Postseason Managerial Report Card: Will Venable
Every October, FanGraphs grades each playoff manager. We focus on their in-game decisions, because a lot of the most important parts of the job – things like keeping players ready to go and making sure relievers understand their role so they know when they might be deployed – aren’t always visible to us from the outside looking in. A lot of what managers do never reaches the public eye, so these report cards instead key in on the remainder of their decisions, the ones that come when the lights are bright and the game is on the line.
We attempt to evaluate those decisions based on process, not results. A pitching change isn’t necessarily bad because the reliever who comes in gets shelled, or good because he gets out of a jam. That’s not to say it can’t be a bad decision – if you bring in your closer up eight, or let your worst reliever face Yordan Alvarez with the game on the line, you made the wrong call. But we’re interested in the before, in what we could expect to happen when a manager makes a pitching change or calls on a pinch-hitter. It isn’t good to completely ignore results, but it’s also bad to fixate on them, and it’s my hope that our report cards strike the right balance.
Earlier this month, Jon Becker wrote up the four managers who lost in the Wild Card round. This week, we’re adding the Division Series losers to the mix. Jon and I have already covered Craig Stammen and Aaron Boone. Next up: Will Venable and the White Sox.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
A- for pitching seems incredibly generous when Taylor imploded in G4 and looked shaky in G5. Like I mentioned in Aaron Boone’s postmortem with Schlittler, I think overthrowing somebody early in the playoffs is highly correlated to meltdowns in later appearances. I understand we have less information than teams do and this grade is about process rather than results, but it sure seems like correlation equals causation and I would personally grade it with that in mind: B- in my book
The problem is that Venable functionally had no good alternatives. The White Sox had 5.5 pitchers they really felt comfortable using, and enough innings to cover that they regularly needed 7 pitchers per game. The author keeps saying he would have done it differently, but I’ve not heard anyone lay out a reasonable alternative.
I would have turned to Brazoban in the 7th of G1 of the WC – you’re up 4 with 1 on and 2 out against the 8/9/1 with the platoon advantage on all of them. You potentially steal 2 outs in the 8th too this way and turn it over to Taylor when Alvarez comes up. Or if you do decide to go to Taylor in the 7th, you pitch Brazoban in the 9th up 3 against the bottom of the order when Taylor is already at 36 pitches.
In G1 against the Guards, I would have tried to sneak through an inning or two with Fedde like Venable did later in the series rather than throw Taylor in the 6th. Hell, throw Sandlin or Martin or whichever RHP you trust most, but I’m not asking my closer to go 4 innings.
I go back to when pitchers were used in the way that Grant Taylor was used in the playoffs. Take a look at the 1978 season of the great Hall of Famer Rich Gossage. He appeared in 63 games and threw 134.1 innings without making a start. He went 3 eight times, 4 four times, 5 once and even had two 7 inning stints. He had 27 saves and finished another 28 games. Goose was a fireballer who gave the appearance of a high level of exertion and, in several seasons, struck out more than a hitter per inning when that was a rare occurrence. These ideas that today’s pitchers all have weak UCL’s and glass shoulders is never tested but there is no doubt that many could stand up to that rigorous usage if given the opportunity. Gossage was hardly alone either as the list of 100 inning relievers is filled with many famous names. Mike Marshall is worth a look. For 5 years straight he appeared in 58 or more games and eclipsed 100 innings in every year. The White Sox do not appear to have a lot of choices as of now for 2027 and it would be exciting if the club went on a trip back in time and used Taylor in a similar way. I don’t hold out much hope however.
In 1978 14 pitchers threw more than 100 innings in relief, and 23 pitchers threw more innings in relief than the 96 AJ Blubaugh threw this year to lead MLB.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see more relievers work like Gossage. That would be awesome! My issue is that Gossage was conditioned for that workload throughout the entire season, and Taylor was asked to do it without that conditioning. Maybe Taylor is entirely capable of filling a Gossage-like role long-term, but it’s managing malfeasance to ask him to do so without letting his body properly acclimate to it.
Venable used Taylor all over the place and for multiple outs all season. He didn’t pitch four inning outings, but he did pretty much everything else.
Brazoban was terrible for the Sox. Couldn’t throw a strike. Any plan involving him is a bad one from jump.
Venable basically managed like he had in the second half once the White Sox looked like they could make the playoffs, but all the little things he did regularly were turned up to eleven.
Hitting wise, he was hampered by the fact that this was a boom or bust offense. Yeah, he put guys in the lineup who strike out a lot against strike out pitchers, but he didn’t have other choices. he used a lot of mediocre or worse hitters like Benintendi, Pham, Grichuk, and Doyle, but that’s who he had on the roster. At least they didn’t force him into carrying and using Luisangel Acuna.
Pitching wise, he had one starter he trusted (Burke). He had a starter with bad control who he used well as a MIRP or opener (Smith), a couple relievers he trusted (Taylor, Newcombe), a couple relievers he was forced to trust (Hudson, Hicks, maybe Shultz), and a whole bunch of guys he didn’t really want to use, but had no choice (everybody else), so he had to find spots to get outs with them. Just one more reliable starter may have made a really big difference.
As to the possible overuse of Taylor, he clearly wasn’t as sharp in game 4, but of the four singles, only one was hit over 90 MPH, and that was J-Ram’s single to a drawn in Miedroth. He actually got hit much harder in game 2, but they were flyballs at people and by the time game 4 rolled around he had only thrown 7 pitches the previous 4 days. That was as rested as he was going to be until Spring Training even if the White Sox made the World Series.
In general, I think he did as well as could be expected with the players he had, both in the regular season and the postseason. Especially the innovative and creative ways he deployed his pitching staff.
I want to commend you on what you said about Jose Ramirez hitting theoretically unhittable pitches. There are players who do that, and without them baseball would lose even more popularity. The national announcers, who are frankly woefully unprepared to deal with teams like Cleveland and the White Sox they may not have seen all season anyway, seem to treat each pitching change, each pitching decision and each pitch as something they would have done better. Ultimately, someone’s going to score a run (see game three, Astros v. Mariners, 2002). And some batters are going to hit any pitcher’s best pitch at the right moment.
I think these playoffs in particular have shown just how much you can put the right guys in the right place, and sometimes you still just get beat.