as well on his eponymous website. Both seem convinced that Joe Nathan should have been the pitcher called for in that situation and, at least by implication, that a superior manager would have done so.
Fast-forward to Saturday, July 12. The Twins lead the Detroit Tigers 6-2 in Detroit heading into the bottom of the eighth inning. Starter Scott Baker returns to the mound, surrenders a single and a homer to narrow the margin to 6-4, and is relieved by Jesse Crain. Crain gives up an infield single and walk, but manages to retire the first out of the inning before being replaced by Dennys Reyes. Reyes advances the baserunners on a wild pitch, allows a run to score on a groundout to narrow the margin to 6-5, and is himself pulled from the game.
Joe Nathan enters now, right? Two out, bottom of the eighth, high leverage situation -- you go to your closer, right? Nope -- Gardenhire turns to Brian Bass. Bass gets the third out on a grounder, Nathan strikes out the side in the bottom of the ninth, and the Twins win 6-5 for their third straight victory.
Does Ron Gardenhire know something the rest of us in the blogosphere didn't know? Actually, he probably does:
- Almost nobody in the blogosphere attends every Twins game (and nobody qualifies unless you count the newspaper-sponsored 'blogs' of the Twins beat writers); Gardenhire does.
- Nobody in the blogosphere attends every Twins practice; Gardenhire does.
- Nobody in the blogosphere knows what the Twins' coaching staff have asked players to work on, and watched to see if they're working on it and how effectively they're doing so; Gardenhire is part of the process that determines what a player should be working on, judges how effective he's being, and decides to expand or restrict the player's responsibilities based on that information.
Traditional baseball folks seem to enjoy dismissing the insights of sabermetrically-aware folks by claiming that they don't really understand 'the game', or that they spend so much time poring over their spreadsheets that they don't really watch baseball. That may be true in individual cases, but some of the most knowledgeable sabermetric analysts in baseball are also among the most knowledgeable fans on the subject of baseball history (see this Posnanski essay for a humorous example).
The traditional baseball folks do have a point, though, even if they don't really understand how to communicate it: with all of the focus on in-game events that statistical analysis uses, it's very easy to assume, if you're a stat-head, that only things that happen in actual games matter when it comes time to analyze a player: how good he is, what his role should be in the future, etcetera. Even if you don't believe that only things that happen in games are significant, the presumption is that things that happen in games are vastly more significant, because they are the things we can measure. To someone with sabermetric leanings, three games in AAA are more valuable than three bullpen sessions with the big-league pitching coach, because the AAA games can be analyzed and parsed; as far as sabermetrics are concerned, the bullpen sessions 'just happen'.
My point is that, if Ron Gardenhire and Rick Anderson are comfortable bringing in Brian Bass in a key situation, maybe the reason is less that they don't understand the situation and more that they've seen something in Bass -- his bullpen sessions, his velocity, the way he carries himself in the locker room after tough outings -- that makes them think that he should be given that opportunity.
Should those of us on the outside be surprised or dismiss the event as a bullet dodged when it works out?
Now just to be absolutely clear, I'm not advocating that outside sources of information should trump sabermetric knowledge; that way leads well past Joe Morgan out to where Bill Walton mumbles about 'great players making great plays in critical situations', and that wouldn't be at all an improvement. What I'm saying is that sometimes what looks like a bad decision sabermetrically might not be nearly as bad as we think it is, because we lack the tools to measure the factors that make it a better decision.
And by the way, in June, Brian Bass had a 2.45 ERA and allowed just nineteen baserunners in eighteen and a third innings. So maybe sometimes we have the tools after all.
2 comments:
That's the best account yet of why Gardenhire is not the idiot many make him out to be, and why quantitative analysis alone can't be used to manage a baseball team.
Managers attend all the games, are able to attend practice, and therefore know what players have been asked to work on. This much is true of all managers, yes? I'm having trouble seeing how to use that information *except* as a defense against the unwanted intrusion of "stats wonks" into my beautiful sport's pure heart.
In general, it seems to me like any detailed description of a given decision or play will to some extent be beyond the criticism of statistics -- just as any specific doctor's decision about a specific patient might be beyond direct criticism about the statistical efficacy of a given treatment regimen. It's only when you back off to the level of a stretch of games, or a season, that you can assess the efficacy of a given approach.
Let's also refine what fans universally gritch over. In baseball, it will usually be the way relievers are used in the pitching staff. In basketball, the local coach always, always uses inexplicable substitution patterns. (Run-of-the-mill fans don't recognize actual basketball plays, so the general rule isn't to resent given plays being called or not.) Also, NBA fans always shake their heads over the way their own team tosses in first round picks to smooth out trades. In American football, almost every team has a sizeable group of fans who think the locals run too much on third and long.
And so on.
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