Will Jim Hendry’s [CENSORED] Work In The Playoffs?
In Moneyball, Michael Lewis quotes Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane as saying:
“My sh_t doesn't work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f_cking luck.”In Baseball Between The Numbers, the editors of Baseball Prospectus ask the question raised by Beane’s frank self-analysis: Why hasn't the guy’s sh---t worked? To get to the answer, BP identified 26 different measures of team quality—everything from things like regular season won-loss record, late-season W-L record, run differential, and team playoff experience to the more arcane Percent Of Runs Scored On Home Runs and Isolated Power—and after a lot of number-crunching and analysis, they concluded that three factors have “the most fundamental and direct relationship” to playoff success: Closer’s Win Expectation Above Replacement (WXRL) Defined here, WXRL measures the contribution of a team’s closer, i.e., the guy who receives the majority of the save opportunities, toward increasing his team’s probability of winning games. Pitchers' Strikeout Rate Just what it sounds like. Fielding Runs Above Replacement (FRAR) The total number of runs a team’s fielders saved compared to replacement-level fielders. So how do this year’s NL playoff teams compare on these three key measures? Here’s a look: Closer WXRL Arizona (Valverde), 4.269; 4th in NL Colorado (Corpas, 4.158, 6th in NL CUBS (Dempster), 2.657; 24th in NL Philadelphia (Myers), 1.647; 40th in NL Pitchers’ Striketout Rate (K/9) CUBS, 7.53 Arizona, 6.80 Philadelphia, 6.48 Colorado, 5.91 Fielding Runs Above Replacement Colorado, 228 CUBS, 193 Philadelphia, 188 Arizona 158 Not a bad picture for the Cubs, eh? The team’s weak link according to these numbers is pretty obvious. It has red hair, an engaging personality, and in 15 games since September 1st, an ERA of 9.82. The good news, of course, is that the Cubs have alternatives to Ryan Dempster. Bob Howry (3.129) is 17th in WXRL among NL relievers. Carlos Marmol (3.694) shows up 11th. Would Lou Piniella entrust closing duties in the playoffs to the 25-year-old Marmol, who has exactly one career save? Almost certainly not—personally, I’d love to see it--but that still leaves Howry. Given how horribly Dempster has pitched lately, I’d argue that Howry, though only 8-for-12 in save opps this season, is actually the smart choice. Plug Howry into the closer's spot and the team that Jim Hendry built looks fairly formidable according to BP’s yardstick. And in case you’re wondering about the Billy Beane question posed at the beginning of this post, BP points to a combination of factors that led to the downfall of Beane's 2000-03 playoff teams. These included at various times bad luck, a veteran pitching staff “cobbled together from the waiver wire,” an immature bullpen and some defensively challenged rosters like the 2000 club with an outfield of Ben Grieve, Terrence Long and Matt Stairs, “one of the worst defensive groups in recent memory."
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