The Impact of the 1914 Stallings Platoon

The previous post described how Boston Braves manager George Stallings made a virtue of necessity by platooning at all three of his outfield positions. The role that his three-position rotation of  outfielders played in the compelling narrative of the 1914 "Miracle" Braves did not go unnoticed, and by the 1920s there was widespread platooning in major league baseball. 

The Impact of the 1914 Stallings Platoon

The 1914 Braves' triumph ratified platooning as a winning strategy, and other managers took notice of the advantages of platooning, the most important of which was to mitigate player weaknesses, such as an inability to hit southpaws. As mentioned in an article on this blog last spring, "100 Years Ago: When Managers Upended Orthodoxies" (see link at the end of this article), platooning was a logical extension of managers increasingly pinch hitting for starting position players at pivotal moments in the game to gain a "platoon advantage"—righty vs. lefty or lefty vs. righty—against the pitcher. 

But the practice did not become widespread overnight—as in the very next season—because at the time of Stallings' epiphany about platooning, the prevailing philosophy had been that the same core of regulars, day in and day out, was essential to stability, continuity, and teamwork. Catcher was the only position routinely shared by two players, and only because of the wear and tear receivers had to endure in the days before catchers' armor became more protective. Only injuries, an occasional day of rest, or sustained ineffectiveness would cause regulars at other positions to be replaced in the starting line-up. 

By the 1920s, however, platooning was pervasive among major league teams. A survey of the game-by-game starting line-ups for all teams during that era, made possible by the painstaking work of retrosheet.org researchers (also available on the website baseball-reference.com), indicates that 46 percent of the teams that took the field from 1915 to 1920 had at least one position platoon for all or a significant portion of the season—26 of the 48 National League teams (eight teams times six years) and 18 of the 48 American League teams. The next ten years, 1921 to 1930, half of all teams platooned, although NL teams—44 of 80—were still more disposed to platooning than AL teams—36 of 80 (eight teams times ten years).  

The overwhelming majority of platoons were in the outfield, many at catcher, and some at first base. Platooning in the middle infield positions was very rare because most infielders in that era were right-handed batters, and because managers desired daily stability at such premium defensive-skill positions.

Platooning was an obvious strategy for mediocre or bad teams trying to compensate for the weaknesses of individual players. It was not intuitively obvious that managers of very good teams, with much stronger cohorts of players than Stallings had with the Braves, would find much merit in platooning, but even they were quick to see the value of platooning at a position of relative weakness in their line-up—and every team had at least one.

Starting with Stallings' 1914 Braves, at least one of the teams in every World Series until 1926 used a position-player platoon during the regular season. Perhaps the most notable pennant-winning teams that platooned were the 1920 Cleveland Indians, whose manager and center fielder,Tris Speaker, used a lefty-righty tandem at both outfield positions he himself did not play, and Wilbert Robinson's 1916 Brooklyn Dodgers (then known as the "Robins") and John McGraw's 1922 and 1923 New York Giants whose outfield platoons included none other than a certain Casey Stengel. Remember the name.

Unlike Stallings, who had more of an inchoate mix-and-match philosophy for platooning his outfield, most managers who platooned relied on a designated tandem pair who split the position between them. This was important not only because it provided a semblance of stability in the line-up, but it gave players an understanding of their role in the scheme.

Of course, players understanding their role is not the same as agreeing with such a division of their playing time. Baseball historian Bill James has suggested that the dramatic decline in platooning that occurred at the end of the 1920s was because platooned players resented the implication they lacked the ability to be everyday players, which ultimately made widespread use of the strategy untenable.

And indeed, the 1930s saw managers in both leagues retrench in terms of platooning. Between 1931 and 1940, only 30 percent of the 160 major league teams that took the field—21 in the NL and 27 in the AL—had a position platoon. 

It wouldn't be until Casey Stengel was managing the 1950s Yankees that platooning resurfaced as a high-profile strategy in the managers' toolkit.  


CLARIFYING HISTORICAL NOTE: While Stallings' master manipulation of his outfielders in a three-position platoon was a major factor in the 1914 "Miracle" Braves' completely unexpected championship season, it should be remembered that the Braves also had very good pitching and the best middle infield, at least in the National League, with Johnny Evers at second and Rabbit Maranville at short.


Link to earlier blog: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/04/100-years-ago-when-managers-well-john.html

The 1914 Stallings Platoon

The Society for American Baseball Research recently announced the five finalists for its annual award given for Historical Analysis and Commentary. They include “The 1914 Stallings Platoon: Assessing Execution, Impact, and Strategic Philosophy,” an article I wrote for the Fall 2014 issue of SABR’s flagship publication, The Baseball Research Journal. This post briefly summarizes the key research findings from that article.

The 1914 Stallings Platoon

The 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves were the team famous for storming out of last place on July Fourth to win the pennant decisively over John McGraw’s Giants, who were defending three straight NL pennants, and then sweeping Connie Mack’s powerful Athletics, who had won three of the four previous World Series. What makes their story such a compelling historical narrative is that they were actually a fairly mediocre team brilliantly managed by George Stallings. Stallings' insight to systematically platoon at all three positions in his outfield is widely acknowledged as the catalyst for one of the most revolutionary developments in the history of managers thinking strategically about how to win games. 

No new news here, but thanks to the painstaking work of researchers for retrosheet.org, comprehensive game-by-game starting line-up data for 1914 became available last spring, making it possible for the first time to dissect with precision Stallings’ master manipulation of all the Braves’ outfielders.

With limited major league experience among his corps of outfielders, and holding a poor hand in terms of talent, what Stallings did in 1914 was to rotate the seven to eight outfielders he had on his roster at any one time among the three positions. Only one of his outfielders--left-handed batting Joe Connolly--was a productive player, at least as measured by the wins above replacement (WAR) metric for player value. Aware of his outfield deficiencies, Stallings did this from the very beginning of the season. Connolly led the Braves with nine home runs and was the most potent offensive player on the team, according to WAR, but started only three of the 120 games he played when a southpaw took the mound for the other guys.

Stallings' starting line-ups had at least two of his three outfielders with the platoon advantage—batting from the opposite side of the starting pitcher’s throwing arm—in all but 11 of the 158 games the Braves played that year. In 44 of those 147 games, all three of the outfielders in the starting line-up batted from the opposite side.

What made his outfield platoon particularly effective was that two of the Braves' infielders were left-handed-batters, first baseman Butch Schmidt and second baseman Johnny Evers. No other NL team had more than one, and most had none, a significant potential advantage for the Braves when right-handers made 71 percent of all starts by National League pitchers in 1914. In practical terms, this meant that in 80 of the 102 games where the opposing team started a right-hander against the Braves, Stallings had at least four left-handed hitters in his batting order to face them. With Evers and Schmidt daily regulars in his line-up, Stallings’ mixing and matching of his outfielders gave the Braves a platoon advantage in their batting order of at least four out of eight position players in 86 percent of their games, whether started by righties or lefties, and a platoon advantage of at least five in 44 percent of their games.

Stallings maximized his platoon advantage by frequently replacing his outfielders during the game if circumstances dictated. In all, Stallings made an outfield substitution 87 times in 1914, many occurring as soon as the opposing manager brought in a pitcher throwing from the opposite side, even if that meant the substituting player first entered the game as a defensive replacement before getting his turn to bat. 

The payoff of platooning for the Braves was that they had by far the best winning percentage of any National League team in games against right-handed starters. Only the American League champion Philadelphia Athletics had a better record against righties. Why? Because Connie Mack had the advantage of five left-handed batters among his core regulars--infielders Eddie Collins and Home Run Baker, outfielders Amos Strunk and Eddie Murphy, and switch-hitting catcher Wally Schang--none of whom Mack made part of any platoon when writing out his starting line-ups. 

The next post will discuss the impact of Stallings' platooning in managers' game-strategy. 

100 Years Ago: The 1914 Braves' New World

This year is the century anniversary of the 1914 Boston "Miracle" Braves. That team is famous for being dead last on the Fourth of July, far behind the New York Giants who seemed well on their way to a fourth straight National League pennant, and going on to not only win the pennant decisively but to sweep the heavily favored, far superior Philadelphia Athletics--winners of three of the four previous World Series--in the 1914 Fall Classic.

100 Years Ago: The 1914 Braves' New World 

There had in fact been positive vibes about the Boston Braves going into the 1914 season. George Stallings had taken over a team the previous year that had not lost fewer than 90 games since way back in 1903 (when they lost 80 in a 140-game schedule), and guided them into fifth place with a 69-82 record. The Braves were clearly getting better, and even though a writer for The Baseball Magazine, the preeminent publication on the sport at the time, thought Stallings had a sufficiently formidable club to maybe finish as high as third or even second in 1914, nobody expected them to beat out the Giants--who had averaged 101 wins in winning the NL pennant each of the three previous years (after which they lost the World Series each time). And so it was surely a disappointment that the Braves started so badly, losing 16 of their first 19 games, that they were already in a 10-1/2 game hole less than 20 games into the season.

On the day the country celebrated its 138th birthday, the Braves dropped both games of a doubleheader to Brooklyn, leaving them with a 26-40 record . . . in last place . . . with seven teams ahead of them . . . 15 games behind the pace-setting New York Giants. From then until the end of the season, the Braves not only got back into the race, but overtook the Giants in early September on their way to winning the National League pennant by 10-1/2 games. They did all that by winning 68 while losing only 19 games the entire rest of the 1914 season. That is the equivalent of a 120-34 record over a full 154-game season, which would have shattered the 116 games won by the 1906 Chicago Cubs.

The Boston Braves were an astonishing 21 games better than any other National League team after July 4th, and made up 25-1/2 games on the Giants. While the Braves may have begun their dramatic comeback on Independence Day, however, it was not until July 19 that they finally crawled out of the basement, after having shaved only four games from their deficit to the Giants. They were in the midst of a streak in which they won 26 of 32 games (one of which ended in a tie) to close to within half-a-game of the Giants after a doubleheader split with the Pirates on August 22.

On September 7 the Giants came into Boston for a three-game series to face a team that was now tied with them for first place. The Braves won two of the three to take a pennant-race lead they would not relinquish; winning 19 of their next 22 games assured that the pennant was on ice with a nine-game lead when they made a return visit to the Polo Grounds at the end of September. There they split four games to put an end to any Giant hopes for their own miracle, which would have required Boston losing every one of their 10 remaining games while New York won every one of their eight just to secure a tie.

While Boston's fantastic finish made it seem as though the Giants collapsed, John McGraw in fact never had his team in command of the race, as they had been in each of their three previous pennant-winning seasons. After starting the season with a 21-11 record through May, the Giants went 63-59 the rest of the way--hardly the mark of a contending team. On July 19, when they began their drive from the bottom of the heap to the top, the Braves started the day only 11 games behind New York in tightly bunched standings, and the Giants' lead over second-place Chicago was three games. The defending NL champions were 38-38 thereafter, while Boston was 21 games better with a 59-16 record--a pace for 121 wins over a 154-game schedule.

The miracle in Boston is an even more compelling story because the Giants had the much better team. Of no small significance, however, while neither of McGraw's pitching aces--Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson and Rube Marquard--pitched up to the lofty standards they had set in their careers (1914 was Mathewson's last as an effective pitcher), the Braves were paced by a trio of hurlers by name of Dick "Baldy" Rudolph, Lefty Tyler and Bill James. None should be considered among the National League's five best pitchers over any five year period that includes 1914, but all three were terrific that year, claiming 68 of their team's 94 victories.

The Braves' only players of note were shortstop Rabbit Maranville and second baseman Johnny Evers. Both may be in the Hall of Fame, but neither is widely considered by baseball historians with a long perspective on the game as one of the greats at his position. Indeed, at the time the Giants' double-play combination of Art Fletcher and Larry Doyle was probably better since both were in their prime while Maranville was just getting started and Evers was near the end of his career. While Stallings had a set infield--Butch Schmidt was the first baseman and first Charlie Deal and then Red Smith the third baseman--his Braves outfield was a mess. Specifically, not one of George Stallings' outfielders played every day. Not one.

What Stallings had were eight different players on his club at any one time who he could put in the outfield--four who batted left-handed and four right-handed. Stallings' epiphany was to platoon them to maximize the offensive possibilities of his starting line-up, depending on whether the opposing starting pitcher was a lefty or a righty. And if there was a pitching change, Stallings would typically make the appropriate outfielder substitution to keep his platoon advantage when the Braves were at bat. The dramatic competitive impact of Stallings' unprecedented systematic platooning--a major contributing factor to their miracle drive--is widely acknowledged as the catalyst for one of the most revolutionary developments in the history of managers thinking strategically about how to win games. See also an earlier post: "One Hundred Years Ago: When Managers Upended Orthodoxies" http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2014/04/100-years-ago-when-managers-well-john.html

100 Years Ago: When Managers (Well, John McGraw Anyway) Upended Orthodoxies

Much of the discussion about baseball in today's day and age is about how advanced technologies and analytics increasingly inform managers' roster and dugout decisions, including positioning and strategy in game situations.  A century ago, managers themselves were at the forefront of sophisticated innovations that became part of managers' game-management toolkit that has endured to this day--using relievers to secure victories, making position player substitutions to try to win games, and platooning for advantage at the outset of games.    

100 Years Ago: When Managers Upended Orthodoxies

The Washington Post's longtime baseball writer Thomas Boswell wrote that the Nationals' switch from old-school Davey Johnson to first-time manager Matt Williams is "emblematic of the era."  Specifically: "The 21st century manager generally has a lower profile ... than most famous managers in the previous century, but he remains important because he is an extension of the analytical thinking of the entire organization.  Like good upper-middle managers, they implement the business plan."  http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/inside-the-game-most-think-the-manager-can-make-a-big-difference/2014/03/27/7acd416a-b4d6-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html.  One hundred years ago, major league baseball was also in the midst of an innovative transition in how managers did their jobs. The job of "baseball manager" had become ever more its own discipline, and its professionalism was evolving into greater complexity.

It was increasingly apparent that the most successful teams would be those that were not only the most talented and skilled in execution, but also the most sophisticated in their use of strategy to win games. So managers began to think more strategically about how to win games, which led to a reconsideration or refinement of three established orthodoxies. It should come as no surprise that John McGraw, who burnished his reputation as a baseball strategy genius by always looking for an angle and being willing to try unconventional things at a time when the game was still discovering itself, was at the leading edge of all three.

The first orthodoxy taken on by McGraw was that pitchers were expected to finish the games they started. and certainly victories.  At a time when relief pitchers were rarely in the game at the end of victories--(pitchers completed 88 percent of their starts and fewer than 3 percent of wins were "saved" in 1903, his first full season as Giants manager)--McGraw's genius was to realize that victories don't necessarily have to come from complete games and that sometimes bringing in a fresh arm to complete a game is the best way to secure a win.   Despite a starting rotation including Christy Mathewson and Joe McGinnity that was better than any in the league, with the possible exception of the Cubs, McGraw called upon a relief pitcher to save 102 of the Giants' 663 victories between 1903 and 1909.  That not only was 15 percent of the Giants' total, but accounted for fully one-third of the total 311 saves by National League teams those seven years. 

By the end of the decade, almost certainly because of McGraw's influence, NL managers in particular had seized on the notion of using a reliever to "save" a victory. (The "save" was half a century away from being a recognized pitching statistic, however.)  By 1914--one hundred years ago--the percentage of victories secured by a save had increased to about 13 percent.  While most managers had bought into this concept by now, albeit judiciously (complete games still being perceived as the best way to get the win), none had any one pitcher designated for a relief role; the pitchers getting the saves were established starters, many of them the ace of the staff.  With Doc Crandall from 1909 to 1913, however, McGraw was far ahead of his contemporaries in imagining or anticipating a future of designated relief pitchers--although even he backed off on that after Crandall.

The second orthodoxy McGraw upended was the one where managers rarely replaced anyone in the starting line-up during the game.  The prevailing wisdom at the time he became a manager was that, barring injuries or poor performance, seven of the eight position players in the starting line-up were the same from day-to-day (the understandable exception was inevitably banged-up catchers) and played every inning of every game; the players rounding out major league rosters who sat on the bench were there more for emergencies--to substitute for an injured regular, to give a regular an occasional day of rest, or to take over if the incumbent was ineffective--than for inclusion in the game at critical moments.  Not including pitchers, major league managers made an average of only 23 substitutions for position players in the field in 1903, but McGraw that year made 44.  Quick to see the possibilities in his never-ending quest to gain a key advantage, McGraw was much more inclined to pinch hit and sometimes pinch run for a position player in pivotal moments, which--if this occurred in any but the last inning--then required a defensive replacement in the field.

From 1908 to 1912, when his Giants were one of the powerhouse teams in baseball, McGraw made twice the number of position substitutions in the field (573) than the sixteen-team major league average (270). By 1914--one hundred years ago--substituting for position players during games for tactical advantage was an accepted practice; National League managers, following his lead, averaged 108 position player substitutions that year, but McGraw was still ahead of the curve with 130 of his own.  Indicative of the two leagues being somewhat different in their strategic approach to the game, American League managers lagged behind in position player substitutions, not achieving consistent parity with their NL counterparts until the early 1920s.

Taking position player substitutions to their logical conclusion--platooning in the starting line-up--upended the third established orthodoxy:  that a team should have a set line-up of core regulars, unchanging except for injury or a player proving ineffective at his position.  Although platooning certainly occurred to McGraw, he did not platoon in his starting line-up until a decade after he began making substitutions to gain the "platoon advantage" in key moments of games, and so it is Boston Braves' manager George Stallings who gets the credit for masterminding the concept.  Unlike McGraw, whose strong teams at the time generally had a dependable player to start regularly at every position, Stallings had no such advantage with the woebegone Braves when he became their manager in 1913.  He had no (as in zero) outfielders he felt comfortable starting on a daily basis.  

Stallings was widely regarded as a brilliant strategic manager even at the time, but what made his claim to fame in historical retrospect was how his master manipulation of eight players--four left-handed and four right-handed at any given time during the season--in an outfield rotation involving all three positions, including making substitutions to counter pitching changes, contributed to the 1914 Braves' miracle of rising from the bottom of the heap on July 4th, overtaking McGraw's indisputably better club in early September, and eventually sweeping the historically great Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. What is unusual is how little attention was paid to this strategy at the time; there were no references to  Stallings' lefty-righty outfield trade offs depending on the opposing starting pitcher in any articles appearing in The Baseball Magazine, the premier publication on the sport at the time, in either 1914 or 1915.  By the end of the decade and through the 1920s, however, platooning was widely practiced by nearly all major league teams.

While George Stallings is the historical midwife of platooning and 1914 is considered the baseline year for that strategic concept, starting line-up data for 1914--the earliest year for which such data is available on the website baseball-reference--shows that both McGraw and Cardinals' manager Miller Huggins also had an outfield platoon that year, although at only one position.  The important point here is that these refinements in game strategies and tactics were more evolutionary than revolutionary; they were institutionalized by the collective wisdom of managers observing and learning from each other and becoming more strategic in their thinking.  Even if basic game strategies and strategies for employing players at key moments in games are now in place, the complexity of the game and its many nuances means there is always new insight and knowledge to be gained. Except today, as Boswell implies in his article, there is social engineering by managers making logical adaptations to not only what they observe on the field of play, but also based on the baseball-use revolution in advanced metrics and technology that can dissect performance.