Joe Torre versus Joe Girardi in bullpen usage

I have long been curious if Joe Torre really did beat up his bullpens and if Joe Girardi was as good with bullpens as his reputation. So I crunched their numbers and spit out my results in a post over at It's About the Money, Stupid. I hope you go over there and enjoy it.

Taking Rick Reilly's point to the max

Rick Reilly, the writer for ESPN.com, recently caused a lot of conversation with his piece, "Guilt by Association." And the conversation is understandable because the piece was all about newly elected managers, Bobby Cox, Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa getting a pass into the Hall of Fame because "the three managers being inducted oversaw at least 34 players who've been implicated as PED users and never noticed a thing wrong." Naturally, any conversation that includes PEDs leads to polarizing views. Half of Twitter is shouting, "Right on!" While others are saying it is the worst thing ever written.

While my position on the PED players and era is firmly established in the, "I don't care" category and do not believe in banning any players or managers from the Hall of Fame, you might think that this piece will fall on the bashing Rick Reilly side of things. But I am not going to do that. This is America after all and everyone is entitled to their opinion. It was not long ago that everyone was piling on Rob Neyer for something he said, and yet, he was bashing Reilly today. 

Instead of focusing on the writer and on his intent or moralistic leanings here, I would rather focus on the logic of what he is saying. And if I paraphrase the entire thing, then he is saying in a nutshell that if the players are not getting a pass on the PEDs they may or may not have used, then the managers who were in charge of those players should not get a pass either.

In one aspect, he is right in that players did things they should not have done and the managers may or may not have known they are doing those things. So by either turning a blind eye or at worst, not paying attention, they are guilty by association.

So that should then mean that no manager from the PED era should ever make it into the Hall of Fame because perhaps as high as 60 to 80% of all players in the game were probably using. If you take Reilly's logic to the max, shouldn't that be the case? Forget about it, Jim Leyland or Joe Maddon or Mike Scioscia or any others that might have a case in the future.

If you are going to make this argument, then you have to take it all the way. The common belief is that all segments of the baseball society fell down the rabbit hole in the PED era. The scouts, the commissioner, the league presidents, the managers, the general managers, the trainers, the union, the publicists, the agents, and yes, the writers and broadcasters all had to know that something was not right in the game and yet it happened anyway. They were all complicit.

Take Reilly's assertion to the maximum and Bill Madden of New York, Nick Peters of San Francisco, Rick Hummel of St. Louis, Tracy Ringolsby of Denver and Peter Gammons should not have gotten a free pass to the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. 

Madden covered New York sports including many of the same players Joe Torre is being accused about. Peters certainly witnessed the Barry Bonds superhero show. Hummel should be just as complicit as LaRussa. Ringolsby was writing when Matt Williams was playing and others in Denver. And nobody knew more people or had more connections in the game in his heyday than Peter Gammons. So take those on too, Mr. Reilly.

Speaking of Matt Williams: Now that he is a manager, what is going to happen if he wins ten World Series in his managing career? What a mess that will be, eh?

And what of broadcasters who often traveled with these players and stayed in the same hotels. Should Jack Buck have gotten the Ford C. Frick Award? He called McGwire's homers after all. What about Eric Nadel who was voted in this year after his lifetime of broadcasting the Rangers. Did one broadcaster cover more PED users than Nadel? Bob Uecker has covered Ryan Braun's career since the beginning. Should "Uke" be a Frick Award winner?

No, this blame and punishment thing can go on and on and thus it is all pointless. You cannot erase history by executing all those who participated in the bad things that happened. You cannot have a Hall of Fame that does not include the best players of their era. You cannot have a Spink Award without the best writers and the Frick Award without the best broadcasters.

Let it go. The numbers are staying. There are no asterisks. The players that created them, the managers who managed them and the writers and broadcasters that breathlessly reported them all need to be drawn in the times that they played, managed, wrote and broadcast. Blame does not get us anywhere. Heck, even the commissioner is going to be in the Hall of Fame someday. My point and response to Rick Reilly is not to blast him but to simply remind him that the entire game of baseball, including those who covered and broadcast it, are guilty by association.

Joe Torre as a Manager

Joe Torre was in the news today as he has stepped down from his position with Major League Baseball. Of course that news accorded some friends over at Twitter an occasion to roast him a bit. It was all in good humor, but still. Joe Torre is the Ronald Reagan of managers. Torre, like Reagan, made it look so easy that his leadership will never be fully appreciated. One Twitter buddy basically stated that Torre was just as good as his teams. Was he? How can we measure that statement? Do his four World Series titles count or did he just not get in the way of the richest team in baseball?

This author likes looking at Pythagorean win-loss totals for teams against a team's actual record as some sort of indication of a manager's success. It's not perfect. After all, it is the players that win or lose games. But managing is, by definition, giving people opportunities to succeed. Torre certainly seemed to do that. And he did so in one of the most stressful environments in baseball history. With George Steinbrenner above him, the New York and world press beside him and huge expectations of an entire city beneath him, Torre became the focal point and allowed most of that pressure to fall on his back and not on his players.

Okay, back to the Pythagorean win-loss thing. What this particular statistic measures is how many runs a team scored compared to how many they allowed and what that run differential should have meant for an actual team record. Let's look at Joe Torre's years with the Yankees and later with the Dodgers. We'll do it in list form. In the following list, the Pythagorean win-loss projection (P) will be listed followed by the actual team record (A) and then the difference in plus or minus.

• 1996 - P (88-74), A (92-70), +4 - Yankees
• 1997 - P (100-62), A (96-66), -4 - Yankees
• 1998 - P (108-54), A (114-48), +6 - Yankees
• 1999 - P (96-66), A (98-64), +2 - Yankees
• 2000 - P (85-76), A (87-74), +2 - Yankees
• 2001 - P (89-71), A (95-65), +6 - Yankees
• 2002 - P (99-63), A (103-58), +4 - Yankees
• 2003 - P (96-66), A (101-61), +5 - Yankees
• 2004 - P (89-73), A (101-61), +12 - Yankees
• 2005 - P (90-72), A (95-67), +5 - Yankees
• 2006 - P (95-67), A (97-65), +2 - Yankees
• 2007 - P (97-65), A (94-68), -3 - Yankees
• 2008 - P (87-75), A (84-78), -3 - Dodgers
• 2009 - P (99-63), A (95-67), -4 - Dodgers
• 2010 - P (78-84), A (80-82), +2 - Dodgers

The totals on that list indicate that for his fifteen year run, Torre was 36 wins above his team's Pythagorean win-loss record. That hardly seems to be a manager that is just as good as his team. Joe Girardi is dead even with his Pythagorean record since taking over the Yankees. Don Mattingly was -2 last year with the Dodgers.

How does that compare to other managers? Great question. Mike Scioscia has a great managerial reputation and certainly had a terrific run before the last couple of years of his team outperforming their run differential. In Scioscia's twelve years with the Angels, he is +25. That's great, but so is Torre. In Tony LaRussa's sixteen seasons with the Cardinals, his actual record compared to his Pythagorean works out to a +6. Jim Leyland is +7 in six years with the Tigers. Bobby Cox was +7 for all his years in Atlanta.

There is certainly an argument that Joe Torre wasn't a great manager before he came to the Yankees. His teams never did anything when he managed the Mets, Braves and Cardinals. And that's a valid point. But in those fifteen seasons, he was only -4 in actual record compared to his teams' Pythagorean win-loss expectation. And that's not half bad really. Perhaps he learned on the job though. Can we give him that?

But since 1996, the only one that comes close to Torre is Scioscia and even so, Torre averaged a +2.4 per season compared to Scioscia's +2.14 per season. Was Joe Torre the perfect manager? Don't ask David Wells and Gary Sheffield that question. But the results are hard to argue. Four world titles. A string of first place finishes.  Plus his actual wins compared to his run differential seem to paint Joe Torre as one of the great managers of his generation.

Worst Batting Games - Joe Torre Addendum

In the middle of the night last night, an overloaded post was finished here about the worst batting performances in a single game in history. Thank goodness there was no need to get up in the morning because that thing took hours to research. But there was a flaw in the post and good friend, Bob Netherton, of On the Outside Corner fame picked it up. Bob (@throatwarbler) is one of the finest baseball historians and writers not currently getting paid to do what he does so well. Anyway, Bob wondered why the post didn't include the game that Joe Torre, then playing for the New York Mets, had on July 21, 1975. Good question. The simple answer was that at two in the morning, a flawed searched missed the event.

What did Joe Torre do? In that game against the Houston Astros, Torre came to the plate four times and grounded into four double plays. This writer stated that three was the record. It is of sorts...for second place. But Joe Torre holds the record and it may never be broken. Four at bats and eight outs. Ouch.

Joe Torre was a great player and had a borderline Hall of Fame career. That career spanned one of the toughest hitting eras of the game as he played from 1960 to 1977. Torre had five seasons batting over .300 and it wasn't until his sixteenth season (the same 1975) that his OPS+ fell below 100. His career OPS+ was 128 and he amassed 55.5 career rWAR. He was a very good player. But he did have one Achilles Heel. He hit into a lot of double plays. He led the league in that category three times and six times finished with more than twenty for the season. Albert Pujols can relate.

1975 wasn't any different for Torre in the double play department. He hit into 21 double plays that season. That had to be a difficult season to be a player for the Mets. Yogi Berra started the season as the manager and was dismissed after 109 games. The team was 56-53 under Berra but fared worse under interim manager, Roy McMillan. The Mets finished that season two games over .500 and in third place.

Looking at the Mets that season, they had great pitching with Seaver, Koosman and Jon Matlack. But the offense was poorly constructed with a bunch of older sluggers who couldn't really slug in the spacious Shea Stadium. Joe Torre was just another square peg on a team that needed rounder holes. That team attempted only 68 stolen bases all season and were thrown out on 26 of those attempts. Yeah, that was a slow and cumbersome team.

So you had a slow and cumbersome team playing against the Astros at Shea facing Ken Forsch who was a pretty good pitcher in the middle of his productive career. Forsch only pitched 109 innings that season (he was only a spot starter) and yet induced twelve ground ball double plays. Slow runners, good ground ball pitcher. All the stars lined up for Joe Torre to make history.

It didn't take long for Torre to get started. He batted third in the Mets' line up that day and in the bottom of the first, after Felix Millan hit a single, Torre rapped a ball back to Forsch who threw to Larry Milbourne who then threw to Bob Watson for the first double play.

Torre again came to the plate in the third following singles by Del Unser and Felix Millan. Torre hit a grounder to short where Metzger threw to Milbourne who then completed the double play by throwing to Watson. Two at bats, two double-plays.

By the time that Joe Torre came to the plate again in the sixth inning, the Mets were already down to Forsch and the Astros, 6-1, and Forsch was cruising (and on his way to a complete game win). In the bottom of the sixth, Felix Millan again singled to lead things off. Torre hit a grounder to second (at least he was using the whole field). It was Milbourne to Metzger to Watson and Torre had hit into his third double-play in three at bats.

Torre had one last at bat in the bottom of the eighth. The score was then 6-2. Unser led off with a bunt single to third. Millan got his fourth single of the game and Unser moved to second. That would bring up Torre who was already tied for the most GIDPs in history with three. And yes, Torre set the record by grounding into a short to second to first double play.

Several keys led to the record. First, Millan went four for four in the game, all singles. Without Millan's good day at the plate, none of this happens. Second, Forsch had one of those "scattered eleven hits" performances that bent but didn't break his team. He gave up enough hits to allow Torre to do what he did. Lastly, the Mets played station to station baseball. There were no stolen base attempts. None of their base runners took an extra base on multiple hit innings and again, they were a slow team, with few slower that Joe Torre.

That game had to be one of the most remarkable things to watch. You have to wonder if Mets fans in the seats that day and those watching on Channel 9 Television knew they had just witnessed history. Joe Torre did something nobody had ever done before and haven't since. 

While Joe Torre's spectacular feat should have been mentioned in the original post, the game would have put Torre nowhere close to the top five in negative RE24 or in WPA. The Mets were never really in the game and Torre's at bats all resulted in fairly low leverage situations (1.24 overall). His final RE24 for the game was -3.101 and his game WPA was -0.242. The Mets probably would have lost the game anyway. But none of that really matters. What matters is that Joe Torre, thanks to Felix Millan, Ken Forsch and solid infield play for the Astros, made history. Four at bats, eight outs.

Who's the Coward?

Joe Torre hasn't exactly had the best PR week in the history of sports figures. He alluded to the fact that he would be open to the Mets' managing position despite the fact the position is not yet vacant. That was certainly a mistake and unseemly. Mr. Manuel wasn't exactly magnanimous in his response, and rightly so. But to Mr. Torre's credit, he did apologize and accepted that he was wrong in what he said. In steps David Wells, that erstwhile former pitcher who couldn't quite keep himself focused or in shape enough to make the most of his incredible skills. Wells came out and publicly blasted Torre and called him a coward.

This smacks the Fan of a kid who made it a habit through his school years to be in hot water with the principal taking pot shots at the principal years after getting out of high school. Wells claims that Torre treated him differently. Well, so do principals treat troublesome students differently than the ones that follow the rules. Come on, David.

The worst part is that this Fan always liked Wells. But then again, we always like rebels in this country, don't we? We love Willie Nelson and get some weird satisfaction from his long hair and the fact that his tour bus keeps getting busted for pot. We look up to the kids in school with the leather jackets and the look of indifference. But sooner or later, we'd much rather put our stock with people who are solid and do things the right way. Wells was never that guy.

Wells was the rock 'n roller of baseball, a trait that made him embraceable to the fans but an irritant on all the teams he played for. The fact is that David Wells didn't make so many stops around the majors because more people wanted to get in on his citizenship. He kept getting jobs because he could get big league hitters out. But he wore out his welcome just about everywhere he went.

But the thing is, Wells has ridden his bad boy image to a cushy job as a baseball analyst for TBS. That gives him a platform to blast his former employers with impunity and where they can't respond. That is its own brand of cowardice. Wells never bought into anyone's rules. He never wanted to be a good teammate or a good citizen in baseball. He was enabled because his golden left arm got the job done. But now he is again enabled to throw rocks in the form of pot shots from a lofty perch that he was given largely because the American public is a sucker for the iconoclast.

Keep it classy, David Wells. Nice going

Joe Torre Walks Away from the Dodgers

For those of us who have had a long man-crush on Joe Torre, it is a relief that he is walking away from the Dodgers at the end of this season. It is a relief because the Dodgers are in such disarray because of the McCourt divorce battle. The nasty splitting of the McCourts means that the Dodgers did not have the means to support upgrades to positions that needed them. That's why the Dodgers could not extend Wolf or go after other pitchers they desperately needed. Plus, it seems from this observation deck, that Torre had lost the team and that they were not responding to him. His continued battles (which is probably too strong a word) with Matt Kemp come to mind as part of the symptoms. Torre is probably not to far from the same place Lou Piniella came to in Chicago.

Torre's decision opens the door for Don Mattingly, the heir apparent, who was announced as the successor. Writers are already stating skepticism at hiring Mattingly who has no managerial experience. The Fan doesn't know if experience is more important than presence and the fact that Mattingley was a successful player will hold more sway in his clubhouse than his experiences will. Some of the writers dredged up the incident where Broxton had to come out of the game because Mattingly started walking away from the mound and then went back. The Fan doesn't see that as a valid argument because the incident was a fluke one and the umpires really made a judgement call that was overly technical to a rule that is more than ambiguous.

Mattingly has been in Torre's dugout for half a dozen years now and there should be few decisions that should surprise him. Managing isn't THAT hard a science after all. Sure, there will be the task of setting up the parameters of Spring Training, but Mattingly can get help with that from a bench coach who has been around longer. The key with Mattingly will be how the players respond to him and only time will tells us that. The succession does smack a bit of McCourt having Yankee envy. He tried to buy an East Coast team and when he couldn't do that, he took New York people to California

The interesting question here is if Torre is simply done with the Dodgers or done with managing. Frankly, this Fan hopes he is retiring. He's earned it and he's done enough in the dugout to get his plaque in Cooperstown. But Torre lives for the competition. He loves managing and it wouldn't be a shock if he turned up in the Mets' dugout or someplace else. The Fan can't picture him going to a non-competitive team. That's not his shtick. There wouldn't be a Brewers in his future.

Maybe Torre will write another book. The first one sure made news, eh? But it's a good thing that Torre quit the Dodgers. That situation was poison and it wasn't working for him anyway. Much luck to Donny Ballgame. He's going to need it.

Manny Loses the Fan

It's time to admit that the years spent defending Manny Ramirez were a waste of energy as much as it was a waste of energy for Manny to pinch hit in a game the Dodgers really needed and in a spot where he really could have made a difference. Even the Fan isn't gullible enough to believe that Manny didn't do that on purpose. Please. So yeah, the Dodgers did what they had to do. He crossed the line just like he has on so many other occasions. The Dodgers couldn't let the White Sox have him fast enough after that.

The Fan has blindly defended Manny Ramirez for all these years. He's entertained this writer like few other players in major league history. But Manny has a character flaw and the Fan tried to overlook it...defend it...laugh at it. It's not funny anymore. The character flaw is obvious. Manny Ramirez has little if any integrity. And if you knew the Fan, you'd know how important that character trait is. Integrity is probably the only thing in life we have complete control over. It's one of our few true freedoms, the choice to be a decent human being and to put others before yourself. Manny Ramirez has twice now (that we know of) chosen to not be a decent guy and not put others before himself.

So yeah, Manny will go to Chicago and get a few big hits for the White Sox. Only, this time the Fan won't care. This time, the Fan won't smile. Joe Torre is one man the Fan respects more highly than others he has rooted for in this life. The most telling thing about Sunday's swan song for Manny is that after he got himself kicked out of the game after one pitch, Torre did not even encounter the umpire. Torre never even left his seat. That speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Joe Torre - Bullpen Killer?

As any reader knows, Joe Torre has long been a Fan favorite. The guy just seems to have more class in his little finger than all managers have in their entire bodies. But he certainly has gained a reputation in recent years for being a bullpen killer. Critics point to the Scott Proctors of the world that litter Torre's past. Guys like Tronsoco on the current Torre team seem to bring new fuel to the Torre reputation. But is it accurate?

Joe Torre has cemented a Hall of Fame career by finding a horse he can ride as the set up guy and his closer. The championships in New York were built that way with Rivera, first as the set up guy and then as the closer. The formula worked. But Torre also seems to have a couple of key other guys that he has faith in and runs them out there as often as possible. If he loses faith in a pitcher, that guy hardly pitches. With Tronsoco this year pitching before his closer in Jonathan Broxton, Torre tries to continue the pattern.

Both guys were brilliant early on and Broxton made the All Star team as a first year closer. At the time, he only had one blown save and an ERA under one. Broxton has now blown five saves and has an ERA over three. Tronsoco has also regressed some since that time. But Broxton has 50 appearances so far and that is right in line with the average for closers (Rivera has 51). The key here though is that this is Broxton's first year at doing this. Perhaps Sherrill should give Broxton a week off or something. Tronsoco has 58 appearances, which is in the top 25 in the league, but not near the top. But again, this is his first year in such a high stress environment.

The top 25 list of appearances would seem to indicate that Torre does not earn his reputation. Only two of his pitchers appear on the list. The Cubs have three on that list. But that's only part of the story. The Dodgers are third in the league in games for relievers behind the Nationals and the Marlins. More importantly, they hold a big lead in the league in relief pitchers getting more than three outs in an outing. The Dodgers have 116 of those. The next closest team has 86. Naturally, they also lead the league in relief pitchers pitching multiple innings.

There are two problems for the Dodgers that lead to this situation. First, their starters--two of which are young and throw a lot of pitches--average the second lowest innings per game in the National League. And yet, they are in the middle of the pack of pitches thrown by starters per game. That means that the relievers have more work to do per game. The Dodgers' relievers have had to record 3.4 innings of relief every game. That's a lot of innings. The second problem is that, yes, Joe Torre will go with a hot hand until the guy's arm falls off.

Just ask Scott Proctor.