Do Managers Make a Difference in One-Run Games?

The argument for one-run games being a possible indicator of a manager's skill and effectiveness in game-on-the-line circumstances is that these are the games where his decisions would have the most obvious impact, as suggested by several exciting games of the 2014 post-season mentioned in my previous article. The prevailing view among sabermetric analysts, however, is that it is misleading to evaluate any manager's performance based on such indicators as his record in one-run games, which are decided as much by luck as a manager's game-management skills. Inspired by Branch Rickey's famous dictum, "Luck is the residue of design," this Insight seeks to explore that issue.

Do Managers Make a Difference in One-Run Games?

As noted in my previous article, Nats' manager Matt Williams' decision to remove Jordan Zimmermann in a 1-0 game with the tying run on base but needing only one more out to even the division series blew up in his face; O's manager Buck Showalter's decision to put the potential winning run on base with the tying run on second, with only one out and his team just two outs away from advancing to the ALCS, proved a masterstroke; and Royals' manager Ned Yost's decision to use a starting pitcher instead of his go-to seventh-inning guy to protect a one-run lead in the sixth in the wild card game nearly cost KC the game and their ultimate road to the World Series.

Games decided by one-run are not simply low-scoring affairs, such as often associated with the Dead Ball Era, but also games decided by scores like 9-8, 8-7, and 7-6. Most are legitimately on the line in the late innings, even if some one-run games begin as blowouts and become close only because of frenetic comebacks that fall just short.

The percentage of major league games decided by one run was typically between 30 and 35 percent during the Dead Ball Era; mostly between 25 and 30 percent from the 1920s through the 1950s when the power game was prevalent; and consistently back over 30 percent in the 1960s—including 35 percent in 1968, which was so much the "Year of the Pitcher" that the permissible height of the mound was dramatically lowered beginning the next year. 

There was a marked divergence between the American and National Leagues in the first two decades of the DH rule beginning in 1973, where one-run games accounted for about one-third of the outcomes in the NL but for only between 25 and 30 percent in the AL. The major league average was about 27 percent in the first decade of the 2000s, with the NL only slightly higher than the AL. In the last five years, about 30 percent of major league games have been decided by one-run, including 29 percent in the American League and 32 percent in the National League last year. (All of the above data is available on the baseball-reference website for every season played since 1900.)

As countless teams have experienced and millions of fans have endured, however, the outcome of games decided by only one run could very much depend on a lucky break or the ability (or inability) of players to execute—events that say nothing about the actual merits of a manager's decisions. It is a matter of inches, after all (or so they say), between fair and foul balls, safe and out on the bases or at the plate, home runs or long fly ball outs to the wall that decide the outcome of games. 

Precisely because so much is up to chance is a strong argument for why a manager's record in one-run games as an indicator of his game-management skills and performance is misleading. 

After all, the Orioles' record in one-run games over the last three years under Buck Showalter, one of the most respected managers in baseball today, is marked by extremes. The 2014 O's had a 32-23 record in games decided by one run—a winning percentage only 11 points below Baltimore's 96-66 record for the season. But the previous year, Showalter's record in one-run games was an extraordinarily ugly 20-31, below .400, for a team that in 2013 had a .525 winning percentage, while in 2012 the Orioles were at the other end of  extraordinary with an amazing 29-9 mark in one-run affairs. It would surely be ludicrous to suggest Showalter is only a good manager in tight games in the even-numbered years.

Grounded in a long history of play-by-play data, sabermetric analysis typically discounts teams' records in such close games as an indicator of their manager's decisionmaking prowess. For example, the probabilities of a team scoring a run indicates that managerial decisions to play for one run using strategies such as sacrifice bunts to advance runners at the expense of an out, or stolen bases—which, if unsuccessful, cost an out and eliminate a runner—often actually reduces the odds of scoring. 

Furthermore, most game strategies are obvious and pro forma, such as whether to sacrifice bunt in the late innings in a tie game, to walk a dangerous hitter with the tying run in scoring position and first base open, or even to bring in a left-handed specialist to pitch to a dangerous left-handed batter at a critical spot in the game. Whether to go "by the book" or not is the manager's choice and the outcome is often indeed dependent on his players' ability to execute or a matter of luck.

Still, bearing in mind Branch Rickey's Bartlett's quotation about "luck being the residue of design"—which is itself a variation of Roman philosopher Seneca's dictum that "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" (well-read in the classics was Mr. Rickey)—managers making decisions to play for one run do so because they believe just one run is what is needed at that moment to ultimately win the game, particularly if it is the late innings, and therefore is worth the risk and the sacrifice of a potentially bigger inning. Even if their strategy to play for one run actually reduces the odds of scoring according to the probabilities of run-expectancy from their decision, their bias is towards not blowing the opportunity to score just one run. And it is the same concerning decisions about pitching changes, defensive alignments, and how and even whether to pitch to particular batters.

Their players may fail to execute. Fate may intervene in a bad bounce, a great defensive play, or a lousy call (although replay challenges are a remedy to that problem). But managers make the decisions they do at the moments they do for the very purpose, they believe, of maximizing their team's chance to win the game. We should be careful never to assume that the manager did not have very good reasons for making the decisions he did—even those that backfired and have fans and pundits screaming, What was he thinking!

A manager's decisions are made in the context of not only the game situation, but also his years (and years) of learned experience in the game, as well as the philosophical approach and willingness to take risks that he brings to the game as part of his personal and, sometimes, his team's organizational history. In this regard, it would seem their decisions are less about luck (although still dependent on execution) than about the manager's judgment. If so, a manager's record in one-run games may indeed be telling as a valid indicator in the outcome—win or lose—of close and sometimes critical games.

There will be further consideration of this issue in the future.

Thinking About That "Dynasty" Word

As soon as they won their third World Series in five years, the word "dynasty" was bandied about when considering this San Francisco Giants team's place in history. But what does that even mean? This Insight, one of occasional articles intended to be provocative in thinking about how we think about baseball, frames the "dynasty" issue in the context of great teams, great franchises and whether the modern 21st century game changes how we should think about dynasties.

Thinking About That "Dynasty" Word

No sooner did Pablo Sandoval squeeze the last out than Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight site proclaimed, "The San Francisco Giants are now a Dynasty," and used an algorithm developed by Bill James to substantiate the point. (http://fivethirtyeight.com/liveblog/world-series-game-7-live-blog/?#livepress-update-19763487) A Reuters release called the Giants "a different kind of Major League Baseball dynasty," the "best at juggling budget and talent" in an age of parity." (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/10/30/sports/baseball/30reuters-baseball-worldseries-dynasty.html?ref=baseball)   World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner said at the Giants' victory parade back home in San Francisco, "Like they've been saying, this is a dynasty." Even before Game 6, New York Times national baseball writer Tyler Kepner titled a column, "Unconventional Dynasty in the Making" and asked "Are they really a dynasty?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/sports/baseball/world-series-2014-sf-giants-have-the-trappings-of-a-dynasty.html). Kepner goes on to say, "The term connotes a higher level of team achievement, but is open to interpretation." Let's take it from there.

Until arguably the mid-1990s with the advent of three divisions in each league, the introduction of a "wild card" team for post-season playoffs and the resulting two rounds of playoffs in each league to determine a pennant winner, a particular team's winning accomplishments seems a suitable baseline standard for beginning a discussion about dynasties. These can be measured in the number of first-place finishes--whether in the unitary league format that prevailed until the second-wave expansion to twelve teams in each league in 1969 or division titles since then--pennants and World Series won over a period of at least five years. While acknowledging that very few teams not named the Yankees would win even as many as three championships in any five-year period, I would suggest that for any team to be considered a "dynasty" based on this standard, it should not have had a losing season in any year of its five-year dynasty-qualifying run and in fact have been competitive all five years.

On top of that, the extent to which a team dominates its era, not merely in championship achievements but in overpowering the competition, should be factored into the "dynasty" equation. Some combination of number of years with 100 or more victories, winning pennant races by large margins, being among the top two teams in scoring or fewest runs allowed can be important considerations when considering which teams are dynasties. The 1906-10 Chicago Cubs with four pennants in five years, three won by decisive margins of at least ten games, four times winning at least 100 games (including in 1909, the one year they did not win the pennant); the 1936-42 Yankees from Joe DiMaggio's rookie season until he went off to war, averaging over 100 wins a year, with six pennants in seven years all won by at least nine games, and leading the league in scoring six times and in fewest runs allowed six times; and the 1972-76 Cincinnati Reds, with four division titles--three by margins of at least 10 games--three pennants and two championship rings are three of the best examples of team dynasties.

Each of these teams was also identifiable with a core group of players for all or most of their run: Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance and Three-Finger Brown (the Cubs); DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon, Charlie Keller, Red Rolfe, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez and Johnny Murphy (the Yankees); Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez (the Big Red Machine).

Aside from dynastic teams identifiable by a core group of players for a specific period of time, there are four franchises that were "dynasties" over a period of at least two decades by virtue of sustained success. Most obvious are the New York Yankees, beginning in 1921 (when they won the American League pennant for the first time) pretty much to the present day with really only two non-dynastic spells therein--from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s and from the early-1980s until the mid-1990s. The Yankee dynasty seamlessly transitioned from the Ruth and Gehrig, to the DiMaggio, to the Mantle eras famously winning 29 pennants and 20 World Series in 44 years between 1921 and 1964. The most recent iteration of the Yankee dynasty lasted from 1995 to at least 2007, bearing the names of Jeter, Posada, Pettitte and Rivera, with 13 consecutive postseason appearances. (The Yankees won nine consecutive AL East titles during these years.).

The three other franchise dynasties were the New York Giants with 10 pennants but only 3 World Series championships in 21 years from 1904 to 1924; the St. Louis Cardinals with 9 pennants and 6 World Series championships in 21 years between 1926 and 1946; and the Brooklyn-to-Los Angeles Dodgers with 13 pennants (6 in Brooklyn) but only 4 World Series triumphs (3 in L.A.) in 32 years between 1947 and 1978.

That 21-year Cardinal dynasty just mentioned is particularly interesting because they won with no team by itself worthy of being called a "dynasty" for any five-year period, with the possible exception of the 1942-46 Cards that won four pennants in five years, two of which however were when major league rosters were depleted because of ballplayers suiting up for Uncle Sam in the Second World War, which took a far greater toll on arch-rival Brooklyn than St. Louis. Even when St. Louis went to three World Series and won two in five years between 1930 and 1934, the Cardinals finished fifth and sixth in an eight-team league in the two years they did not win the pennant. Branch Rickey kept the Cardinals competitive with the vast number of minor league affiliates under St. Louis control and shrewd trading according to the principle of better to trade a star player approaching his career pivot point of decline a year too soon than a year too late.

With an additional round of playoffs, the wild card era should change how we think about dynasties. Division winners now have to navigate a five-game series and then a seven-game series to get to the World Series. Short series can be fickle, making winning division titles in long 162-game seasons a more true test of how good a team really is than the number of championship rings.

The Atlanta Braves from 1991 to 2005 won an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles that included six 100-win seasons, eight time finishing first by a blowout margin of at least 8 games, and nine times having the best record in the National League ... but those accomplishments seem somehow diminished because they went to only five World Series and won only one. It should be noted that two of their five pennants were before MLB's three-division / wild card structure came into being when they had only to survive a seven-game League Championship Series to compete in the World Series, and that they were eliminated in the five-game Division Series first round in five of their last six consecutive seasons as division champions. And this was a team that not only dominated the league, but included a significant number of historically great players--Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones--at the peak of their careers.

The New York Yankees from 1996 to 2001 are the only team in the current three divisions / wild card era that can claim a "dynasty" by the traditional dynastic standards of winning pennants and World Series. They survived two American League playoff rounds to make it to five World Series in six years (including four in a row from '98 to '01) and won four championships. Throw in 2003, and it's six pennants and four World Series triumphs in eight years. Since then, even the Jeter-Rivera variant of the Yankee dynasty, having been eliminated in the opening Division Series round in four of their last eight post-season appearances (although they did win it all in 2009), has been snakebit by the number of postseason series now required to be won for baseball's championship.

By winning their third Series in five years, the San Francisco Giants accomplished something not done by any team since the 1996-2001 Yankees. There is no question about that Yankee team being a dynasty, not to mention an extension in the nearing-a-century-long dynasty of the Yankee franchise. But the 2010-14 Giants won their division only twice in five years (remember, they were a wild card this year), only once by as many as eight games (in 2012); never won more than 94 games on the season; never had the best record in the league (they were second-best in 2010); followed their 2010 and 2012 championships with disappointing noncompetitive seasons; and have only the third best record in the National League (after the Cardinals and the Braves) over the last five years.

Whatever can and should be said about the Giants and their accomplishments, they have not dominated the National League in the way one would expect of a dynasty--not in any of the last five years. As has been noted by various experts, however, General Manager Brian Sabean's record in making high-impact trades (such as for Hunter Pence) and bringing in journeymen players to fill sudden holes has kept the Giants in the competitive mix, capable of recovering quickly from disappointing years. They maybe are not quite a dynasty given their actual record over the last five years--not yet, anyway, and certainly not by traditional definitions--but the way the game has evolved and the difficulty of sustaining a winning team, today's San Francisco Giants may be the team that redefines how we consider the concept of "dynasties."

How Major League Owners Justified Opposition to Integration in 1946

Sixty-eight years ago, even as Jackie Robinson was clearly demonstrating he belonged in the major leagues while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate in Montreal, major league owners marshaled the same argument expressed in an internal e-mail by the owner of the NBA Atlanta Hawks--that black fans at his arena were hurting his team's bottom line--to oppose the integration of major league baseball. 

How Major League Owners Justified Opposition to Integration in 1946

The owner of the Atlanta Hawks has decided to sell his controlling stake of the NBA team because of the terrible optic from an e-mail to his general manager in which he complained that the Hawks were drawing an "overwhelmingly black audience" and that black crowds "scared away whites" from buying ticket-packages, to the financial detriment of the franchise. The same sentiment was expressed as the primary reason for opposing integration  in a consensus report delivered to Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler in August 1946 by major league club owners, who were universally against Branch Rickey's decision to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers, although there may have been one or two who were privately open-minded but not willing to take any lead in bucking the segregationist history of the major league game.

The junior Senator from Kentucky, who would have been up for re-election to his Senate seat in 1946, Chandler had been elected Baseball Commissioner as a dark horse candidate in a contentious vote of owners in April 1945, five months after the death of Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who most assuredly did not support the idea of integrating the major leagues, even if there was supposedly no official policy). Chandler did not, however, assume full-time the burdens of being Commissioner until finally resigning from the Senate in November 1945, meaning he was still quite new on the job when a subcommittee of owners that included the presidents and two franchise owners in each league presented him with their report addressing the fundamental issues facing Major League Baseball.

Best known as "The MacPhail Report" for its principal author, Larry MacPhail, who was part of the new ownership group of the New York Yankees, the committee tackled head-on the "people who charge that baseball is flying a Jim Crow flag at its masthead--or think that racial discrimination is the basic reason for failure of the major leagues to give employment to Negroes" by accusing them of "simply talking through their collective hats." In addressing the "Race Question" the report set as its foundation premise that "professional baseball is a private business enterprise [that] depends on profits for its existence, just like any other business."

Written in the same summer that Jackie Robinson was tearing up the International League with 40 stolen bases, 113 runs scored and an ultimately league-leading .349 batting average, the report observed that there was a tremendous increase in black attendance at all the games in which he played, and that in two Triple-A cities--Newark and Baltimore--blacks accounted for more than half the attendance when Robinson's team, the Montreal Royals, came to town. As paying customers, they were surely contributing to club coffers, but the MacPhail Report warned that such levels of black attendance in ballparks such as Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds in New York City and Comiskey Park in Chicago "could conceivably threaten the value of the Major League franchises owned by these Clubs." The report did not specify Ebbets Field, which all concerned certainly knew was Jackie's ultimate destination.

Once that very pregnant point was made--and it was certainly one that motivated the Yankees well into the integration era--the MacPhail Report went on to assert that if the best black players left to play in the major leagues, then the "Negro leagues will eventually fold up" and, back to the issue of money, major league teams would lose out on substantial revenue from renting out their stadiums to Negro League teams featuring star players. All of this, the drafting committee concluded, "is not racial discrimination." Instead, "it's simply respecting the contractual relationship between the Negro leagues and their players."

The MacPhail Report made no specific recommendations, but went "on record" asserting that the problem "vitally affects each and every one of us" and that any "fair and just solution" should be compatible "with good business judgment and the principles of good sportsmanship." Notwithstanding his fellow owners' concerns about the presumed negative financial impact on "each and every one of us," Branch Rickey did not hesitate to promote Jackie Robinson to the major leagues the next year.

The rest is history, and history certainly bears out not only that Branch Rickey was on the right side of a fundamentally moral issue, but that the "bad for business" argument that was the centerpiece justification for opposing integration was not just wrong, it was cynical and bogus. Attendance did not suffer as more teams began to integrate, except insofar as competitiveness--or lack thereof--was concerned. From the end of World War II until 1952, the American League attracted more fans to their ballparks than the National League every year except for in Jackie's rookie season of 1947. But beginning in 1953, with its greater preponderance of black stars, the National League outpaced the junior circuit in attendance every year until 1977 with the exceptions of only 1955 and 1961 (when the AL expanded to ten teams while the NL remained at eight).

The MacPhail Report singled out the Giants, Yankees and White Sox as franchises whose value might decline if integration resulted in a boost of blacks in attendance at their stadiums, presumably causing many white fans to stay away. The Giants and White Sox were both early to integrate, became much better teams on the field of play and did not suffer at the gate. The figures show that the cardinal determinant in attendance fluctuations was competitiveness, as well as the increasing physical deterioration of stadiums approaching fifty years old and with limited parking options at a time when Americans were falling in love with their cars and suburban lifestyles. Similarly, the Yankees' attendance did not suffer after they integrated with Elston Howard in 1955 or because they had Howard, Hector Lopez and Al Downing as key players when they were winning pennants in the early 1960s. Not until the Yankees plunged into the depths of the second division in the second half of the 1960s did their attendance plunge as well.

See the following related post from last year: "More Reflections on '42': The Moral Failure of AL Patriarchs.
http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-reflections-on-42-moral-failure-of.html