Hurdle, Baseball's New Genius?

[BigRapidsJackass]

Newman, you're pretty much right.

But as usual, I'm learning a lot by reading The Book blog. Here's a comment that sums up what Hurdle is doing right and what everyone else so far seems to be doing wrong. Here's a good comment by Tango -- ignore the acronyms for the stats, and just focus on the point for a moment. Two separate comments here by the authors:

#73 —Tangotiger, 10/15 @ 10:02 AM
MGL/71: This is a great point. Facing the Rockies hitters for the 3rd time, Livan is probably a 5.50 R/G pitcher, give or take. The DBacks have at least 5 relievers who are MUCH better than that, and it was a “must win” game. In a game like this, Livan should be told he’s only going a max of 5 IP before the game even starts (unless he has a huge lead). In fact, Webb is probably the only starter they have who should be allowed to start the 6th, and even he is likely a little worse than their relievers (when facing hitters a 3rd time).

I could see the day coming when some manager has the guts to try this in a postseason. After all, we watch a version of this every summer in the All-Star game, which tend to be low-scoring games. And if this gutsy manager succeeds, it could lead to big changes in postseason pitcher usage. Of course, if it happens to backfire the first time (despite being correct), no one will try it again for 10-20 years!

And:

#81 —MGL, 10/16 @ 12:41 PM
Remember that in The Book, we learned that a pitcher loses about 8 wOBA points (8 OBP, 10 SLG) every time through the order. In terms of winning percentage, that’s about a .030 loss each time through the order. So, a guy can go from being a .530 pitcher, to .500, to .470 each time through the order.

A replacement-level pitcher will pitch .380 as a starter, and .470 as a reliever. It’s fairly easy to see that after only 18 batters (70 pitches), a .500 starter (.470 the third time in the order) can make way for the worst pitcher on the team!

What relievers possess is highly leverageable, and with all the off days, they definitely should be used alot.

Let me put that in plain language:

Bullpens are underutilized. Not because relief pitchers are generally "better" than starters. No, they're not. It's because starters become less effective each time through the batting order.

But you can't always do this in the regular season. You've got 162 games to play, and typically that means you play ball on something like 13 out of every 14 days. If you tried to get through a season by pulling your 4th and 5th starters after 3 or 4 innings, you would risk a bullpen collapse.

But the playoffs -- particularly this year's playoffs, with unnecessary extra days off built in, even during 3 day homestands -- hand you the opportunity to optimize the use of your pitchers. Actually, the expanded roster in September offered a similar opportunity. Hurdle has seized that opportunity. Necessity was the mother of invention here, since if he had Cook and Lopez he very likely might've tried to squeeze 6 innings out of them regardless of the situation. But when he started using guys like Dessens and Morales, he was forced to re-think his bullpen usage. And he deserves some credit here for doing the best job so far among all of the playoff managers by taking advantage of the weird playoff scheduling and getting the most out of his staff.

That's a pretty important point. Does it make him a genius? No, but sometimes baseball managers get labeled "geniuses" based on even slimmer evidence.

[rockieprogress]

Starters don't always become less effective as the game progresses.
Sometimes they change pitch selection as the game progresses, i.e. fastballs early in the count early, but sliders early followed by change-ups to get them out, later in the game.

Unless the Pitching Coach is using pitch selection with his SP, to give his RP's a chance to be effective given their repertoire, if the SP is effective, I'd leave him in.

How can a RP that throws sliders, and only sliders, as his out-pitch be considered an upgrade over a SP that has been throwing lots of sliders anytime in the count?

[BigRapidsJackass]

How can a RP that throws sliders, and only sliders, as his out-pitch be considered an upgrade over a SP that has been throwing lots of sliders anytime in the count?

I'm not saying that there's any mechanical formula to follow here. Only that managers need to be aware that even if their starters appear not to be "losing it," the reality is that hitters may be catching up to them by the 3rd time through the order.

There's really good studies on the difference between starting and relieving. And there's a lot of data there to crunch, unlike the 3-days rest vs. 4-days rest thing. Every club has at least a couple Taylor Buchholz or Elmer Dessens types who've made a bunch of starts and a bunch of relief appearances. And the studies show that these guys typically post an ERA about .80 to 1.00 runs better when relieving. So while you might have a point about starters moving more to their secondary pitches the longer the game goes on in order to mix things up and give hitters a different look, the sad truth is that very few pitchers have secondary stuff that stacks up favorably with their best pitches. I think that explains CC Sabathia's poor starts this post-season: he's getting his fastball over, but he has absolutely no command on his secondary pitches. And he's a guy with excellent secondary stuff, not the ordinary pitcher by any means.

Again, not to belabor the point, but Hurdle has really impressed me on this point. The other playoff managers -- all of them -- seem to be stuck in the midsummer managing mode.

[hiaspire]

Hurdle finished 3rd in the manager of the year voting. Oddly enough, behind the two managers who we just happened to BEAT in the playoffs (Melvin and Manuel). Some of the Hurdle skeptics even were saying that he clearly outmanaged Melvin and Manuel on our way to the Series.

ESPN - Wedge, Melvin named top managers - MLB

Had the voting been in consideration of the job done over the full season including the playoffs, you'd think Hurdle would have a very strong case to be ranked above both in the NL voting as we out-maneuvered both teams in those sweeps.

Going forward, would a team have more confidence in Melvin, Manuel or Hurdle of those top finalists if they had their pick of this litter? I'd say Hurdle.

On the AL side of the voting with Wedge, Scioscia, Torre, and Francona, though, I'd probably take most if not all of them instead.

Makes you wonder, though. More is asked of a manager in the NL obviously. Some (but certainly not all) of the more highly regarded types are in the AL, and maybe part of the reason there is that they don't run into as many opportunities for mistakes or second-guessing on the junior circuit where the team can almost be run on auto-pilot within a game in comparison. AL also has deeper pockets in most cases revolving around the Boston/NYY universe and teams trying to keep up.

[wolf213]

Not sure why Torre is such a highly regaurded manager anyways? With him its like driving an Automatic Transmission.... learn the rules of the road and just drive, where other teams like the D-Backs, Rockies, basically every NL team, or team with out a payroll over 100 million, is like driving a stick shift. Theres a whole lot more involved.

I guess this year we should see just how Good Torre is.