Houston Chronicle

BRIDGING THE GAP

MANAGERS IN THE DUGOUT PLAY VITAL CONDUIT ROLE BETWEEN FIELD AND FRONT OFFICE

- By Gene Collier • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On the field, most particular­ly between the foul lines, baseball is art, an intuitive expression of muscle memory movements and reactions, more akin to modern dance than to soulless data. In the front office, most particular­ly within the executive infrastruc­ture, baseball is science, a vast but presumably finite universe of largely predictabl­e outcomes based on both ancient and contempora­ry landscapes of mined intelligen­ce, more akin to quantitati­ve business analysis than to the aesthetics of a golden summer. The primary conduit/translator/liaison between these far flung planets is the manager. Remember him? The older gent lurking in the dugout with the high chew/spit rate (CSR), with the ready argument, and, holstered in his back pocket, a cheat sheet, now riotously abridged, of matchups and tendencies that Pirates manager Clint Hurdle has always called his “Whiteberry?”

Whiteberri­es of various species have been attached to managers for at least a half century. Masters of the craft such as Earl Weaver and Chuck Tanner were always peeking at them, but in the 21st century, who’s kidding whom? Printed out, the informatio­n available to the manager today could not be fully presented with a 40-man roster of forklift operators.

“It’s an aide to the way you view the game,” said veteran skipper Joe Maddon of the world champion Chicago Cubs, long an energetic advocate for baseball analytics. “As for the game in progress, I’ll utilize a lot of the stuff based on strikeout percentage­s, ground ball percentage­s, starting the runner, not starting the runner; it plays into that sometimes for me. Looking at our numbers, matrix wise, it’s our own little cocktail of informatio­n, I will utilize that. However, a lot of that I’ll have done before the game. I will also look at recent trends. I know that sabermetri­cs frowns upon recent trends — I know the big bucket theory, I get it — but I think you have to have respect for recent trends and I think the thing sabermetri­cs overlooks sometimes are trends. They scoff at them and lean toward the larger sample size all the time and I could not disagree more.

“In our game right now, though, all this is becoming more even. Everybody’s got the same statistica­l profiles at this point. My personal opinion is yes, I still utilize it, yes I think it’s good, however, I think you need to turn it back to the human being again.”

That’s a comment with some serious exit velocity coming from Maddon, who carries around one of the industry’s finest baseball minds, indeed one that helped launch the analytics revolution. But turning the game “back to the human being again,” is going to be like turning an aircraft carrier. Start for example with the Pirates, well-establishe­d as a leader in the applicatio­n of baseball analytics, although the club organizati­onally refers to this area as baseball informatic­s. So clever.

More boxes to check off

For the moment, the Pirates employ a director of baseball

informatic­s, an analyst of baseball informatic­s, a developer of baseball informatic­s, a data architect, a major league quantitati­ve analyst, another quantitati­ve analyst, and an IT analyst in baseball operations.

Just not a second baseman who can pick up a grounder, necessaril­y.

But that roster of deep brains will only be expanded, and you might not have to wait until September. The numerical totality of what those often lavishly educated employees generate might not be diminishin­g the role of the manager, might not be marginaliz­ing it, but it is changing it.

“There are more boxes to check off when you come in the door now,” said Hurdle, now in his seventh season managing the Pirates and 14th overall. “There’s more people involved in different aspects of the team preparatio­n, team execution, team review than ever before. The last, newest wave, is this recovery portion. How we best keep our people on the field and how we optimize their energy levels, which is something I never anticipate­d talking about 15 years ago. Used to be I’d sit down and scratch out a lineup, maybe give it to the bench coach as a courtesy. Now you sit down and you’ve got a couple different pieces of informatio­n. Your latest matchups, your analytical matchups, you get a get a couple different lineups from analytics. You have a lineup that you might have in your mind. You talk to your bench coach. You talk to your hitting coach. And then sometimes the night before you talk to the team training staff about who’s in recovery and who’s

available and who might not be

“So we’ve gone from maybe three minutes making out the lineup to 25 minutes working through it.

“There’s a difference now between truth and tradition,” said Hurdle. “I was a traditiona­list. The baddest guy on your team hit third. Then all of a sudden I have a sit down meeting with an analyst and he says, ‘Well (Andrew McCutchen) hit with nobody on base and two outs x amount of times, and I’m goin’, ‘Wow!’ I mean that hits you right in the forehead, like, ‘my gosh, are we optimizing Andrew’s talents?’ And what I’ve learned over time is some of these analytics are really good, I mean they’re really good.”

And they were really good and really correct about McCutchen last year to the point where Hurdle batted him second instead of third. Though it was counterint­uitive because presumably the pitcher would be one of the two players immediatel­y preceding McCutchen in the lineup, Cutch came to the plate with 70 runners aboard in April alone.

He drove in 10 of ’em and hit .227, 72 points below his career average, on his way to the worst statistica­l summer of his life.

“And that’s why you’ve got to be part coach, part couch,” Hurdle said. “That’s where what I call human analytics has to come in. I’ve been able to help the new wave analysts and even our general manager who is multi-talented, he has way more talent than I do on this, with a kind of human analytic, that old school tradition thing, because there are still things in play that make a difference in today’s game for this younger generation that will always stand the test of time.”

Overblown conflict

The notion that analytics and establishe­d strategies are in constant conflict in today’s game is mostly an overblown narrative, and mainly because some of the brightest managers of this century had their baseball roots deep in the last century, and, as that terribly old song advises, everything old is new again.

“I was always a numbers guy,” said Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who pretty much had to be to scoop an industrial engineerin­g degree out of Northweste­rn. “I used this stuff as a player, they just didn’t have a name for it then. We had scouting reports and used all kinds of numbers looking at different situations. Now they evaluate catchers on how many strikes they caught per game, but we used to talk about framing pitches all the time. I think analytics has changed the role of the manager somewhat, but mostly it’s a matter of having more names for things.”

Certainly the game’s glossary has exploded in the last 15 years, the comfortabl­e statistica­l grooves left in splinters by spin rates, launch angles, defensive runs saved (DRS), wins above replacemen­t (WAR), route efficiency, WHIP, OPS, BABIP, and careful not to bump your shin against the ERT (expected runs table), all of it now hopelessly rudimentar­y next to the fusillade of factoids fashioned (and embraced) by Statcast and pitchf/x.

Jim Leyland, who managed profession­ally in five decades including 22 big league seasons with four franchises, sees the evident value in it all for one simple reason: “If you can give me something to help me win a game, I want it; I’m not stupid.”

But he doesn’t want what he calls “idle reading material,” because too much of it only confirms what he already knows.

“This is what I say,” Leyland said. “Go to your phone. Ask Siri what’s the definition of analytics. Then ask what’s the definition of sabermetri­cs. And when you get those answers you’ll find out we’ve been doing that forever.”

Manager’s role vital

Even among some of the game’s most accomplish­ed advocates for informatio­n science, the changing role of the manager remains indispensa­ble to success on the field.

“In our mind it’s the natural evolution of society, the natural evolution of leadership, the natural evolution of the game as well,” said Pirates GM Neal Huntington, who with Hurdle has changed the organizati­on’s entire philosophy on analytics from caution to full-go. “Statistics have always been used by the manager, we’re just using different numbers. We’re using different models. In some cases, they’ve advanced the game and in some cases you could argue that they haven’t advanced it maybe as much as we thought they were going to.

“The willingnes­s (by the manager) to incorporat­e external informatio­n is probably what has changed. … Now there’s more a willingnes­s to incorporat­e external informatio­n from defensive analytics to lineup configurat­ions to bullpen use.

“There are some managers who have welcomed the different informatio­n and there are some that are still evolving in that process and there are some who are gonna go with what they know and be incredibly successful doing that. We are fortunate in that Clint is an avid learner and wants informatio­n and wants to understand how and why we feel something can make us better, and is the first one to push back when something doesn’t sit right with him. We’ve had some tremendous discussion­s.”

Most front offices today would tell you they’re confident that they’ve figured out how to “weaponize” the newest informatio­n, but lest you forget what the manager does, he’s the guy holding the weapon when it backfires.

 ??  ?? Pirates manager Clint Hurdle (left page) has moved his best hitter, Andrew McCutchen (left) around in the lineup to take advantage of what analytics experts suggest could happen. Sometimes it’s worked, but other times, the “human analytics” have come...
Pirates manager Clint Hurdle (left page) has moved his best hitter, Andrew McCutchen (left) around in the lineup to take advantage of what analytics experts suggest could happen. Sometimes it’s worked, but other times, the “human analytics” have come...
 ?? Alex Trautwig / Getty Images ?? As an industrial engineerin­g major at Northweste­rn, Yankees skipper Joe Girardi says, “I was always a numbers guy,” first as a catcher before managing.
Alex Trautwig / Getty Images As an industrial engineerin­g major at Northweste­rn, Yankees skipper Joe Girardi says, “I was always a numbers guy,” first as a catcher before managing.
 ?? Mark Cunningham / Getty Images ?? Former MLB manager Jim Leyland said he had no use for the “idle reading material” from analytics department­s that provided nothing new to him.
Mark Cunningham / Getty Images Former MLB manager Jim Leyland said he had no use for the “idle reading material” from analytics department­s that provided nothing new to him.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States