He Looks Like a Ballplayer
I think one of the most interesting new ways teams can possibly gain a competitive edge going forward is by looking at the psychology of players, managers, and even their own scouts and front office executives. Of course, baseball pscyhologists have been around for quite some time, but there are always subtle aspects of the trade that can be applied to different areas.
A manifestation of the way managers, coaches, scouts, and execs think about players is the way in which athletes are assigned their roles and positions. As human beings looking to optimize order in every situation we can, we love to compare players. “What big leaguer does Prospect A remind you of?” “What player do you think your game is most similar to?” These are questions asked all the time. When we hear that x player is like y (i.e. I love saying Josh Thole is like a left-handed Paul LoDuca), it makes things easier for us to analyze. This was discussed over at The Book Blog last year, where I commented:
…I think a lot has to do with preconceived notations of what people think starters and relievers “look like.” Joba Chamberlain “looks like” a reliever. Jamie Moyer “looks like” a starter. I’m sure, on both a conscious and subconscious level, things like height, physical appearance, “makeup,” and even race are taken into account when managers are assigning roles to amateur pitchers.
Sometimes, organizations may choose to put a player at a certain position simply because they “feel” that said player is a “good fit” there, not based on analytics or statistics, but on subjective and inherently prejudiced (not in the conotational sense) beliefs. When I started following Mets prospect Jenrry Mejia, a baby-faced righty with a fantastic arm, I instantly got nervous. Despite his potential to be an extremely valuable starting pitcher, Mejia had the “look” of a reliever, in the Francisco Rodriguez or Mariano Rivera mold. In an interview with my good friend Jeremy Greenhouse at The Baseball Analysts this past winter, I said the following:
I’m really worried the Mets are going to put [Jenrry Mejia] in the bullpen to start the season. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope they put him back in Binghamton next year. His peripherals in Binghamton were really solid last year. I hope he continues to prosper there and move up the ranks. I don’t want to see him get thrown in. He has that look of a set-up guy or closer that people can think “Oh, this is one of those late-inning guys, a K-Rod because of that electric arm.” And they can forget that he can actually be a very good starter if they leave him in the minors for long enough.
And then it happened. Right at the start of Mets Spring Training, Jerry Manuel and others saw Jenrry Mejia, and the thought of him pitching anywhere else but the end of ballgames vanished:
“I went to Omar and told him, ‘You’ve got to make this guy a closer,'” [Darryl] Strawberry was saying in animated fashion Tuesday…”He’s the only guy I’ve ever seen that reminds me of Mariano Rivera…I played with Mo, I saw it up close. I know what his cutter looked like and I’m telling you, I haven’t seen a pitch move like his, with that kind of velocity, until I saw this kid Mejia.”
Mejia is currently in the minors after a decent stint throwing mostly mopup innings in the big leagues. He hurt his arm in his second start back after being sent down to try starting again, most likely due to rapidly going from starter to reliever to starter in less than a year.
But the examples don’t stop there. Andre Ethier was the starting centerfielder for the All-Star Game this year despite never playing a game there in the major or minor leagues. In fact, the craziest part was that Brewers outfielder Corey Hart had played over 350 innings in centerfield during his major league career and as recently as 2007! Manager Charlie Manuel’s explanation for the move was hysterically sad:
“The reason he’s playing center field is because when we did the fan voting and the player voting, we, uh, Hart had the … he was ahead of the outfielders,” Manuel said. “He has to start. He was supposed to start the game, and Ethier’s the one I chose to play center field because I remember he played there a lot.
“We do not have what they call a true center fielder right now. We have some on our roster… at the same time… that was the reason why he started in center field.”
Best attempt at translation: When Braves rookie Jason Heyward pulled out of the game with a thumb injury, Hart moved into the starting lineup by virtue of finishing third among NL outfielders in player voting. Braun is a left fielder. Ethier and Hart are right fielders. Manuel recalled that Ethier used to play center field “a lot,” so decided to pencil him in there.
Of course, Manuel’s recollection was incorrect.
In fact, it was Hart who used to play center field, doing so as recently as 2007, when he played 34 games — starting 28 times — at the position.
Ethier, who was voted into the game by the fans and topped player balloting, looked surprised when he was asked about the last time he played in center.
“Center field?” he asked. “Am I playing center field? I heard rumors. I don’t even know the lineup.”
“Last time I played center field would have to have been … ugff … in college, 2003,” he said.
Charlie Manuel looked at Andre Ethier and looked at Corey Hart and decided that Ethier clearly “looked like” a center fielder more so than Hart. In fact, he knew one of them had played center field before, and his gut instinct was so strong that he incorrectly stated it was Ethier!
The people who make baseball decisions are human, and are subject to making the same mistakes as everyone else. However, it’s about time we put a little more thought into our decisions; subjective assignments based on misinformation are not only costly, they’re lazy.
Pat Andriola is an Analyst at Bloomberg Sports who formerly worked in Major League Baseball's Labor Relations Department. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola@tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat
Charlie Manuel may not be an idiot, but he sure says some idiotic things quite often.
Charlie Manuel is actually a pretty good manager (not tactically but at managing a clubhouse) and a great hitting coach. But yeah, the Gut often sounds a bit idiotic if for no other reason than his West Virginia accent.
Any time I see him interviewed it seems like he can hardly speak English, and then I remember that due to his time in the Japanese leagues he actually speaks fluent Japanese. With a West Virginia accent?
Ethier clearly shouldn’t be playing center field, but then again none of those guys should. I guess if the ASG wants a center fielder they need to not treat the outfield positions interchangeably, because fans love dingers.
Yeah. There are other reasons too.
I’m seriously just prepared for a boatload of stupid whenever Charlie Manuel talks now.
His players react very well to his style of managing. It doesn’t always sound great when he’s saying it, but his guys respond.
It didn’t really matter who played where, because no one was hitting off the NL staff anyway. So good that Lincecum and Carpenter didn’t even make an appearance.
If Ethier can be a CF in the all-star game for multiple innings, then Ryan Zimmerman can be your “super-utility” guy on the bench (instead of Infante) in that highly unlikely emergency situation.
Amen! Amen! Amen!
For a man who values Omar Infante’s defense so much, you’d think he’d take the time to know how much time is spent playing CF for his outfielders.
There’s a ton of psychology that’s yet to be explored in baseball. What about all the players who have the stuff but ‘can’t put it together’ or why does a change of scenery help some players? What exactly happened last year with the Rockies when Tracy took over and they went on a tear for the rest of the season? Baseball could probably benefit a lot from psychological theory, but baseball would also probably just be really resistant to it.
At this level, a lot of physical indicators are similar for ballplayers – the mental aspects are different and unexplored save for when we take physical performance as a proxy.
I have thought a change of scenery benefits ballplayers because they’re stuck with coaches that, for whatever reason, they don’t understand/respond to and vice versa.
I’ve been in some organizations where I didn’t flourish because the organizational philosphy and/or my superiors just didn’t jibe with me.
People valuing your contributions and being able to speak to you in a way you can understand and respond to is vastly underrated.
I’m getting a mental image of player A being on team x and going up to bat with a runner on second and having the manager tell him, “ok, we need you to produce.” And then the player thinks to himself, “pro-duce? like vegetables?” And then strikes out while thinking of lettuce.
Then he gets traded, comes to bat in the same situation and his new manager says, “alright, we need you to get a hit so that guy can score.”
Player A, “oh, I can do that! Why did my other manager want me to make him a salad in these situations?”
Then he knocks the run in.
Number 1 reason of turnover in organizations: poor fit with boss.
It definitely is a coaching thing. If an organization wanted to really get the most out of its players, they’d do a better job attracting the best coaches throughout it’s entire system – and probably more emphasis should be put on the lower tiers.
Another thing they should probably do is stress development over natural ability – it needs to be instilled as an organizational culture.
Manual and Pinella are in the same group of managers. They get a lot of leeway because they’re good guys and likeable.
But both make a lot of bad decisions, and neith can communicate in a way that doesn’t sound like bumbling.
If you’re wondering where Manuel’s leeway comes from, it might be the fantastic results he’s gotten in Philly.
Quoting BP’s 2009 annual: “Manuel may not be the classic, generalized ideal of a sabermetric manager, but if there’s a good reason why not, we’d like to hear it.”
I’m still convinced that Manuel got his Dodgers RFers confused and thought he was putting Mondesi back in CF.
“Sometimes, organizations may choose to put a player at a certain position simply because they “feel” that said player is a “good fit” there, not based on analytics or statistics, but on subjective and inherently prejudiced (not in the conotational sense) beliefs.”
Do not discount sbjective beliefs. There is a reason that managers tend to rely on their gut. That is because they’ve watched millions of baseball plays over their lives and have internalized a lot more than we realize. If a manager says that a player “looks like” a starter/reliever, then I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Read the book “How we decide” by Johan Leher. In it, he describes how the human mind internalizes a lifetime of experience and makes choices which often cannot be determined to be correct or incorrect by objective analysis without countless hours of study, and make those choices in an eyeblink and be correct an amazing percentage of the time. According to the book, the phrases that an experienced person choosing might use would be very similar to the title of this post “he looks like a ballplayer” summarizes a lifetime of watching guys who are ballplayers, and seeing something that is impossible to describe in any other way.
Of course, Leher also discusses when such intuition can fail us, but one thing I have a problem with the saber community in general is their too quick dismissal of the kinds of statements like “He looks like a reliever” or “He looks like a starter.” Such statements are often correct, and it is dismissive to simply call it “subjective” as if that is no way to make any decision. Many decisions are made subjectively, and many times they are correct for having been made so.
The problem with decisions like that is that the human mind is programmed to see patterns… even when patterns don’t exist. From an evolutionary stand point, the risk of not recognizing a pattern is far greater than the risk of believing a pattern is there when it isn’t. i.e you eat a berry and die; therefore, I don’t eat the berry.
By seeing that possible pattern, I may have saved my life. Of course you might have died from something other than that berry, and I might have stuck a guy who has no experience in center field when all I had to do was take an extra 2 min to find the real truth.
I buy gut instincts when it comes to in game management. When it comes down to who should pitch hit, which reliever, starting guys who look good but just aren’t getting the results, etc.
I’m just think they weigh it a bit too heavily on younger players during the offseason, spring training, in the minors.
What he says might not always be stupid, but really, it’s that he sounds stupid. In every interview of him that I’ve heard, he sounds incredibly dumb. It also seems hard for him to make eye contact. When he’s on camera he always looks elsewhere.
That’s the issue, though, isn’t it, Dan? Intuition is fine, but unless we actually have some evidence that certain body types are better suited to relieving than starting (for instance), then really all we have is an ex post facto self-fulfillment. That is:
1. Two high-profile pitchers with similar body types (Rivera and K-Rod) both achieve above-average success.
2. Pitching coaches direct similar looking pitchers into similar roles.
3. When said pitchers fail, it’s because they didn’t have the talent. When they succeed, it’s confirmation that those body-types do well in relief roles.
My only point is that it seems to me that the saber community is far too dismissive of intuition, indeed the whole tone of this article seems to mock the idea that anyone can “look like a ballplayer” to a manager, scout, or other baseball expert. I’m all for analysis (it’s what I do in my job) but I think a little humility would go far here.
I recall the offhand quote Chipper Jones made this past offseason where he said there were some pitchers you could not fall behind on, when explaining why he swung at so many first pitches. This sparked not a little discussion and analysis, and finally it was shown his approach was justified through analysis. Jones, of course, knew he was correct without all those pretty charts and graphs. Given that he knew how to succede at hitting far better than any analyst, I think giving him the benefit of the doubt would have been prudent.
So it is when a manager makes a comment which seems silly. Subjective analysis? When we have so many numbers! We have regression! We have PitchFx! We have all this crap which tells us this, that, or the other thing! Well, I think we should start with assuming the manager or other experienced professional actually might know what the heck he’s talking about, even if he’s not really able to put it into words.
So, let’s say “hmmmm, Jerry Manuel thinks this kid should be a starter. Let’s start assuming he may be correct.” Instead, we get “it’s a subjective thing, i.e. I’m assuming he’s wrong.”
I have the same feeling when it comes to the idea of a “clutch player.” No less than Bill James admitted that there’s a possibility that such an animal exists and we are simply not at this time able to identify it. My point is that if you ask 100 fans to name clutch players, they will often come up with the same names. Why? Is it possible that they know something without knowing how they know it? I contend that this is not only possible, it is likely.
I’m willing to not rule those possibilities out — but I’m not in favor of putting career rightfielders in centerfield or deciding whether a guy should be a starter or reliever based on intuition until we actually do have some confirmation for those beliefs.
The hypothetical that keeps coming to mind is Pedro Martinez…what if some like Jerry Manuel had decided early on, based on Pedro’s physique and tendency to tire in the later innings, that he’d be better suited to the bullpen? What a waste of potential value to the team, and a waste of possibly the single most dominant 4 or 5 year stretch by a starting pitcher.
Who plays CF in an All-Star game is one thing, but deciding the career paths of players is another.
I like your post quite a bit, until you get to clutch hitting.
I think we can agree that being clutch is raising your game in critical situations.
Poll those fans – Derek Jeter will probably go on the top of that list. Except that for his career, in high leverage situations (late in close games, lots of runners on, etc), he’s notable WORSE than he is normal situations. And still above average. He’s Derek Jeter, so notably below his career averages is still good.
Is that clutch? He performs WORSE when the chips are down.
Just because a lot of people think the world is flat doesn’t mean they’re on to anything – they may just be sharing misinformation.
Keep that in mind as well.
We should go to intuition when something can’t be or is not yet well quantified. Otherwise, we should try to stay closer to the facts. And when intuition flies in the face of well established fact… It’s probably wrong.
I’m not a big Manuel fan myself but he really is the victim of a lot of the same prejudgement this article was talking about. He sounds dumb = he is dumb in a lot of people’s minds. Then, with those expectations, everything else is judged accordingly. When he makes a bad decision, he’s just proving he’s dumb, and when he makes a good one, he just lucked into it.
What’s really pathetic is that this sort of information is INCREDIBLY easy to obtain. Anyone with a smart phone could have told Manuel the answer in 30 seconds.
Maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, Manuel wasn’t concerned with the blazing question of ‘who will start in CF’, thus forgoing the opportunity to care as much about it as you.
I really wouldn’t doubt that this decision almost came down to race.
Ethier’s not black, but he sure as hell looks like he could be. Charlie probably thought that Ethier can run, so he was like, “hey, this guy looks fast, let’s put him in center field”.
Yeah, managers for the longest time put the guys with low OPS high speed on because it “looked” right, and they decided that looking athletic automatically made you a better ballplayer, and that a batting champ with little power is just as valuable as a homer run champ who is younger and better defensively (Colavito for Kuenn) because darn it, BA is the most important stat. Managers REALLY know what they are doing all the time.
Prince Fielder approves of this argument.
You think it happens in baseball…try the government or corporate America! The combination of greed and this kind of lazy decision making are sinking our entire COUNTRY into the toilet (and that is a non-partisan statement).
Ethier played CF in the minors. Not much probably 20 games. But don’t you think Manuel asked him? i do.
Regarding Mejia, you said “He hurt his arm in his second start back after being sent down to try starting again, most likely due to rapidly going from starter to reliever to starter in less than a year.”
That sentence really stood out to me. Do you have any inside information on that being the ‘most likely’ reason, or are you just playing doctor? This site is often very critical of people who don’t embrace statistics in a certain way, or people that base decisions on what they ‘see’ rather than basing them on facts (such as Gold Glove awards), so it’s strange that you would add in a sentence like that, unless doctors have told you that’s the most likely reason.
Plus one here… That statement is unfounded.
Most likely is a gross exaggeration, unless you’ve seen studies I haven’t.
The level of blatant stupidity in this game, does not even approach the degree of stupidity in other facets of everyday life. In this day and age, if you use common sense, you are labeled a “genius”. It’s enough to drive a thinking man crazy.
This is somewhat off topic but it relates to stupid comments made by “baseball” people. One of the local Royals tv broadcasters is Frank White. When he was playing Frank was one of my favorite Royals – an awesome second baseman. Frank however says some of the dumbest things on air that are so “baseball” people-esque. Example: The other night White and the other announcer Ryan Lefebvre were making fun of a local blogger and sabermetrician who declared Yuniesky Betancourt to be the worst shortstop ever. White said, “Well the guy who came up with those stats obviously never played the game.” I wanted to punch my tv set. It was sooooo Joe Morgan-like. I love ya Frank but STFU.
MM
Well the National League won. second, I can tell you from watching Hart, he is not a good defensive CF.
Done and done.
Hart is assuredly a better defensive CF than Ethier is.