Back Story to the Catch and Throw That Ended the "Wait Till Next Year"

On October 4, 1955—sixty years ago—Johnny Podres retired the Yankees in order in the last of the 9th at Yankee Stadium to complete an eight-hit 2-0 shutout in Game 7 that finally, after seven previous Brooklyn visitations to the Fall Classic, ended the "wait till next year." Podres, who also won Game 3 to prevent the Yankees from taking a three games-to-none lead in the '55 Series, was the World Series MVP. But it was an exquisite defensive play by Sandy Amoros that saved the day for the Flatbush Faithful, which might not have happened if not for the decision to pinch hit for Don Zimmer.

Back Story to the Catch and Throw That Ended the "Wait Till Next Year"

When the late, great Yogi Berra, then managing the 1973 New York Mets, said in the midst of a pennant race in which his team was lagging in August, "It's not over 'til it's over," he most assuredly was not thinking about the 6th inning of Game 7 in the 1955 World Series. 

That’s when, with Yankee runners on first and second and nobody out, Sandy Amoros made a great catch at the left field fence after a long run to rob him of an extra-base hit that would have tied the score at 2-2. Savvy veteran Gil McDougald, the runner on first, was so certain Berra's drive would be a hit and so determined to score, that he failed to consider it might actually be caught. But catch it Amoros did. He immediately fired a strike to cut-off man Pee Wee Reese, whose throw to first doubled off McDougald before he could scramble back.

And thus was the game and the World Series over before it was over, regardless of any philosophical musings to the contrary by Mr. Berra.

A key part of the lore and majesty of that moment is that Amoros had just entered the game to play left field. This has usually been described as a prescient move by Dodgers manager Walt Alston. 

But Amoros was put into the game at that precise moment, just in time to make the most important defensive play of the World Series, less because Alston had an inclination to upgrade his defense than because he had just pinch hit for starting second baseman Don Zimmer with the bases loaded, two out, and the Dodgers ahead 2-0, in the top half of the inning in a bid to put the game away. Stengel had relieved left-handed starter Tommy Byrne with right-handed Bob Grim two batters earlier, and Alston judged the left-handed George Shuba as the better bet to break the game open than the weaker-hitting, right-handed Zimmer. 

Shuba, in his last at bat in a major league game, made out, after which Alston moved Jim Gilliam from left to replace Zimmer at second, and put Amoros in to play left. Gilliam was the Dodgers' Mr. Versatility. He had replaced Jackie Robinson at second base in 1953, with Jackie moving to play third and occasionally left field, and had started the '55 season playing second, but Alston used him increasingly in the outfield as the season drew to a close when Amoros, who had started the year in left field, was mostly sidelined because of his struggles at the plate.

These moves were consistent with the 1950s baseball renaissance in platooning and substituting for position players based on the game situation that was brought back into prominence by Alston's rival in the Yankee dugout—one Mr. Casey Stengel. (The heyday of both practices, particularly platooning, had been in the 1920s.) 

Alston, however, then in his second year as Dodgers manager, was not yet anywhere near Stengel’s zip code when it came to substituting for position players in his starting line-up. Stengel made 211 position-player substitutions during the regular season (much fewer than the record-setting 286 he made in 1954), while Alston made only 106, which was also below the National League average of 127. That might be because the Dodgers’ faced only 55 left-handed pitchers all season.

The Dodgers also faced only 11 southpaw starting pitchers in 154 National League games, so Alston had little opportunity to platoon even if that was something he was inclined to do. But two of the Yankees’ top starting pitchers, Whitey Ford and Byrne, were left-handed, causing Alston to bench the left-handed-batting Amoros, who was now being platooned, in favor of right-handed infielder Zimmer in the eighth spot of his batting order in three of the four games Stengel started his southpaws. Gilliam, the Dodgers' lead-off batter, was in the starting line-up for every game of the Fall Classic, in left field when Zimmer played and second base when Amoros played. 

Until Game 7, Alston had substituted for a position player just once in the Series, in the sixth game. But that was a move made necessary when Duke Snider twisted his ankle on a sprinkler head making a catch in center field in the third inning. Those darned Yankee Stadium outfield sprinklers . . . let us not forget Mickey Mantle was maimed by one during the 1951 World Series. Snider was back in the line-up for the Series finale, although the sprained ankle may have contributed to his 0-for-3 day.

Anyway, with Stengel starting Byrne in the finale, the right-handed-batting Zimmer was in Alston's Game 7 starting line-up, and the left-handed-batting Amoros not. And after Stengel changed pitchers, Alston pinch hit for Zimmer the first chance he had, necessitating a defensive replacement, which meant Gilliam moving to second and Amoros replacing Gilliam in left field.

That series of moves came just in time to save the game for the Dodgers, helping them to secure their first World Series triumph, which turned out to be their only World Series championship in Brooklyn.

Postscript: Neither Zimmer nor Amoros had the career they or the Dodgers envisioned. 

Sandy Amoros was a brilliant prospect who led the International League in batting with a .353 average in 1953, when he played for Brooklyn's top Triple-A team in Montreal. In the majors, however, Amoros had difficulty hitting lefties. Playing in only 517 major league games, mostly between 1954 and 1957, Amoros was almost exclusively a platoon-player against right-handed pitching, starting just six games against southpaws in his career—three of them, plus Game 6, in 1955—and had only 92 plate appearances against lefties. 

Zimmer had difficulty hitting anybody, perhaps because of a horrific beaning in 1953, when he was a hot prospect with the Dodgers' Triple-A team in St. Paul, that left him unconscious for 10 days with a fractured skull. Don Zimmer was never a star player, but went on to become a cherished baseball figure as a manager and, ultimately, as the wise confidant to Joe Torre when Torre was building his Hall of Fame managerial credentials in the Yankee dugout.

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. 

  

Counterintuitively Successful: Boston's 'Teen Years--The 1912-18 Red Sox

Our 2013 World Series champion Boston Red Sox have been described as a team that came out the best in the major leagues with more a workman-like, rather than a star-studded, line-up (notwithstanding Big Papi and Dustin Pedroia), almost as though they overachieved for the talent they had--especially after having lost 93 games last year.  The same might be said of the Red Sox' first sustained stretch of excellence, beginning 101 years ago in 1912 and extending through 1918, when they won four pennants and four World Series in seven years.  With only two exceptional players as bookends--Tris Speaker, who patrolled center field and was an imposing offensive force, on the championship teams of 1912 and 1915, and Babe Ruth, an outstanding southpaw who pitched for Boston's winning teams in 1915 (although not in the World Series), 1916, and 1918--the Red Sox' success was certainly earned, including through the crucible of two tight pennant races, but they won against established patterns at the time for teams that dominated the league over successive years.

Boston's 'Teen Years--The 1912-18 Red Sox

The World War I-era Boston Red Sox were a worthy successor to the Philadelphia Athletics, who won four pennants and three World Series between 1910 and 1914, but hardly as imposing in either their dominance of the baseball world or the overall talent level of their team.  Connie Mack's Athletics had the characteristic pedigree of a baseball dynasty, including continuity of core players during their championship seasons and many of the game's best at their positions in both contemporary and historical context.  The Red Sox' mastery of the American League, by contrast, could be described as counterintuitive to the model of baseball's great teams to that point in time--the Boston Beaneaters and Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s; the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, New York Giants, and Mack's Athletics since 1900.  For example:

• Unusual for the time, the Red Sox won their four championships under three different managers, none of whom managed the team for more than three complete seasons.  In the 25 previous years (1890-1914), every team that won multiple pennants over any five-year stretch did so under only one manager.  
• Unusual for the time, the Red Sox maintained their standing as the best team in baseball despite, after two championships, trading away the centerpiece of their offense and their far-and-away best player--one of the very best in the game's history, in fact--and nonetheless winning two more.  In the 25 previous years (1890-1914), every team that won multiple pennants over any five-year stretch had continuity in their starting line-up, and none traded away their best offensive player as Boston did with Tris Speaker. 
• And, unusual for the time, the Red Sox were at the forefront of strategic innovations involving platooning and in-game position player substitutions when they won their two middle pennants. At the time, teams that were generally favored by the baseball gods with good health and few injuries relied on no more than ten or eleven position players who would receive nearly all of the playing time and rarely be taken out of a game, with those on the bench asked to fill in only when necessary.  

Managerial Musical Chairs in Boston:  The Red Sox' first of four 'teens championships came in 1912--with a franchise-record 105 victories interrupting the Athletics' string of four pennants in five years--in their first season under player (first baseman)-manager Jake Stahl.  Stahl had to be coaxed out of a one-year retirement, trying his hand at banking after leading the league with 10 home runs in 1910.  Despite his World Series triumph in 1912 that contributed to the Giants' string of three straight Fall Classic defeats, by mid-season of the next year Stahl was back in the banking business, undermined by front office politics and a dismal start to the season.  Stahl's replacement was Bill Carrigan, the team's veteran catcher, who was highly regarded as a leader and for his knowledge of the game.  The Red Sox came back strong in 1914, finishing second to set the stage for picking up where Philadelphia left off when Connie Mack began breaking up his great team following the Athletics' debacle in the 1914 Fall Classic (although his team's tenuous financial position was Mack's real impetus).

After leading Boston to back-to-back Series championships in 1915 and 1916--taking out both the Phillies and Dodgers in five games--it was Carrigan's turn to decide that retirement looked good, especially going out on top. Second baseman Jack Barry took over as player-manager in 1917, brought the Red Sox home second, then joined the reserves as the US fought in World War I.  Ed Barrow, in a precarious position as President of the International League at the time, took little persuading to become Boston manager in 1918, leading the Red Sox to their sixth pennant since the birth of the American League in 1901.  That tied Boston with Philadelphia for the most pennants won by an American League team.  (For any who are wondering: the AL team in New York, at this point in history, had precisely zero pennants--which, of course, would soon change with what would become an 86-year-long Curse of the Bambino.)

Offensive Impact of the Speaker Trade:  The 1912-18 Red Sox can almost be considered two different teams--before and after Tris Speaker.  The best offensive player in baseball at the time besides Ty Cobb, and arguably a better all-around player because of his defensive brilliance in center field, Speaker was the only position player on the Red Sox who could be considered, even at the time, to be an elite player.  Speaker was flanked in the outfield by Duffy Lewis and Harry Hooper, making up one of the most famous outfields in history.  Even though Lewis, Hooper, shortstop Everett Scott and third baseman Larry Gardner remained from the 1915 pennant-winning Sox, Boston lost a significant bit of its offensive edge after Speaker was sent packing to Cleveland just before the start of the 1916 season--with cash the primary consideration--in part because he was a leader of one of two rival factions in the clubhouse, but mostly because the Tribe wasn't willing to meet his salary demands. Lewis and Gardner would both be gone by 1918, and it wasn't until 1918 that either player the Red Sox got for Speaker (pitcher Sad Sam Jones and infielder Fred Thomas) made any appreciable contribution to Boston's cause.

With Speaker one of the AL's three best position players from 1912 to 1915, based on wins above replacement (WAR), the Red Sox, according to the WAR metric for player value, had the third-best offensive team in the league the first three years, and were second in 1915.  They led the league in scoring in 1912 and were third each of the next three years.  Without Speaker in 1916, Boston won the pennant despite being sixth in scoring and next-to-last in the AL as a team in offensive wins above replacement and having only one position player among the top 10 in player value--Gardner, who ranked seventh (while Speaker was best in the league with his new team in Cleveland). The Red Sox were only fourth in the league in runs scored and fourth in offensive WAR when they next won in 1918, in no small measure due to Babe Ruth starting nearly half of his team's games in the outfield, in addition to his starting pitching responsibilities.  Ruth and Hooper were the only two Red Sox (at fifth and sixth) whose player value was among the top 10 AL position players. (Gardner had the eighth highest WAR among AL position players in 1918, but was now playing in Philadelphia.)

Playing the Percentages.  Once Speaker was gone, the foundation for Boston's success rested on strong pitching--a staff that included three of the league's best pitchers in Ruth, Dutch Leonard, and Carl Mays--and exceptional defense.  With a much less proficient offense, particularly among infielders, the Red Sox benefited from Bill Carrigan, along with visionary NL managers George Stallings (who managed the other team in Boston) and John McGraw, being at the leading edge of an evolution towards in-game position player substitutions and platooning to gain match-up advantages against opposing pitchers.  McGraw had been out front since late in the previous decade in using his bench strategically during a game, and Stallings popularized platooning with his outfield rotation when the Boston Braves had their "miracle" come-from-way-behind season in 1914.

Carrigan was one of the first managers in the game's history, and the first American League manager, to systematically embrace both concepts.  In 1915 and 1916 he platooned at first base with lefty-swinging Dick Hoblitzel against right-handed starters and righty Del Gainer against southpaws, and in the final month of the 1916 season he platooned the left-handed batting Chick Shorten and right-handed Tilly Walker in center field, which he continued into the World Series.  And Carrigan was far more aggressive than the typical manager in making in-game position substitutions for tactical advantage.  In three full seasons under Carrigan from 1914 to 1916, the Red Sox averaged 152 defensive substitutions--including a record-shattering 193 in 1916--substantially more than double the average of 63 by the seven other American League teams over those three years, which was consistent with the league average since 1908.  Carrigan often used his managerial discretion to pinch hit for a weak-hitting starting position player at a crucial point in the game to gain a favorable match-up against the opposing pitcher.  In 1916, for example, the light-hitting (.232/.283/.295) Everett Scott completed only 77 percent of the games he started at shortstop, and both Hoblitzel and Gainer were often replaced when the starting pitcher was relieved by a twirler throwing from the same side they batted.  Carrigan's line-up manipulations in 1915 and 1916 might well have been the difference in the Red Sox winning back-to-back pennant races decided by less than three games.