The Royals New Manager and Data-Driven Decisions

Semi-recently the Kansas City Star ran a long story about the Royals new manager, Matt Quatraro and the article’s second paragraph said this about Royals CEO and chairman John Sherman:

“Sherman declared a need for more data-driven decisions, less sentimentality and a willingness to turn over the roster.”

A statement which actually raises more questions than it answers (especially if you’re a new manager) and today we’ll take a look at a few of the questions it raises. Like...

Who fills out the lineup card?

Teams and managers don’t like to talk about this publicly and if you ask Matt Quatraro this question he might not want to answer it, but it’s still worth asking: does the need for more “data-driven decisions” mean the Royals front office will feel comfortable sending Quatraro a lineup card and if they did that, would Quatraro feel comfortable ignoring it?

This is just the kind of question that comes up when teams interview managing candidates and it’s also just the kind of question teams hope the rest of us don’t ask because it’s a lot like showing up for Thanksgiving dinner and while he’s sitting next to his wife, asking your brother: “Who wears the pants in your family?”

Whatever the answer, somebody’s going to get pissed off.

How will the data that drives decisions get delivered to the players?

Every coach I ever met wanted information, but a lot of them wanted that information filtered through them. A very smart coach once said there was so much information available at the Big League level, that information overload was a real problem.  

Players overloaded with information can become indecisive, so a coach might want to decide which players can handle a lot of information and which players can’t and object to a front-office guy dumping a bunch of new information on a player who already has a hard time remembering how many outs there are.

Which brings up another thing we don’t often think about:

If possible, you want a smart guy playing next to a not-so-smart guy because the smart guy can help the not-so-smart guy keep his head in the game. Which is also maybe the least-appreciated thing in sports: the effect teammates have on each other. Put a smart guy next to a blockhead and the blockhead gets better, put two blockheads side by side and they both get worse. 

So when you look at the data, you better realize a player’s numbers are affected by the people surrounding that player.

Can Quatraro and the players deviate from a “data-driven” game plan?

Players now have positioning cards that tell them where to stand (those are the cards you see them looking at between batters) and those cards are based on data.

Now say the pitching game plan is to throw fastballs down and away to a right-handed hitter and the positioning card says the second baseman should move toward first base because that’s where the down-and-away fastballs will be put in play, but that night the pitcher isn’t finishing his pitches and those fastballs are winding up in the middle of the plate.

Will the second baseman have the freedom to ignore the positioning card and react to what he’s seeing and move toward second base instead of first base, or is he expected to stick with the original plan?

If your life is empty and have nothing better to do than learn more about defensive positioning than any sane person really needs to know, here’s an article I wrote:

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article210238024.html

Do you think short-term or long-term?

When Terry Francona was managing the Boston Red Sox, an analytics guy suggested benching David Ortiz that night because Ortiz had lousy numbers against the other team’s starting pitcher (a data-driven decision) and in the version of the story I heard, the analytics guy was offered the chance to go tell Ortiz he wasn’t playing that night.

And in the version of the story I heard, the analytics guy declined the offer.

Bench Ortiz and now you’ve got a pissed off player and suggested maybe he needs to be platooned against left-handed pitchers which will lessen his value and cost him money and who knows how he’ll react to that and one of the possible reactions is Ortiz calling his agent and saying, “Get me the hell out of Boston.”

Is it logical to risk all that to gain what might be a slight advantage in three plate appearances?

Keeping Ortiz in the lineup against a pitcher he hasn’t hit all that well in the past isn’t “sentimentality.” It’s realizing players are human and have human emotions and thinking long-term instead of short-term.

Speaking of which…

What’s the data say about patience?

When teams lose or players struggle, people tend to lose their minds, panic and call for the manager to be fired or the player to be sent to the minor league team in Nome, Alaska, but sometimes the answer is patience.

Which might be seen as “sentimentality” or a lack of “willingness to turn over the roster.”

There are definitely times you need to give up on a player or maybe decide that player might succeed elsewhere, but not in your system or on your team. Knowing when to give up on a guy and when to stick with him isn’t easy, but you can’t give up on a player the first time he struggles because sooner or later every player struggles.

His first year in the Big League Mike Trout hit .220.

Ned Yost was criticized for sticking with players who were scuffling, but Ned knew some players need to scuffle in the Big Leagues to learn how to succeed in the Big Leagues.  

When Eric Hosmer hit .232 his second year in the Big Leagues, critics wanted Hosmer sent back to the minors and Dayton Moore defended keeping him with the Royals by saying they already knew what Hosmer could do down there and the last time he played in Triple A, Hosmer hit .439.

Hosmer needed to face Big League pitching to learn how to hit Big League pitching.

If the data says a player is failing at the Big League level, will Quatraro feel comfortable asking the front office to be patient and give the player time to figure things out and if Quatraro does that, will the front office listen to him?

Which data drives decisions?

Quatraro’s old team – the Tampa Bay Rays – lost a World Series when manager Kevin Cash pulled starting pitcher Blake Snell because he didn’t want Snell facing Dodgers Mookie Betts or Corey Seager a third time (a data-driven decision) and replaced him with reliever Nick Anderson because Anderson had performed well over the past two years (another data-driven decision).

People who are into numbers like large sample sizes because they smooth out the anomalies; other people think you have to go by what’s happening that night because what’s happening that night might be one of those anomalies. When you’re in a must-win game, you don’t care what a guy does over a season, you care about what he’s doing right now.

The overall numbers might support Cash’s decisions, but that night Blake Snell was pitching his ass off – he already struck out Betts and Seager twice – and while he pitched well in the regular season, Nick Anderson was scuffling in the postseason.

Saying you’re going to let the data drive decisions sounds logical and businesslike, but there’s a whole lot of data available and you’re going to have to decide what data is going to drive that night’s decisions.

A common problem with data-driven decisions

Let’s say you have a pitcher with an Earned Run Average of 4.00.

The word “average” is right in there, but way too often people take that 4.00 ERA as a constant, when in reality on some nights the pitcher’s better than that and some night’s he’s worse. That’s why you have a manager in the dugout (at least theoretically): to react to what he’s seeing that night.

Forcing the manager to stick to a game plan that was based on data from the past and not what’s happening in the present has led to a lot of really bad decisions.

But sticking to the numbers is a way to cover your ass. If what you do doesn’t work out you can always say you did what the numbers told you to do. And you can almost always find a number that supports doing whatever dumb thing you did:

“Hey, on alternate Tuesdays with a temperature over 92 degrees, that guys slugs .473.”

A very smart ballplayer once said owners love numbers because they’re used to working with spreadsheets and guys who have college degrees and wear ties, and because generally speaking, owners can’t see what ballplayers and coaches can see just by watching.

Owners can’t tell if a pitcher is tired just by watching him pitch – they need pitch counts. Which they might want the manager to stick to even though one night a pitcher’s gassed after 70 pitches and another night the same pitcher has another inning in him after 90.

None of this means the data should be ignored.

It’s helpful information for a manager to have on hand and blend in with what he’s seeing that night and since we don’t have the answers to all the questions that got asked, we’ll just have to watch and see what happens, which assumes MLB will get its shit together before Opening Day and tell us who we have to pay to watch Royals games.

Let’s hope it’s a data-driven decision.