It appears that a lot of baseball decisions are related to statstics. Sabermetric statistics and the like, that is. These sorts of stats can make the minds of old-timers like me hurt.
As an anecdote, besides playing basketball in high school I also played on the chess team. But I was not into memorizing openings, studying gambits and learnng end game strategies. That was like, well, work. So while I had my moments, for example once beating the highest ranked player in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, when I got to the point of having to make chess my passion if I wanted to improve, I just couldn't do it. It would have taken all the fun out of the game for me and I just stopped playing competitively.
So when a guy raised on batting average, stolen bases, home runs, ERA, strikouts, shutouts, saves and wins was confronted with sabermetrics, I just didn't join in because it would have made following baseball like schoolwork.
Over the years I have started to nibble at the periphery of sabermetrics and as a science geek, I started to develop questions. Those questions, as related to the 2023 Cleveland Guardians, are the subject of this post. Stats like Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and weighted Runs Created (WRC+) measure overarching questions about a player's value. But can we dig deeper than those and see how a player's value can be impacted by the players around him?
So here are some questions I have:
(1) WOULD A PITCHER'S WAR GO UP IF WE COULD TAKE SOME OF THE PRESSURE-PACKED LOAD OFF OF HIS SHOULDERS?
For example, knowing how Francona likes to use his bullpen, would it help if Hentges had another lefty to spell him once in a while? That lefty would likely have to be a Hentges clone, being able to get both righties and lefties out. But could we help the team win this year AND help in future years by extending the Hentges' product for aive lifetime, if we just took some of the need for Francona to call on him in these pressure situations. It would seem to me if we just randomly removed 5-8 appearances a year for a pitcher it might improve his performance this year as well as save his arm in future years. The advantage of having a lefty who was also effective against right-handed batters is that you could save other members of your bullpen.
(2) IS IT REALLY GOING TO HELP THE TEAM'S AND JOSH NAYLOR'S PERFORMANCE IF WE SIT HIM AGAINST TOUGH LEFTIES AND IF WE SIT OSCAR GONZALEZ AGAINST TOUGH RIGHTIES?
To me this is fascinating as the premise would have to be that whoever you substituted would be better in those situations AND that these rest days might lessen how sharp your starting player is. So, for example, if we let Will Brennan play against tough righties aren't we doing him a disservice? I mean, the guy is a tough righty because he is tough to hit, not JUST because he is tough for righty batters to hit. That is why a straight platoon, statistically is better, I think, than just resting a player. The issue becomes if we only play Gonzalez against lefties for a full season he might not even end up with as many plate appearances in 2023 as he had in part of a season in 2022 so would his performance suffer by not being sharp? I get sitting Josh Naylor against tough lefties but if we sat him against ALL lefties would that hurt his production? Is there any way to model this?
(3) ROTATING DH, IS IT REALLY EFFECTIVE?
I think the answer here is 'Yes". But do we have statistics that support that? Does giving a guy a mental day while allowing him to bat really impact his performance in subsequent games? How about his September performance, which would be a measure of whether these mental days off would impact long-term fatigue. Could you tie that into how many times he DH'd compared to just flat out didn't play and how those games were spaced out during the season. It would seem that we have the ideal sample set from 2022 as we used this after Reyes was let go.
(4) CAN BATTING ORDER IMPACT HITTING STATISTICS?
It has long been thought that where you hit in the batting order impacts your statistics. It's thought that hitting after a great basestealer allows you to see more fastballs as breaking pitches are easier to run on. But since sabermetrics doesn't favor stealing bases, is the above just a myth. How about hitting ahead of great hitters? The conventional wisdom is that you get better pitches to hit because the pitcher doesn't want to put you on base ahead of good hitters. Besides these stats, does the hitting order impact a team's ability to maximize their outs? In an earlier post I pointed out that maybe hitting Josh Bell 5th (preceded by low OBP Gonzalez) and Amed Rosario 8th (preceded by low OBP Zunino) or 9th (preceded by low OBP Straw) would limit their penchant for hitting into double plays while still allowing whatever positives they bring to still impact the rest of the lineup (e.g., helping to make Gonzalez a better hitter hitting in front of Bell and after Ramirez. For a low-power team like the Guardians who favor running up pitchers pitch counts and require multiple batters to generate a run, it makes a lot of sense to avoid these 2-for-1 out situations. Is there statistical evidence that this actually works?
So, in summary, there are questions that I think can be answered by sabermetrics and detailed game-by-game analyses of performance as well as fatigue-related stats as measured by performances late in the season and, especially for pitchers in pitches/high leverage pitches per outing (starters) as it impacted later results and usage rates, including back-to-back or 3 out of 4 or 5 games (for relievers) as it impacted their late season performance. However, as I said, me getting into that would be too much like math in school for me to consider it fun. Soooo, I will leave that to the professionals.
I hope the Guardians are considering these things as I really think they need to bring in another lefty similar to Hentges. and consider how they are going to use Josh Naylor, Gonzalez, Brennan and Arias/Freeman this coming season as well as if and how they are going to use the rotating DH.
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