Strategy changes in short season?
Baseball to differ both on, off field
With just nine weeks of play, the 2020 baseball season will be like none before it, which, for a sport that heavily relies on analytics, makes things either fascinating — or extra tricky.
“When we look back, do we see some results that make zero sense whatsoever based on what you were projecting?” asked Rob Naberhaus, the A’s senior director of baseball development and technology. “It will be very interesting looking back.”
Add some major rule changes, and the results might include some unusual experimentation. Teams with little hope of contending over 162 games might throw caution to the wind and employ any number of ways to use their expanded rosters — why not? The recent trend of
high homerun totals and equally inflated strikeout numbers might give way to more small ball, especially in the later innings. Home teams, especially, may try to avoid extra innings, which this season will start with a runner at second base. If clubs are going to try anything off the wall, this is the year.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a dramatic departure from what you normally see in a 162game season, but I do assume there will be some things that are different across the league,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said, noting pitching usage in particular might be affected given the short training camps.
For analytics experts such as Naberhaus, pitching — generally accepted as the most important part of the equation — presents the biggest unknown. It’s tough to formulate reports when starters are at such different levels of readiness entering the season.
“It’s really hard to know what to expect out of the gate,” Naberhaus said. “You’ll have more confidence as the season goes on, but that’s really the question mark for most clubs right now. How do you project these guys and determine how to use them when they’re not at their normal readytogo out of spring training?”
The contrast was on display during the A’s Giants exhibition games this week. Oakland starters Sean Manaea and Mike Fiers threw five and 31⁄3 innings, respectively, and Chris Bassitt went four in relief Tuesday. San Francisco used a different pitcher every inning of each game.
The A’s are likely to have 15 pitchers on their 30man roster when it is announced Thursday morning. They might mixandmatch more often, especially with starter Jesús Luzardo in the bullpen as he works his way back after missing two weeks because of a positive coronavirus test and with starter A.J. Puk sidelined indefinitely with shoulder inflammation. With 15 position players for the first 15 days, Oakland, a team that usually employs a threeman bench, also can pinch hit with relative abandon.
The rule changes — the threebatter minimum for relievers, and especially the runner at second to start extra innings — will necessitate different approaches. The A’s seldom bunt or playsmall ball, but there might be incentive to do so more often, whether to avoid extra innings or to try to take advantage of the runner at second in extras.
“I would say probably a little bit later in the game you might see some more of that, certainly the 10th inning — extra innings is a wild card at this point,” Oakland manager Bob Melvin said. “Our lineup as we sit here right now is one that has a lot of power and I don’t think we vary from the strategy that we hit the ball out of the ballpark up and down the lineup. We make pitchers throw a lot of pitches, we draw walks, we have guys on base.
“The extrainning games are a completely different dynamic, especially if you’re the home team and the visiting team has not scored and you go into the bottom of the 10th having to score just one run. That’s when I think more the manufacturing stuff kinda comes into play, at least with us.”
“I think the number of bunts in meaningful situations, particularly in the 10th inning with a runner on second base, we’ll see a little more,” said Giants bunting coach Mark Hallberg. “You won’t see them in the top of extra innings. Visitors will have to play for more than one run since the home team, too, will start the bottom half with a runner in scoring position.”
Hallberg said the chances of scoring a single run in an inning that begins with a runner on second and nobody out rises from 60% to 65% if the first hitter successfully sacrifices him to third. But the odds of winning decrease if the home team sacrifices hoping for a tie and another inning.
“Obviously, giving up any outs is not a good thing from an analytics standpoint,” Naberhaus said. “But there is something if you have someone at second base — maybe there is a bit of advantage there.”
Could stolen bases become more of a factor? Putting runners in motion? Naberhaus said the A’s are looking at two years of minorleague data with runners placed at second in extra innings and consulting with TripleA manager Fran Riordan about his experiences with that scenario. “We are in the process of digging into that and figuring out the best strategy,” Naberhaus said.
With such a short season, will teams be quicker to make some hard calls if players underperform? Do traditionally streaky hitters get less leeway if they start slowly?
“In terms of playing time and lineup and bullpen decisions, yeah, there’s a little more urgency there,” A’s general manager David Forst said. “You don’t have the 162game period for things to even out the way you expect them to. We’ve had some conversations with Bob about when you pull the trigger on things or when you give some guys more leash.”
Playing baseball in the midst of a pandemic, with rushed training camps, could play major havoc with all aspects of running a team. Forst said he’s unsure how aggressive he and vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane might be with bringing players in from their alternate site or making trades, because that would introduce new elements into the semibubbles teams are establishing. And losing players to positive tests, or rashes of injuries related to shortened camps, will make scouting reports even more difficult.
Naberhaus said the A’s are trying to account for such scenarios with their propriety analytics system.
“Ultimately, we’re trusting the team we’ve had that’s won 97 games two years in a row will continue to play very well,” he said. “But at a moment’s notice, we may need to pivot and change, so from an analytics standpoint, we’re building out what we can do to swap guys in and out with our projection system and, on a daily basis, with our reports we provide to Bob and David and Billy. It was a lot of work over the past month building that out so we’re ready to go if things change very, very quickly.”
Even with so many unknowns, Forst said there are some constants when it comes to daytoday strategy.
“You know the way Bob works — every game is one he wants to win, no matter how many games are in the season, and we’ve had so many seasons come down to one or two games,” he said. “You know going in every game matters. I don’t know if that changes at all.”