Category Archives: Don Mattingly

Tony Jackson Joins the Anti-Sacrifice Bunt Alliance

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Though we all groan every time “columnists” like Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers decide to focus their tired shtick on the Dodgers, I’ve always felt that beat writers Tony Jackson, Dylan Hernandez, and Ken Gurnick consistently produce solid work, often being the first to break news and generally providing an informed, balanced viewpoint to readers. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect – it was only a few months ago when I got on Jackson for employing “blown saves” when discussing Jonathan Broxton, for example – but even if the Dodgers don’t have the quantity of beat writers they once did, the quality is still there.

It’s with this in mind that Jackson deserves credit for putting pen to paper on a topic that’s long been known in the stats community, but which the casual fan has been slow to accept: sacrifice bunts are almost always the wrong choice.

Jackson:

The sacrifice bunt is the most counterproductive strategic ploy in the game.

And Mattingly, in apparent attempt to conform to conventional baseball wisdom, put it on twice in the final innings against the Diamondbacks, resulting in the Dodgers giving away at least one and possibly two outs at critical junctures of what became a one-run loss.

Yes. YES. A million times, yes. Jackson is referencing the final two innings of yesterday’s embarrassing loss to Arizona, a game in which Chad Billingsley and Kenley Jansen held the Diamondbacks to just one hit and an unearned run (partially due to a blown pickoff play which Jamey Carroll took blame for). The Dodgers, as has become an epidemic this season, managed just three hits from the regular lineup (Billingsley’s double was the fourth), dooming Billingsley to another undeserved loss on his way to a 10-13, 3.20 ERA season.

In the 8th, James Loney led off with a double (a momentous occurrence that probably deserved a post of its own), before being replaced on the bases by Tony Gwynn. Mattingly had Rod Barajas bunt him over to third, despite Gwynn being fast enough to score from second on most hits and despite Barajas being one of the only Dodgers showing any semblance of power.

Jackson summed up what happened next:

Except that the guy behind him, righty hitting rookie Jerry Sands, didn’t come up. Instead, Mattingly sent Dioner Navarro to pinch hit — now he takes the unconventional route, burning his backup catcher — to face the right-handed Hernandez because Navarro is a switch hitter, with all of his hits this season coming from the left side.

Only this time, Navarro didn’t get a hit. This time, he struck out on three pitches.

So much for giving yourself two chances to get the run in. Now, having chosen to simply give up one of your three outs, you are left with one.

Jay Gibbons popped out to left, and the threat was wasted. In the 9th, Carroll led off with a single, and Mattingly tried unsuccessfully to employ the sacrifice again, asking Aaron Miles to sacrifice Carroll to second. Miles couldn’t handle that task twice, and once he was finally allowed to swing away down 0-2, struck out. There’s a good chance Miles wouldn’t have grabbed a hit anyway, but two of the final six outs the Dodgers were given were simply thrown away by the employment of the sacrifice.

Here’s where I can help Jackson, though:

I have no data to support my case here, other than more than a decade of watching a big league baseball game almost every day and a long-building skepticism about the effectiveness of this age-old strategy. One of the arguments that could be made in Mattingly’s favor is that the Dodgers have such a weak offense that they have to try to create runs. I say the exact opposite, that their offense is so weak they simply can’t afford to be giving up outs when they have only three of them per inning to work with.

Jackson’s completely correct, but even if he doesn’t know it, there is plenty of data to back him up. Let’s head over to the run expectancy charts over at tangotiger.net, which allow you to select a baserunner/outs situation and is defined as “presenting the average number of runs that scored, from that base/out state, to the end of that inning”, based on the results of all games played over a certain time period.

When Loney (replaced by Gwynn) doubled to lead off the 8th inning, the Dodgers had a man on second with no outs. After Barajas’ sacrifice, they had a man on third with one out. Which situation usually results in more runs, based on every time each has happened from 1993-2010?

Avg. number of runs scored, 1993-2010
Man on second, no outs: 1.170
Man on third, one out: 0.989

How about in the 9th inning, when after Carroll’s single, they had a man on first with no outs? Mattingly’s goal was to get Carroll to second with one out, but when Miles failed, the result was a man on first with one out.

Avg. number of runs scored, 1993-2010
Man on first, no outs: 0.941
Man on second, one out: 0.721
Man on first, one out: 0.562

As you can see, in each case, the highest likelihood of scoring a run was to allow the next batter to swing away, not to give away an out in the hopes of securing one more base. In the 9th inning situation, the damage was particularly severe, since the sacrifice wasn’t successful.

There are, as Jackson notes, some rare times when the sacrifice bunt is appropriate. If, for example, the pitcher had been batting in either of these situations, then you can certainly make the argument to try to get an extra base to go along with the out the pitcher is almost certain to make. But as ineffective as Barajas, Sands, and Miles have all been at times this year, the better choice was to let them hit – particularly in the 8th inning, when the fleet Gwynn was already in scoring position and likely able to score from second on most hits.

I don’t know if Mattingly knows those numbers, but he disappointingly said after the game that it was an easy decision, one he’d do again. I’ve been generally pleased with Mattingly’s performance so far this season, but if there’s one area he’s proven to be infuriating, it’s with his use of bunts. As we saw yesterday, such decisions can directly harm the run production of a team that’s already terribly struggling in that arena.

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No official decision has been announced yet, but it sounds more and more likely that Blake Hawksworth will be headed to the disabled list, and that his replacement will be Javy Guerra, who would be making his major league debut. As I said yesterday, there’s not much in the way of immediate reinforcements ready in ABQ, so it’s not a total surprise to see them dip down to AA Chattanooga instead.

So What Does Aaron Miles Have on Don Mattingly?

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A quick thought for you on this holiday morning, and while it’s not one that’s particularly new – we’ve been complaining about this both here on the blog and on Twitter for some time now – it is one that gets more relevant as the days go on.

What, exactly, is Don Mattingly’s fascination with Aaron Miles, who is atop the lineup yet again for today’s game in Chicago? That’s the third time in the last seven games that Miles is leading off, and it will be his tenth start of the year. Miles, as just about everyone on the planet could have predicted, has been awful, hitting .214/.233/.278 for a 31 OPS+.

The issue here is that there’s two issues here, because ignoring the batting order for a moment, there is no godly reason to have Miles in the lineup at all. Yes, I understand that Rafael Furcal is on the disabled list and that Juan Uribe has missed a few days with a tight left thigh, thus requiring more time from the backups than we’d like. But why Miles, who is atrocious with no prayer of improvement, over Ivan DeJesus, who I’m not even a huge fan of but who satisfies the simple requirement of “not being Aaron Miles”? As Jon Weisman writes at Dodger Thoughts today, DeJesus has received just five plate appearances without a start since getting called up on April 12, while Miles has seen six starts in that time. Is DeJesus any sort of guarantee to perform? Of course not. But it wasn’t that long ago that he was a highly thought of prospect, and there’s at least potential for a spark there. You can’t say that about Miles.

Even beyond the impact it has on the field, the decision to continually play Miles over DeJesus goes directly against what Mattingly said on April 6, when DeJesus was initially sent down to make room for Casey Blake:

“He had a great spring. But the way we’re set up, his at-bats are not enough to dwarf his development,” manager Don Mattingly said of the decision to send De Jesus down. “I’m sure he’s disappointed — and I know he wants to be in the big leagues — but his best interest is for him to still be playing every day.”

“We know he’s going to handle the bat,” manager Don Mattingly said of De Jesus after announcing he’d been optioned. “Defensively, he just needs to keep working and keep putting polish on his game at second base. I look at Ivan as a kid that can play every day, and the way we’re set up, he’s not going to get the at-bats that’s really fair to him or to his development, or what we’re trying to do. To sit here and get two at-bats a week is not going to do him any good, and it’s not going to do us any good. He’s young, he can play. To me he’s an everyday guy.”

Yet that’s exactly what they’re doing, by sitting him in favor of an option that’s in no way obviously better. This is exactly the issue that worried me just after DeJesus was called up to fill Furcal’s spot:

I know I haven’t exactly been the biggest supporter of Ivan DeJesus, but can we please get him more time at second base instead of Aaron Miles? Maybe DeJesus is a big league player, and maybe he’s not, but at least there’s hope there. Miles (0-2 tonight, hitting .214) is just execrable, and that’s not likely to change. DeJesus at least got his first big league hit tonight, and there’s no reason to not be playing him.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Yet compounding the playing time issue is that Mattingly insists on batting him leadoff, an insult aggravated more by the fact that the superior Jamey Carroll and his .372 OBP (working towards his fourth straight year of .355 or better) continues to hit 8th. Because when you want guys on base for Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp to drive in, why wouldn’t you put your worst hitter (okay, James Loney is still challenging for that crown) ahead of them?

Back when the Dodgers signed Miles in February, I noted that among players who have received as many plate appearances as he’s had since 2003, only three players in baseball have generated less value for their teams. In another two weeks or so he’ll have enough PA to knock Juan Encarnacion off the list and become the third least valuable player in that time. Ladies and gentlemen, your leadoff hitter.

We knew signing Miles was a terrible idea when it happened, and what we’ve seen of him so far hasn’t done anything to change that impression. So please, Don, spare us from having to see him play so much – and if you absolutely can’t resist that temptation, then at least hit him as low in the lineup as you can.

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It’s still incredibly unlikely that this happens and even if it did, it would take months, years or more. Still, I wrote about a scenario in which Brewers owner and LA native Mark Attanasio could end up with control of the Dodgers the other day, and today I see this tidbit in Buster Olney’s piece:

Heard this: In the highest offices of a handful of other teams, the heavy speculation is that Brewers owner Mark Attanasio would be the most likely candidate to move from one team to the Dodgers — if Major League Baseball fends off the expected legal challenges of Frank McCourt, and if MLB decides to have an established owner take over the Dodgers — and if Attanasio actually were to take the opportunity, if presented. But it will take months for all of this to play out.

Don’t hold your breath, or get your hopes up. Just be happy that there’s people in the know who think that there’s even a sliver of a chance there.

The Process Was Good, Even If the Results Weren’t

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The Dodgers, as you probably noticed, did not win last night, dropping them down to .500. That’s not all that unexpected based on what we thought coming into the season, because this team just isn’t built to withstand a poor performance by the starter (and Ted Lilly and his declining velocity is about one more lousy start from getting his own post on whether I should have been harder on his contract than I already was) and an oh-fer by Matt Kemp. Without Rafael Furcal, and with Juan Uribe and James Loney sucking in a fashion not generally seen outside of the darkest corners of the internet, it’s going to take more than the occasional Rod Barajas homer and a few lucky hits by Aaron Miles to help this team score runs.

That’s not the point of today’s post, however. I have always been of the mindset that the process is more important than the results, because if you make wise decisions in your process, the results will come. For example, if Ned Colletti traded Jerry Sands for Jose Lopez tomorrow, and Sands immediately suffered a career-ending injury while Lopez hit a few dingers for the rest of the year, the end result may be that the Dodgers got more value, but the process would have been so horribly flawed that there’s no defending it.

It’s with that in mind that Don Mattingly should be commended for his lineup choices last night, even though they didn’t, you know, work. For months – years, maybe – I’ve been dying to both take Loney out of the lineup against lefties and have Casey Blake play first base in his stead. Blake, I’ve long argued, should not be an everyday third baseman, and would be much better served as a utility player who steps in against lefty pitching. Not only did Mattingly do that, he also then shifted Blake to left field in 8th inning as part of a double switch, showing that he’s willing to move Blake around if needed. Blake may have only went 1-4, but the process in terms of getting him in over Loney against a lefty was sound.

Also serving as a positive for Mattingly was that he placed Jamey Carroll atop the lineup with Miles hitting 8th, exactly the way it should be. (Well, the way it should be is that Miles would be unemployed, but still.) Again, the results weren’t there, but that’s more because Mattingly is saddled with a largely underperforming roster than anything. For once, the thought process was sound, and it’s part of the reason I already like Mattingly about 10000x more than Joe Torre.

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Christopher Jackson of the Albuquerque Examiner has been a wealth of information lately, both in comments here and on the newspaper’s site. I’ll be doing an interview with him near the end of the month on life following the Isotopes. Check out his recap of the mess that happened in last night’s game:

Second baseman Justin Sellers was hit by a pitch on his right hand in the fourth inning, forcing him to leave the game.

Three batters later, Juan Castro fouled off the first pitch from Austin Bibens-Dirkx, only to suddenly double over in pain, clutching his left side. He had to leave the game as well.

In the seventh inning, J.D. Closser, who had moved from catcher to third base to replace Castro, stumbled while trying to field a grounder. The ball bounced up and struck Closser under his left eye, leaving him with a visible bruise and forcing him out.

At that point, Jerry Sands had to move from right field to third, and with no position players available on the bench, pitcher Tim Redding trotted out to right field.

“The big question is with J.D., if he’s available or not (to catch),” Bundy said. “I guess Jerry Sands would be my backup catcher.”

First things first: is “Austin Bibens-Dirkx” a great name, or the greatest name? Sellers and Closser sound like they’ll be fine in a few days. Castro, well, I will never celebrate someone getting hurt. Let’s just say, we won’t have to worry about seeing him in the big leagues any time soon. And before you ask: no, Sands is not going to be a third baseman in the bigs. Besides, he didn’t even homer last night. What a bust! (Trent Oeltjen had two.)

Speaking of the Isotopes, you probably noticed that Ramon Troncoso was never called up yesterday despite my claim that he would be. Jackson notes that it was announced in ABQ that he’d be going up, and Troncoso was told to get moving, but then the move was canceled with no explanation. Bizarre.

Let’s Play Two

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I’m used to some late nights following the Dodgers, but this was something else: I came home from a night out to see that past midnight, the 2nd inning was just resuming after a rain delay. I briefly considered sticking it out, but thought better of it; that turned out to be the right call, because it was nearly 5am here in the east when the game was finally suspended in the 9th.

So today we get the pleasure of two different games, and if you don’t think the second game is guaranteed to go extra innings, you must be new to baseball. With Hong-Chih Kuo unlikely to continue pitching in the top of the 9th due to his injury history, and Ted Lilly, Mike MacDougal, Kenley Jansen, and Matt Guerrier already used, the Dodgers have three pitchers remaining to finish off a game that is currently tied at two: Jonathan Broxton, Blake Hawksworth, and Lance Cormier.

So far, I haven’t offered you anything you don’t know already, but there is a reason for this post; two, in fact. First of all, we’re going to learn a lot about Don Mattingly’s managerial style if the Dodgers don’t take the lead when the suspended game resumes (Matt Kemp will be on first base with no one out, and Juan Uribe, James Loney, and Xavier Paul coming up). If the game goes to the bottom of the 9th tied, will he go with the “by the book” strategy of saving Broxton for a lead, or will he go with the more efficient choice of using his best available reliever? After all, it does no good to save your closer for the bottom of the 10th if one of your two lesser arms has lost the game in the 9th.

Secondly, why couldn’t the Dodgers call up another reliever for the regularly scheduled game tonight? They’re allowed to make roster moves between the two games, and Mattingly noted the thought in Ken Gurnick’s story on dodgers.com:

Mattingly said he spoke with general manager Ned Colletti about calling up a pitcher, “but we don’t have a lot of flexibility” because the Dodgers are already planning on calling up a fifth starter (probably John Ely) for Sunday in place of the disabled Jon Garland.

But the supposed lack of flexibility doesn’t really seem to make sense. Let’s say that A.J. Ellis is the player sent down to make room for Ely tomorrow, as we assume he will be. You could just send Ellis down after the first game today for an extra arm to help in the second game, be it Ramon Troncoso, Travis Schlichting, Scott Elbert, or someone else. Then send that pitcher down before tomorrow’s game for Ely. The end result is the same, in that Ellis was sent down for Ely, except that you turned a third catcher into an extra arm for tonight’s second game.

Gaining Clarity on the Dodger Batting Order

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About six weeks ago, I examined the Dodger batting order, wondering how this oddly assembled mismash of players would fit behind Rafael Furcal at the top. I reviewed some options, but basically determined that there was no perfect solution, particularly at #2.

Over the weekend, a story from Ken Gurnick of dodgers.com has helped us gain a little bit of insight into what Don Mattingly is thinking:

One day before he addresses the full squad for the first time as manager, Don Mattingly said Monday he plans to bat Ethier third and Kemp fourth and keep them there “all year long.”

Mattingly said he’s still thinking about Casey Blake as a No. 2 hitter behind leadoff hitter Rafael Furcal. That would likely mean James Loney following Kemp, with Uribe sixth, the left-field platoon of Marcus Thames/Jay Gibbons seventh and the catching platoon of Rod Barajas/Dioner Navarro eighth.

Ethier at 3 and Kemp at 4 is what I predicted in January, and it could be awesome, or it could just as easily be disastrous. Nonetheless, it’s an acceptable use of imperfect options, because we’ve known all winter that the success of the 2011 largely hinges on what you get out of those two. JaMarcus Gwybbons, Jr., at 7 and the catchers at 8 is also the best you can do with those subpar choices, so that’s fine as well. Loney at 5 and Uribe at 6 seems to also make sense, continuing the L/R balance of the lineup and pushing Uribe’s inferior OBP down as far as you can; ideally, he’ll often come up with some combination of Ethier, Kemp, and Loney on base, allowing his occasional power to do the most damage.

That brings us to the only really questionable idea, which is putting Casey Blake in the two spot. I certainly understand Mattingly’s thinking there, because it does make for a great L/R lineup balance (on days that Gibbons or Gwynn starts at #7, there wouldn’t be a single situation with back-to-back hitters from the same side), and there’s quite honestly no obvious solution. The problem, of course, is that Blake is hardly the ideal answer himself. At 37, he’s coming off what is arguably the worst year of his career; his 27.1 whiff percentage is the highest he’s ever had, and his .159 ISO is the lowest he’s had since 2002. He’s making less contact, he’s hitting for less power, and his age doesn’t exactly promise a rebound. It’s not really the kind of hitter you want to see getting the second-most at-bats in your lineup, or the kind of guy who gives you hope that he can advance Furcal into scoring position for Ethier and Kemp to take advantage of.

Still, I’m hard-pressed to offer a better solution. Uribe’s brand of low OBP and decent power certainly doesn’t fit the spot any better, though I do wonder if James Loney may be an interesting choice there. We all know that Loney has little power, though his K rate was 10% less than Blake’s. On the other hand, that could certainly turn into more double plays, given Loney’s propensity for hitting grounders nearly half the time. I guess the tiebreaker here is that it would also mess with the L/R split, because you’d have lefties at 2 and 3, and righties at 4-5-6 (assuming it’d be Kemp-Blake-Uribe).

So I suppose it comes down to this: I don’t like Casey Blake as a #2 hitter, but there’s also not a really great alternative. So I tentatively approve of Mattingly’s choices here, since he’s doing the best with the limited options he’s been handed.

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In other news, we have our first injury note of the spring (and yes, I saw that Dana Eveland pulled his hamstring last week, and no, that doesn’t count):

Vicente Padilla is heading to LA to have MRI on his right elbow, which has similar pains as last year. Results expected tomorrow.

That’s not a great sign, though it does underscore the importance of all of the pitching depth Ned Colletti put together this offseason. If anything, it might scuttle any prospective battle between Padilla and Jon Garland for the #5 spot, since it sounds like Padilla’s injury concerns might make him more effectively used in short bursts anyway.