2015 ROYALS—The Perils of a Night Off

May 24, 2015—Cardinals

So I’m looking at the schedule and realize the Royals will finish up the Cardinal series on Sunday afternoon, fly to New York and have the night off, play a day game against the Yankees on Monday and have that night off, play a night game on Tuesday, a day game on Wednesday, fly to Chicago and have that night off, have an off day on Thursday and have that night off, a day game on Friday and have that night off (turns out they get rained out on Saturday and have another night off), play a day game on Sunday, fly home and have another night off.

When I point out how many nights off the Royals have in the coming week, a Royals coach—who I’m pretty sure would rather have his name left out of it—says: “We won’t be worth a fuck.”

And they aren’t.

New York offers a lot of distractions and the Royals play like they’ve been distracted by every one of them. They lose the first game in New York 14-1, get swept by the Yankees and during that week filled with off nights, go 1-5.

A fellow journalist asks me why the team seems to struggle after a day off; were the players out of rhythm or did they lose their mojo or was it plain bad luck or maybe just a coincidence?

After he repeatedly presses me for an opinion I say: “They party.”

The fellow journalist—who’s old enough to have a driver’s license and a family and vote in elections—says he doesn’t think professional athletes would do that and I say: “Why do you think they want to be professional athletes?”

If I was in my twenties with millions of dollars in the bank, three phone numbers some female fans gave me and a night off in New York, I’d party too. In my twenties I didn’t have any of those things and I still partied.

As Jason Kendall says repeatedly: “People forget they’re kids.”

2025 Update

By 2019 the behavior of the younger players changes and instead of partying, a lot of players get Styrofoam containers of food from the postgame spread, go back to their hotel rooms or apartments and play video games, which appalls some of the veterans:

“Jesus, what happened to going to the Copa Cabana with Billy Martin, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Hank Bauer and getting in a fistfight?”

The best answer I ever heard to the “Who would you like to be?” question (and I forget who said it) was: “Mickey Mantle in the 1950s on a Saturday night in New York.”

But the kids may be on to something because cell phones and social media change everything.

I’m having dinner with a coach from another team and he suddenly ducks his head and when I ask WTF, he says: “cell phone.” There’s a beer on the table in front of him and he says if someone posts that picture and something goes wrong the next day, people will be happy to blame him and his drinking.

He then tells me a story about a player taking a picture with a female fan after a game and the female fan posts the picture immediately and when the player gets home his wife is waiting up for him and when he walks through the door she asks: “Who’s the blonde?”

Stories like that make Call of Duty seem like a reasonable option.

May 28, 2015—Off Day

After getting beat by the Cardinals in the last game of that series and getting swept in the Yankee series, the Royals have lost four games in a row and easily-panicked fans start to freak out.

It doesn’t take much to start a stampede and after four-straight losses the herd is restless; the herd also has an extremely short memory. In 2014 the Royals lost five in a row once, four in a row three times and three in a row on several occasions—and still wound up in Game 7 of the World Series.

But for some baseball fans (the kind that have strong opinions on social media) it’s never too early to panic and they seem to take pride in being the first to say their team sucks which seems a lot like taking pride in being the first Texan at the Alamo to suggest surrendering.

The off-day gives me an opportunity to write about how a manager can protect himself with the strategies he uses. Big League baseball has its bureaucratic side, just like every other big organization, and making sure you don’t get blamed for something that goes wrong is part of how you survive.

If a team wants to be successful in the postseason when you have to win right now this minute, it helps if they can occasionally produce a Big Inning (because sooner or later they’ll be in a high-scoring game), but they also need to know how to play Small Ball (because sooner or later they’ll be in a low-scoring game).

So if sooner or later a team will need to play Small Ball, why don’t more managers do it?

I ask that question and here’s the answer I was given: because of the press conference afterwards.

If a manager bunts or steals or calls for a hit and run and those moves don’t work, he’ll get criticized for being a bad manager. If the manager sits on his hands and lets the offense swing away and that doesn’t work, the players will get criticized for not hitting.

Another way to avoid criticism is by being a slave to the numbers.

If a move backfires, just point to the matchup numbers and you’re probably off the hook. The media usually doesn’t take the time to look into matchup numbers, so we won’t realize when those numbers are based on very few at bats. If a guy is 2-for-9 off a reliever, but had three line drive outs; the numbers favor the pitcher, but the batter actually hits that pitcher well.

Or it might be reversed:

Say the batter is for 4-for-9 off the reliever, but two were broken-bat flares. The hitter’s matchup numbers look good, but because of the small sample size, the numbers don’t accurately reflect what happened.

But if the manager follows the matchup numbers, he’s safe—he did what the numbers told him to do. It might not be good managing, but it covers his ass.

Giving players a green light is another way to avoid blame. In the Royals case, the players have much more freedom than fans might imagine; they often steal or bunt or hit and run on their own.

And that’s a good thing; the players can see things that the coaches sitting in the dugout can’t. If a player picks up on something—like the catcher puts his bare hand behind his back on fastballs and keeps it out in front for breaking pitches—the player can take advantage of that without having to ask permission from the analytics department.

That’s the good side of a player having the green light.

The bad side goes like this: if a player tries to steal a base or bunt and the move fails, managers can then say the player was doing it on his own. Giving the players a green light can protect the manager.

But some players with a green light won’t run or bunt because they don’t want the responsibility if the move doesn’t work. They want someone else to take the responsibility. If a player shows initiative, the manager can’t throw him under the bus or the player will become passive.

Some organizations are run by control freaks; they want to make out a game plan and have the manager and players follow it to the letter and that’s how you get the Tampa Bay Rays pulling Blake Snell from a World Series game when Blake Snell’s pitching his ass off.

The Royals are different.

The players and coaches have the ability to react to what they’re seeing during a game and they don’t have to get an OK from an analytics department intern. His willingness to let his coaches coach and players play and then protect them when it doesn’t work out, is probably Ned Yost’s biggest managing strength and in the final game of the 2015 World Series, it’s going to pay off big time.

May 29, 2015—Cubs

In the seventh inning Kelvin Herrera is facing Addison Russell with a 4-3 lead. Kelvin starts the at-bat with a 100-MPH fastball for a swing and miss. The next pitch is an 89-MPH changeup (incorrectly listed as a fastball on MLB.com) and Russell hits that changeup out of the park to tie the game.

If you throw 100 MPH, why throw a changeup?

Well…

Consider what people would say if Herrera had thrown another fastball and that pitch had been hit out of the park. I believe it would go something like this: “No matter how hard you throw, you can’t just keep throwing fastballs to major league hitters.”

And I’m pretty sure that’s what critics would say because I’ve said it.

We criticize pitch selection because it’s easier to understand than pitch execution, but every pitcher I’ve ever met thinks pitch execution is more important than pitch selection.

There’s nothing wrong with throwing an 0-1 changeup as long as it’s a good changeup. It’s simplistic to criticize any move that doesn’t work and praise any move that does; sometimes a player does the right thing and it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes a player does the wrong thing and it does.

But criticizing anything that doesn’t work is easy and that’s why we do it.

Left-handed batter Anthony Rizzo is at the plate and the count’s 3-0. Salvador Perez calls for a fastball away and then widens his stance by moving his left foot toward the right-handed batter’s box. If a catcher can receive the pitch between his shin guards it looks more like a strike; Sal’s already a big guy, widening his stance gives Edinson Volquez an even better chance of keeping the pitch between Sal’s shin guards.

When the pitch arrives it’s outside the electronic strike zone shown on TV. Fans should not take those strike zones as gospel—I’ve seen the same pitch show up as a ball and a strike on two different web sites—but this pitch is well outside the strike zone, but still in line with Sal’s left knee.

And Salvador Perez sticks the pitch.

We see Salvy receive 100-MPH fastballs and don’t think of the hand and arm strength it takes to receive that pitch without the mitt moving.

Sal uses some advanced catching techniques to make the Volquez pitch look more like a strike and the home plate umpire buys it; he calls a 94-MPH fastball—well outside the zone—strike one. Anthony Rizzo doesn’t like it and turns to complain, but maybe he should aim his criticism at Salvador Perez; he’s the one that turned a ball into a strike.

Anthony Rizzo goes on to single, but Salvador Perez makes him work for it.

May 31, 2015—Cubs

The Royals lose 2-1 in the 11^th inning when a pop fly drops in-between Alcides Escobar and Alex Gordon, but it’s worth examining why the Royals were playing extra innings in the first place: they pitched to a hot hitter and paid the price.

Yordano Ventura is pitching well and has given up a total of three hits in six innings; but two of those hits were to Chris Coghlan. With one down in the seventh, Yordano walks Miguel Montero. Then Yordano throws a wild pitch and Montero advances to second base. Pinch runner Jonathan Herrera replaces Montero, but Ventura strikes out Jorge Soler for the second out.

With two outs, first base open and the guy who already has two hits against Ventura at the plate, the Royals chose to pitch to Coghlan. The Cubs left fielder picks up his third hit of the day, drives in a run, ties the score and eventually sends the game to extra innings.

Since starting this job, one of the things I’ve heard over and over is that what a hitter is doing right now is more important than his overall numbers.

The numbers guys like large sample sizes; the more encounters a pitcher and hitter has, the more confident the numbers guys feel about predicting the outcome of a future encounter. Which would be accurate if every factor stays the same—but they don’t.

Hitters change.

Sometimes they change from year-to-year, sometimes it’s game-to-game, sometimes it’s at-bat-to-at bat and sometimes it’s pitch-to-pitch. You might get a hitter out twice in a row by pitching him away, but if he comes to the plate for that third at bat and this time he’s standing on top of the plate, you better bust him in.

And hitters get hot.

Chris Coghlan’s overall batting average might be in the low 200s, but coming into that third at bat against Ventura, he’s 6 for his last 17; a .353 average. And on Sunday afternoon he’s seeing the ball well and barreling up Ventura’s pitches. With first base open the Royals chose to pitch to a hitter that is hot right now and pay the price.

The Royals finish the month of May with a loss to the Cubs, but despite all those nights off, still go 14-12 for an overall record of 29-19 and head into June 10 games over .500.

Coming Up: Greg Holland explains why some walks are OK, Eric Hosmer defends a teammate and a fan demonstrates why GMs shouldn’t listen to them.