The Decision Making of Game 4

HOUSTON — The power of the role of the manager has diminished as more authority is concentrated in the front office. But the manager position is a significant one and never more important than on the World Series stage. Managers can win and lose games. And it was decision-making in Game 4 that was particularly fascinating in the Dodgers’ 6-2 win to even the series Saturday.

Game 4 was about a lot of things. Cody Bellinger ended his three-game slump. Joc Pederson warranted his placement on the postseason roster, and the evening was also a game about human and managerial decision-making.

Following the game, and even during the game, A.J. Hinch was criticized for not sticking with Chris Devenski long enough, for remaining with starting pitcher Charlie Morton a little too long, and for ultimately turning the game over to Ken Giles. Giles’ struggles continued as he faced three batters, all reached, and all scored, including the decisive run. Giles has allowed a run in six of his last seven appearances and has allowed 10 runs in 7 2/3 postseason innings (More on Giles Sunday at FanGraphs).

“He can get outs and he’ll continue to get outs,” Hinch said to reporters. “You have the ball in your hands at the most critical time because you have the best stuff. … I’ve always tried to give the reliever a little bit of a leash.”

Hinch also allowed Morton to face a portion of the Dodgers’ lineup for a third time — despite Morton’s well-documented issues when pitching deeper into a game — a decision that allowed the tying run to score.

Charlie Morton has been awesome. He is also nearing the third time through the lineup pic.twitter.com/g1gMizSe2G

— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) October 29, 2017

Hinch is a smart man, the manager of one of the most analytical clubs in the game. But his decision-making Saturday was interesting because he managed traditionally — sticking with his starter, turning the game over to his closer in the ninth — after he recently managed much more unconventionally and analytically.

It was in Game 7 of the ALCS when Hinch did not allow an effective Morton (five innings, two hits, no runs allowed) to face the Yankees a third time. Morton faced 18 Yankees. The night before Game 7, Hinch called Lance McCullers on his drive home and let McCullers know he was finishing the game as something of a piggy-back, tandem stater. And then on Friday night, he pulled off another tandem start with McCullers starting and Brad Peacock pitching the final 3 2/3 inning to secure a victory.

But he managed differently — more emotionally? — Saturday.

I had asked Hinch about his decision-making process earlier this year. I was curious how major league managers avoid the trappings of their human hard-wiring, how they avoid becoming too risk-averse. It is a problem central to Michael Lewis’ book “The Undoing Project” which focused on the work and relationship of Israeli psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Said Lewis in an interview with Time advancing the book:

“Some of the most interesting ideas were these throw-away thoughts, like Danny’s idea they played with for a while—how people making decisions aren’t actually trying to maximize their returns, but minimize regret. I see it all that time in people’s decisions.”

For instance, when offering research subjects $1,000 — or — having a 50% chance to earn $2,500 depending on the result of a coin flip, most chose the certainty of $1,000.

To avoid letting emotion creep in, Hinch told me this summer he made as many decisions as possible in his office at “2 p.m.” in advance of a night game. Hinch said he tries to map out every scenario, and his response, before games.

“It keeps the emotion out of the game,” Hinch said.

But Saturday? Hinch explained some of his decision-making processes to reporters in the interview room late Saturday night.

“It’s always in your best interests to take the pitcher out a hitter too early rather than a hitter too late. At least that’s how I’ve gone about it,” Hinch said Saturday night. “But the context of the game is always going to shift and change. You can draw it out perfectly and map it out, but you never know how the other outcome would have been. It’s easy to say everything you do and it goes wrong. Everybody in baseball thinks that the other way would have been perfectly good, and we don’t know. And our jobs are criticized because of outcomes that we already know and outcomes that we assume.”

We as a people like to treat problems after they occur rather than do everything we could to head them off. It is in part why it’s more difficult to prove the benefits of preventive practices and care. We are good with procedures, pills and auto repair, we are less committed to taking 10,000 steps per day, eating our kale chips, and giving our cars regular oil changes.

As you’re probably aware, most pitchers are less effective each time they go through the lineup due to a combination of fatigue, loss of stuff, and batter familiarity. It’s the Third Time Through the Order Penalty.

If the Dodgers had a plan to pull Alex Wood after two times through the order no matter what, Saturday was a good test for such rigidness as Wood had a no-hitter through six innings. Dave Roberts allowed Wood to begin to face the Astros a third time. Wood faced only one batter a third time:

Moving to the crouched position did not appear to help Wood impose his will upon the missile hit by George Springer. The ball seemed like it had a chance to go through the support wall and into the old Union Station beyond the left-field wall.

Give Wood credit for gutting out six-plus innings and allowing just the one hit, but it would not be accurate to say Wood had good stuff. His fastball velocity was down, which can mean trouble for Wood and about every pitcher. He generated just four swinging strikes on 84 pitches.

I asked analytically-minded Dodgers pitcher Brandon McCarthy about the situation. McCarthy said “symbolically” it would have been difficult to lift Wood until he allowed a hit.

“Whether it works or not, it’s not the fourth time through, it’s not the ninth inning, it’s not 110 pitches,” McCarthy said. “To pull a guy with a no-hitter, I think it’s a little harsh… that might be a little too hard and not enough of feel. There is still a balance there of numbers versus feeling. You can believe in numbers, which both teams do, but there has to be some consideration of feel.”

What Wood and Morton have in common is each struggles the deeper they pitch into games both in 2017 and for their careers.

Consider the following charts:

With men on the corners and one out in the sixth, Chris Taylor entered the right-handed batter’s box and became the first batter to face Morton three times. Taylor grounded a ball to third that Alex Bregman threw home to successfully cut down the lead runner. Corey Seager flew out to left, one of the few air balls against either pitcher, to end the threat.

There were some warning signs as Morton did appear to leave his stuff more elevated in the zone.

Morton’s pitch locations in the third inning:

Morton’s pitch locations in the sixth inning.

Morton returned for the seventh. With one out, he hung a curveball to the Bellinger, who doubled to the left-center gap. The star rookie had been 0-for-the-series after a strong NLCS.

The third-time-through alarm sounded and Hinch appeared from the first-base dugout. While Hinch perhaps waited one batter too long, the margin for error is small this time of year. Astros reliever Will Harris allowed Bellinger to score on a Logan Forsythe base hit that tied the score at 1.

Hinch gave the ball to Devenski, who he had allowed to go multiple innings regularly the last two seasons, perhaps a more revolutionary role than the celebrated one of Andrew Miller last October. But Hinch did not allow Devenski to finish the game after he threw a clean eighth. Instead, he showed loyalty and faith in Giles. It went unrewarded.

It’s perhaps too simple to say a manager should always adhere to the spreadsheet, to the never-let-a-non-top-of-the-rotation-arm-face-the-lineup-a-third-time rule. But perhaps it’s even easier to get caught up in the moment, trust eyes, listen to a player’s plea to continue, and leave a pitcher in for a batter too long, to make the walk to the mound moments too late.

The default position is usually adhering to tradition for most people, not doing something unconventional. From a Kahneman and Tversky paper documented in “The Undoing Project:

“The greater sensitivity to negative rather than positive changes is not specific to monetary outcomes,” wrote Amos and Danny. “It reflects a general property of the human organism as a pleasure machine. For most people, the happiness involved in receiving a desirable object is smaller than the unhappiness involved in losing the same object. … Happy species endowed with an infinite appreciation of pleasures and low sensitivity to pain would probably not survive the evolutionary battle.”

We’re wired to do the safe thing, to survive. Charlie Morton looked great, but pitchers often look great until they don’t. Ken Giles hasn’t looked great in some time but he still has the closer label. The unconventional Astros were handled more traditionally Saturday and perhaps it hurt them. Regardless of what happens on Sunday, the series will now shift back to Los Angeles where more decisions await.