The Lessons the Royals Should and Shouldn’t Teach Us
The Kansas City Royals are World Champions. Last night, they finished off another spectacular playoff run, this time pushing the envelope on a play at the plate instead of having the tying run get stranded at third base. Despite being continually underestimated — including here, frequently, in things I’ve written over the last few years — the Royals ran away with the AL Central, aggressively loaded up on reinforcements at the trade deadline, and then trounced everyone in their path during the postseason. After years of enduring criticism during the building of this roster, Dayton Moore and his staff can certainly feel a significant amount of vindication this morning; they won with exactly the kind of team they believed could win.
Because baseball is a copycat industry, we are almost certainly going to see the other 29 teams look at KC’s success and try to figure out which parts of it can be reproduced. Certainly, they aren’t the first team to win with mostly home-grown talent, but they are a bit unique in that they refined a certain style of play until that model became synonymous with their organization, so it might be a little easier to copy “the Royals way” than if they just won while playing a more conventional style. So let’s see if we can tease out some lessons from Kansas City’s roster construction that other teams might be able to learn from.
The Royals basic blueprint is to keep the game close for the first five or six innings, getting just enough work from their starting pitchers to turn as many contests as possible into games decided by the relief pitchers. And never was this plan more obviously successful than this postseason, where the differences in late game scoring between themselves and their opponents proved to be the difference in three of their four victories.
At MLB.com, they have some postseason pitching splits, including one that shows the performance of each team in the seventh inning or later, which basically sums up why the Royals are World Champs this morning. Here is how KC fared, and how their three postseason opponents fared, after the seventh inning began.
| Team | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | ERA |
| Kansas City Royals | 0.200 | 0.244 | 0.300 | 0.544 | 1.73 |
| New York Mets | 0.218 | 0.272 | 0.374 | 0.646 | 4.56 |
| Houston Astros | 0.254 | 0.347 | 0.444 | 0.792 | 5.63 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 0.352 | 0.396 | 0.455 | 0.852 | 8.23 |
And here’s how those same offenses fared once the seventh inning began.
| Team | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | PA | R | R/PA |
| Kansas City Royals | 0.325 | 0.392 | 0.485 | 0.877 | 242 | 51 | 0.21 |
| Houston Astros | 0.219 | 0.254 | 0.406 | 0.660 | 67 | 6 | 0.09 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 0.197 | 0.254 | 0.280 | 0.534 | 142 | 10 | 0.07 |
| New York Mets | 0.161 | 0.241 | 0.213 | 0.454 | 178 | 11 | 0.06 |
The Royals scored 51 runs in 242 plate appearances from the seventh inning on; the other nine teams to qualify for the postseason combined to score 55 runs in 687 plate appearances in those same situations.
Now, a large part of that is simply not a plan that can be put in place by another organization. Their late-game offensive success was remarkable, but there just isn’t much evidence that it’s something that can be planned on; KC hitters had a .691 OPS and averaged .11 runs per plate appearance from the seventh inning on during the regular season. While there was a lot of talk about contact hitters providing a huge advantage in those situations, the Royals were basically the best contact team ever during the regular season and didn’t see it translate into success against elite relievers for the first six months of the year. “Hit the crap out of the ball in clutch situations” is a great recipe, but not a very easy one to follow.
But it’s not a coincidence that the Royals opponents had a hard time putting together late-game rallies, because Kansas City’s bullpen was about as good as it gets in baseball. Even after losing Greg Holland, the team had three shutdown relievers, and Luke Hochevar played the part of one in October as well. While their opponents pushed starting pitchers into middle relief roles in order to try and bridge the gaps between their trusted starter and a closer they believed in, the Royals had arms on arms, giving them the ability to keep their relievers fresh without sacrificing at-bats with a guy on the mound they didn’t trust.
Relievers are still notoriously difficult to predict, but if there’s one significant change in roster construction that I think the Royals may usher in, it will be to emphasize the number of quality relievers in a bullpen rather than simply having a closer and a setup guy you believe in. Stocking the bullpen full of quality arms, giving a team the ability to put out rallies before the closer ever warms up, proved to be a huge advantage for the Royals in the playoffs. The Royals realized that games can and are won in the innings before the closer gets to the mound — or after the closer leaves, if the game goes to extra innings — and made sure they weren’t vulnerable in those situations. I’d expect a number of teams to try and and figure out how they can build themselves a Royals-esque bullpen this winter.
While the Royals deserve a ton of credit for their success, it would also be irresponsible to ignore the fact that they got some breaks along the way; specifically, including a host of hugely important defensive mistakes from their opponents. If Carlos Correa fields a relatively easy ground ball, the Royals might have been eliminated in the fourth game of the ALCS. If Daniel Murphy gets his glove down on Saturday night, the series may very well have been tied at 2-2. If Lucas Duda makes a reasonable throw home last night, Eric Hosmer is out at the plate, and the series is going back to Kansas City.
Throughout the playoffs, broadcasters were falling all over themselves to credit the Royals contact hitting and aggressive baserunning, and that absolutely is a hallmark of the the Royals style of play. We just shouldn’t get too caught up in thinking that the Royals have figured out how to force their opponents into errors, however. Per Baseball-Reference, here are the league’s reached-on-error totals during the regular season.
| Team | Reached on Error |
| BOS | 73 |
| PHI | 71 |
| TEX | 70 |
| MIN | 68 |
| SDP | 66 |
| ARI | 65 |
| SEA | 64 |
| OAK | 63 |
| WSN | 63 |
| CHW | 62 |
| PIT | 59 |
| BAL | 58 |
| KCR | 58 |
| NYM | 58 |
| CIN | 57 |
| COL | 56 |
| LgAvg | 56 |
| ATL | 55 |
| HOU | 54 |
| LAA | 54 |
| STL | 54 |
| NYY | 52 |
| CHC | 50 |
| MIA | 48 |
| MIL | 48 |
| SFG | 48 |
| TOR | 47 |
| DET | 46 |
| CLE | 43 |
| TBR | 39 |
| LAD | 36 |
The Royals reached base on two more errors than the average team during the regular season, and realistically, this isn’t something where the spread in talent between teams is going to be noticeable during a game. Even the gap between the top and bottom teams in ROE is only .22 extra bases reached per game, or one extra baserunner per five games. If the Royals had some kind of error forcing skill — which they didn’t appear to have during the year — and they played a series against teams that were the absolute most passive teams who hardly ever forced their opponents into mistakes, we’d expect that to add up to one extra baserunner during the entire series.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting that part of winning in October is getting some breaks. The Royals benefited from their opponents making some crucial defensive lapses at huge moments in various games, and there’s not a lot of reason to believe the Royals forced those errors. We can and should give them credit for not making those same errors and limiting the opportunities they gave their opponents, but it doesn’t appear that there’s much evidence to suggest that another team that copies the Royals style of play should expect their opponents to make a similar number of defensive mistakes in the future.
Of course, part of the reason the Royals were able to capitalize on their opponents miscues, and not vice versa, is that the Royals were a better defensive team than anyone else they played. They sacrificed some offensive production to put above average defenders all over the field, and feature a few spectacular defenders in guys like Lorenzo Cain, Alex Gordon, and Alcides Escobar. Regardless of what method is used to evaluate defensive abilities, these guys grade out exceptionally well, and the Royals consistently turned more balls in play into outs than their opponents, both in the regular season and the postseason.
Over the last two years, the Royals have put up a +112 UZR; the second best mark during that stretch is +63. Even with the error bars on fielding metrics, it’s pretty safe to say that the recent versions of the Royals are some of the best defensive teams we’ve ever seen, and the quality of their defenders helped turn run-of-the-mill pitchers into pretty good run preventers. Rather than paying a premium for pitching, the Royals stocked up on defensive value, and were able to put together a unit that could keep opponents from scoring at an elite level.
Like with bullpens, there’s more variation in year to year defensive performance than offensive performance, so betting on defense is a riskier strategy that won’t always pay off. And to get elite defense, you usually have to sacrifice some offense in the process, so building a team around good fielders with okay bats isn’t a guarantee of greatness. But for a team with budget constraints, betting on defenders and relievers may become the en vogue strategy, since you generally develop elite defenders and relief pitchers at young ages, and they won’t see their prices rise as quickly in arbitration and power hitters and frontline starting pitchers. If you build a defense-and-bullpen oriented team out of your farm system, you can probably keep the group together at a lower overall cost than if you build around power hitters and aces.
The Royals blueprint isn’t an easily copied one — and like every other blueprint other teams have followed, it isn’t guaranteed to work — but I would expect that the Royals success will lead to a bit more emphasis on depth, defense, and bullpens. The Royals are basically the exact opposite of a stars-and-scrubs team — though they do have some legitimately great players as long as defensive value is taken into account — and I wouldn’t be surprised if other teams started to see their success as a reason to push more towards a higher quantity of good players rather than attempting to ride on the backs of a few great ones.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Just one more to consider: analytics explain a lot, but not everything.
YOU’RE SO SMART!
One thing I appreciate about Fangraphs is that the site is usually pretty good about acknowledging the limitations of analytics, whether specifically (e.g., the discussion of defensive metrics in this article) or in general. David’s comment is not wrong, but the sentiment (that Fangraphs thinks it can explain everything with anayltics) is wrong, and not one that Cameron or anyone else on the staff would hold to. The first paragraph of this article even contains an admission of sorts, that Cameron and Fangraphs have underestimated the Royals.
No, I just agree more with the article Mr. Cameron wrote before the WS. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/appreciating-the-world-series-for-what-it-is/
I know we’re downvoting the hell out of this, but this is exactly what we’re all saying! “Analytics” appreciates many variables that are either random or above our current level of understanding, and the Royals have been “lucky” in that those variables broke in their favor.
It’s being downvoted because it’s already been said better in the article. And it is being said in a trolling manner.
The OP is not interested in adding insight or reasonably critiquing anything. The comment is an attempt to poop on fangraphs, without providing anything of value.
Thus the downvotes.
This response would have made more sense an hour ago, before the OP repeatedly cited the article by Cameron that he was referencing with this comment.
also I apologized for sounding smug. not trolling but also not thin skinned. I can certainly understand the down votes as explained. Have a nice day everyone.
I agree with this comment. Had I written it, I might have phrased it differently, specifically: “The advanced statistics we currently use are not as predictive as we think.”
But I also agree with the basic sentiment. Analysis, by its nature, comes after the fact. Sometimes events are not well analyzed. More often the analysis is beautifully done and written, but is not why the event happened as it did.
FanGraphs is pretty good about frequently mentioning the limits of analysis. Which means David is agreeing with you.
I apologize if it came off as a smug comment. I am not actually a troll. Nor am I as smart about baseball as the writers on the site. Why people have a knee jerk negative reaction to a suggestion of humility I do not understand. Before the WS started there was an article that Mr. Cameron himself may have written suggesting that people were going to over react to the results of the WS as if it were “the answer” to different theories of roster construction and the differing strengths of the Royals and the Mets, instead of the small sample outcome of a short series, and that was the perspective I meant to reflect. Also that people can try to explain all baseball outcomes with mathematics but there are not presently sufficient tools to do so completely.
Theoretically, analytics “could” explain most things–but humans are not there yet.
This is not true if you believe in randomness, unless said analytics’ explanation can expand to include, “This was random.”
I sometimes believe in randomness, but I’m never sure when I will, nor am I confident that I know how long that belief will last. Its a feeling, ya know? The hair on the back of my ring finger rises up.
Bullpen depth has been the Giants big strength also. In the 2014 postseason, Casilla, Romo, Affeldt, Lopez, and Petit gave up almost nothing to anyone (the only exception was Kolten Wong’s homer against Romo). But almost no one other than Giants’ fans noticed it.
I must have dreamed the articles I read about the Giants bullpen and Bochy’s use of it being key to their wins.
Or, I suppose, only Giants’ fans write baseball articles.
It was completely overshadowed in the 2014 postseason by the KC bullpen and Bumgarner. Casilla didn’t give up a hit for about 2 months in August-October and I don’t remember anyone but the Giants’ broadcasters even mentioning it. And in all of the articles which are being written recently about how the Royals are doing it, I haven’t seen a single comparison with the Giants, have you?
It seems like the real reason you’re upset is because your Giants, and by proxy, *you* aren’t getting enough attention. Go back and sit in your desk, and when it’s your turn, all eyes will be on you.
The first point your article made in terms of what should be learned from the Royals is that bullpen depth matters. This point would have been much stronger if it had also referred to the team which won 3 of the 5 preceding World Series for whom bullpen depth was really the only consistent factor (one of the points of scientific analysis is that you try to draw conclusions based on evidence from many sources, not just one, I hope you realize that). I don’t see how you can claim that what I’m looking for here is attention for me, considering that if you had mentioned the Giants, I wouldn’t even have made this post. And the Giants have had plenty of attention paid to them, so that also can’t be what I was looking for. What I was looking for was some reference to the Giants’ relievers, specifically relating to depth, because that has really been the most important factor in their 3 World Series titles. And if we’re getting in psychoanalysis here, which you seem to want to do, it’s pretty clear that you’re sensitive about this issue because for several years the people at Fangraphs somehow managed to completely miss the importance of this factor for the Giants’ 3 World Series wins, which is why you not only radically underestimated them but you also radically underestimated the Royals, and now you have a lot of egg on your face.
Next year’s an even year… it’ll come soon enough!
It’s going to be tough in this respect. The Giants may be title contenders again next year but I doubt that a deep bullpen will be their strong point. Their core relievers are too old, the young ones (Strickland, Osich, and Kontos) don’t inspire great confidence, Bochy doesn’t seem to have any ideas for dealing with the situation, and the management doesn’t seem to be putting any emphasis on this at all.
You know John, there’s a pretty good chance that wasn’t the real Dave busting your chops… You’re coming off as really think skinned and it’s an easy target for trolls.
*thin
It does seem there is a different style of play exemplified in the Royals and Giants worth paying attention to. It’s certainly not the 3 run homerun, station to station approach Earl Weaver championed.
It might also help John’s case when he comes to an analytical site to post real evidence instead of just making stuff up. Casilla’s hitless streak in John’s imagining was “about two months,” but in reality was not quite a month, Sept 16 – Oct 15. Ten appearances, 11 IP. Casilla was really good, but only half as good as he was in John’s imagination.
I wonder if there is something to be gleaned from the similarities between the Giants and the Royals. Like the Royals, the Giants are an excellent contact hitting team. Like the Royals, they have a deep bullpen (plus Bumgarner the magician). And, I think, most importantly, like the Royals, the Giants have a great defense. One of the hallmarks about the three championship runs the Giants have made is that they didn’t make any mistakes on defense. Last year, the Giants didn’t give the Royals anything defensively, and (off the top of my head) made two key excellent defensive plays in Game 7 that saved their butts. The first being Panik-Crawford’s iconic glove flip GIDP, the other, almost as important, was Juan Perez’s positioning on a Nori Aoki liner down the left field line in the 6th or 7th inning. That ball is usually a double, but Ron Wotus’ excellent defensive positioning work turned it into a routine out. Further, Buster Posey (and the Giants’ staff) more or less shutdown the Royals running game. In contrast, the Mets made a number of key errors and the Royals were perfect stealing bases against D’Arnaud.
The similarities between the teams made for a much more competitive series and really forced the Royals to work, and ultimately it came down to an historically great pitching performance for the Giants to win.
Actually the Aoki liner was in the 5th inning, and it was before Bumgarner found his groove.
There’s plenty to be gleaned. All of the people who are claiming that the Royals just got lucky would be advised to remind themselves of the Giants’ ‘unexpected’ success for similar reasons.
Here’s the main lesson – better to be lucky than good.
You poor thing.
If Lucas Duda makes a reasonable throw home last night, Eric Hosmer is out at the plate, and the series is going back to Kansas City.
The real question is though, what are the odds that Lucas Duda makes a reasonable throw? Duda is a sub-par fielder and 1B are generally not known for being strong/accurate throwers. Yes a decent throw gets him but if the odds of him actually making a decent throw are relativly low then I think you are selling the Royals scouting and Hosmer short by simply blaming Duda.
Hitting on 20 and getting 21 is a stupid play that got lucky. What Hosmer did is likely more akin to hitting on 15.
Based on WP, Duda would need to make the play less than two-thirds of the time for it to have been a good gamble by Hosmer. That’s crazy low. Even below average defenders don’t post fielding percentages of 65%.
They dont post fielding percentage’s of 65% over the course of a full season because 90% of the plays they make are really easy. This is, however, is a one non-routine play sample size with a guy who is not a great fielder. A less than 65% success rate is not at all out of the realm of possibilty IMHO.
Other than the context of the World Series, that play seems routine to me.
We’d both be speculating on the average conversion rates for that specific play, but do you really believe Lucas Duda cannot throw the ball within a foot of his catcher two out of three times?
Honestly, you could make an argument that any play where a 1B is throwing the ball is not routine as most 1B are at 1B at least in part because they dont throw well.
In this instance though it was a rushed throw to home on a tag play. That is hardly routine under any circumstances if you ask me. Any throw high or to the catchers right and Hosmer is likely safe.
It seems like you’re saying no, Lucas Duda cannot make that play two out of three times.
There’s no way to know for sure, so we’ll agree to disagree on that. The throw did not need to be rushed. A throw within a foot of the plate in any direction gets Hosmer. It wasn’t close.
What Im saying is that Duda making a poor throw 3-4 out of 10 times is not at all an unreasonable thing to gamble on.
The error was because the throw allowed the runner to advance (to add one more reason why the 65% comment is off base). If that is a bad throw that is not as bad, Hosmer still scores, but no error is charged. It needed to be somewhere between okay and “good” to get Hosmer out. I’d argue it was the right decision to test Duda.
strike that, there was no error.
Buckner makes that play.
The degree of difficulty on this play is much higher than the average play, it’s a tag play at the plate, a lot can go wrong, that throw was no where near guaranteed, a classic example of putting pressure on the defense and forcing them to execute.
I think you need to consider the overall context; to me, this was the perfect time to take this particular risk: if you’re out, you still are going home with a 3-2 Series lead; you can’t expect Familia to implode three games in a row, which means you can’t count on the next batter getting a 2-out hit to get you home; it’s safe to assume that the Mets are not expecting you to run, and will therefore be caught off-guard–and, in fact, Duda seemed to double-clutch on his throw; you know that first basemen in general aren’t known for their throwing, and that, in any case, Duda isn’t a top-rank defender. In a vacuum, yes, it’s a huge risk; considering the circumstances, it’s a smart calculated risk that in fact paid off.
One thing that seemed clear to me last night: over the course of the Series, the Mets let the Royals get into their heads and make a mess. After Hosmer’s double they did not have the look of a team that had a one-run lead, two outs to go and their star closer on the mound. They looked like a group that was waiting for the other shoe to drop–and it did. In the 12th, too, after Perez’s bloop single and Dyson coming in to pinch-run, and all the Royals hooting and hollering in their dugout–Reed looked spooked, the infielders looked grim and tense, and all the life seemed to drain out of the park. I think a more experienced team would have pushed back some, but the (relatively) young Mets seemed to let it get to them.
Do you really think Hosmer went through that very lengthy thought process before he took off for home? If he did, I’m pretty sure he’d still be standing on third base trying to work out whether to run.
I think the Royals lost a pretty big game when they could have sent the tying run home last year, Hosmer was determined that wouldn’t happen this year, and Lucas Duda choked. Let’s not over-complicate it. It was pure aggression, and it paid off, but calling it a “smart” play is post hoc nonsense.
Blerg, that’s the question, isn’t it? Can aggression on the base paths be a smart, calculated tactic? You seem to distinguish between the two as mutually exclusive, but what if they are interrelated, or at least, share overlapping characteristics?
What if being too safe, too conservative, too passive on the base paths is just as suboptimal as being too aggressive?
Blerg, you don’t seem to know how the mind works: if Hosmer had to run through all his options when the ball was hit, of course he’d still be standing on third. But, he said after the game that they had been told that if they had a chance to run on either Duda’s or Wright’s arm in a pressure situation, they should do it. That was already in his mind, and because of that, he made a split-second decision based on what he saw unfolding before him. I just articulated after the fact what was flashing through his mind in the heat of the moment. “Pure aggression” is Bill Buckner running into a certain out in the 9th inning of the deciding game of the 1974 WS, trying to needlessly stretch a no-out double into a triple with the Dodgers down by three runs. Hosmer running last night was a smart play created by good scouting and knowing what was going on in front of you. “Smart” can be lots of different things, all the way from aggression-as-calculated tactic (as blue fountain says) to using “post-hoc” in a baseball post to camouflage faulty reasoning.
Sure, aggression can be a strategy, and it can be a good one. Maybe, as overarching strategy, it’s generally to be aggressive rather than conservative on the basepaths, and maybe that’s especially true in October. I think this is probably true.
Even so, I’m going to assume that a player can distinguish bw being aggressive and being overaggressive, that is, taking bad risks instead of good ones. If so, Hosmer’s decision falls into the overaggressive camp (while Cain’s postseason baserunning heroics fall into the former camp). Hosmer’s decision on that play working out is contingent on Duda making a bad throw, actually a terrible throw, over a distance of about 90 feet. It’s just a bad risk.
However, it’s possible a baserunner or a baserunning philosophy can’t be aggressive wo also being overaggressive. In that case, then maybe overaggression is the right strategy. Still, I think that a player and a team’s baserunning strategy can be more granular than that, as in “Let’s take good risks, and not bad ones” rather than “Let’s take lots of risks. Gimme, gimme, risk.”
If you want to give Hosmer credit for Duda choking, that’s fine. Unless the scouting report on Duda’s defense was “Choke artist … will likely botch a throw he makes 95 out of 100 times in low pressure situations” then I don’t see how that dash home is a smart play. Sometimes bad decisions lead to good results. Hosmer going home there wasn’t a “certain” out, but it was pretty darn close. I guess where we differ is that I think you can be smart-aggressive wo being dumb-aggressive on the basepaths. Hosmer taking off there was dumb- aggressive, as would have been Alex Gordon going home in Game 7 last year.
…but he had a scouting report telling him that Wright throws slowly, and that Duda’s throws tail left.
I don’t think the Royals’ 3-1 Series lead is relevant to the question of whether Hosmer was smart to go. The smart move was to do whatever increased the probability of winning that game. Unless you have reason to believe the Royals were at some specific disadvantage in games 6 or 7 beyond the usual crapshoot, there is no reason to gamble when leading 3-1 any more than if the series were tied 2-2, or even if the Mets were leading 3-1.
As has been pointed out many times, if Hosmer stays, there are two outs with a runner at third, so the probability of his scoring is about 0.33. So we just ask, was his probability of scoring on the GB greater than that or not? I think there can be honest opinions on either side, but it’s not as simple as saying Duda is just set up to throw to home, and all he has to do is get the ball in a certain length of time.
In fact, Wright has to make a strong throw that doesn’t skip in the dirt. Duda has to get the ball out of his glove quickly. He has to avoid Perez coming down the line. He has to throw the ball to a fairly small target.
The first two worked in the Mets’ favor, but Duda had to move to his right to get a clear throw, which made his throw a little more rushed. And while he made a very poor throw, that shouldn’t obscure the fact that his throw could have been much closer to the target, and still required the catcher to move enough that he would have been late for the tag.
This is the part of analytics that bugs me sometimes. Run scoring probabilities are great in a general sense. But that .33 you mention takes nothing about the game situation into account. Who is on the mound? What is the score? Who is at the plate? What is the defensive positioning? What inning is it? All of these and more may move that number up or down.
Of course, the specific context of the situation is important too. A defender who is at best not known for his throwing prowess is put in a position where 1) a bad throw could very well cost his team the World Series, 2) to a team with a reputation for heroic (“magic”) come-back victories, 3) that is also known for aggressive and excellent baserunning, 4) in the ninth inning 5) in front of his home fans. All analysis and skill considerations aside, Duda is a human being, and I think it’s reasonable to argue that for him or any other player, the appropriate sample size for that throw was N=1.
…Duda’s fielding percentage on this particular play was 1.000?
In fact, the Royals’ scouting report on him said his throws tend to tail to his left (in this case, the catcher’s right). And Duda’s arm graded out badly among first basemen this year in general. I can’t remember where I read both of these things, but if they had both of those in the scouting report, then of course they were going to run aggressively.
And Wright’s arm isn’t great anymore, one more point in the play’s favor. Given all that, and the fact that losing this game still leaves them favored to win the title, I think running makes a decent amount of sense there. It doesn’t deserve any credit for the error, but it does mean the percentage play was probably reasonable.
One thing Duda didn’t get enough credit for: he turned that ball SO fast. If he makes the kind of turn you usually expect from a first baseman, it actually would have been close even with a good throw.
More like hitting on 18. An MLB firstbaseman should be able to make that throw.
What makes it not a completely dumb play is that they were up 3-1 in the Series so you push the envelope.
If the Win Probability of 35% stated above is correct, it’s not at all like hitting on 18. He needed to have a 35% or better chance for it to be worth it.
So it’s a lot more like hitting on a 12 (31% bust chance) or 13 (39% bust chance). Yes, there’s still a chance he busts (is nailed at home), but it’s worth the risk.
So he hit on a 13 and it worked.
http://www.betus.com.pa/sports-betting/guide/blackjack/hitting-busting-blackjack-odds-06-22-2010/
I’m an idiot. I had that backwards. It’s like hitting on 16 1/2, since 16 is a 62% bust chance (38% success) and 17 is a 69% bust chance (31% success).
So it’s like hitting on 16 1/2. Not a great play usually, but not awful, especially if you take into account what the dealer is showing. If the dealer has a 7 or higher showing, you should hit on 16 every time. But never on a 17.
So it’s not a clear choice either way for Hosmer.
Actually, the real question is: what are the chances that Duda makes the play vs. what are the chances that the next batter gets a hit (and thus scores Hosmer)?
If Lucas Duda was a better defensive first baseman, Eric Hosmer isn’t out at the plate because Eric Hosmer doesn’t try to score on that play. But the Royals knew Duda couldn’t throw worth a hoot, and it was a gamble that was likely to succeed.
He is still paid a lot of money to, ya know, play baseball for a living, and one of the thing that entails is throwing a ball, something he’s been doing for most of his life. Unless Duda’s arm is in a sling or Hosmer secretly had jet-fueled cleats, I don’t know how you can say that gamble was “likely” to succeed. Maybe when you say “likely”, you mean less than 10 percent of the time.
Wright is way over cutting in front of the SS, leaving Hosmer free for a big lead off 3B. You can say in retrospect that he miscalculated, but with Duda a 1B it only looked like a good baseball play to him.
I’m in the camp of “most 1B, including Duda, should make that throw the majority of the time”. On a fairly routine basis, 1B field a grounder, pivot, then throw to 2nd base to start a double play. Catching the ball on the fly, then throwing home with the play in front of you, seems like a much easier throw.
Depends on what you mean by majority. 60% is a majority. If you say I have a 40% chance of being safe though I’m running everytime.
Actually, the real question is: what are the chances that Duda makes the play vs. what are the chances that the next batter gets a hit (and thus scores Hosmer)?
This.
I mean well beyond 60% chance that a first baseman should make that throw. On the potential double play balls I mentioned, every now and then you see a very wide (but caught) throw, or a ball that flies into left field, but it seems rare. Almost every time the throw is easy for the SS to catch. And that’s with a runner in the way, making it a tougher throw.
By the way, Inside Edge puts plays into categories such as 90-100%, 60-90%, etc. I wonder if there’s some sort of template to know where that kind of throw is, for the average 1B.
Also, this is a very crude way of looking at it, but Duda only has 3 throwing errors in his career as a 1B. According to his player page, he’s started 25 DPs. I assume that means it’s a 3-6-3 or 3-6-1 double play.
If the success rate was that high then Duda would have made the throw. Unless you think it was some 1 in a million mistake.
and I’m sorry but I just dont think that sub par fielding 1B making a poor throw to home is something akin to a miracle. But thats just me.
“If the success rate was that high then Duda would have made the throw.”
That’s simply not true, unless ‘that high’ is 100%. Murphy’s grounder is fielded properly, what, 99% of the time? But he still missed it. If Duda makes the throw (let’s say) 90% of the time, he still misses the throw 1 out of every 10 times. There’s a big gap between 1 in a million, and 1 in 10.
A little credit ought to go to Perez, too. Not a very fast runner, but as he approached 1st while there was no Met player covering third, it forced the Mets to make a decision about whether they were going to try to get the lead out or the force out, with the risk being they may get neither if they hesitated too long. That’s why Hosmer didn’t retreat to the bag. There wasn’t a threat to him. In that moment, the pressure was very much on the Mets to make the best decision and do it quickly.
The odds of him making a good throw were low? He is a professional baseball player who has to make similar throws to 2b all the time. He certainly has had to throw home on plays with the infield drawn in. Since 2011, he’s made 3 throwing errors and has 196 assists. Granted, there was some pressure and he was probably surprised by Hosmer’s attempt, but the notion that he was unlikely to make a good throw is absurd.
“there’s more variation in year to year defensive performance than offensive performance”
Does defensive performance actually vary more, or is it just variation in the imperfect defensive metrics? For example, Escobar and Gordon have their ups and downs offensively, but they seem to perform more consistently on the defensive side.
And if defensive skill, as opposed to a result-based measure of defense, is more consistent year to year, that makes it a more attactive skill set to build around.
I think defensive value really does vary more. In the course of a season, a batter’s skill has enormous influence over the outcome of 600+ plate appearances. A defender has a lot of easy plays and a lot of impossible plays, and a relatively small number where his skill really makes a difference. At-bats come regularly; challenging defensive opportunities are sporadic.
That’s not the same as saying defensive ability varies.
But in a sense, value = ability * opportunity. So either of those factors could make a difference in how valuable a player is, regardless of measurement issues.
Even if ability stays the same, if in a given season you have 40 balls hit to you where your ability could actually make a difference, and the next season (because of pitcher K rates, randomness, whatever) you have a chance on 50 of those same balls in play — that should result in varying levels of defensive value being reflected.
Ultimately, even if defensive ability doesn’t fluctuate, the impact of having that ability still could.
I like a lot of Fangraphs content, so I want to see them do well and doing well often means increasing readership. It does seem like that has happened overall this year – or at least in spurts.
One cost of that success though has been the comment sections on many articles, which for some time have seemed overrun by nonsense and shitposting.
It was probably not as good before as my memory makes it seem. But there’s no question that it’s worse now and has all but completely taken a way a facet of fangraphs that used to be an enjoyable and refreshing break from typical internet comment sections.
Shitposting about shitposting.
I’m here for you bro.
It seems like, for probably a few years after a championship, there is a strong contingent of fans of a team that like to knowing insinuate that any criticism of their beloving winner is just sour grapes. As if the Royals winning the world series means that the null hypothesis is that they are clearly the best team, and the burden of proof is on anyone who suggests that another team maybe actually could have won, in the same circumstances.
That’s not really what’s going on here.
Instead, we’re seeing an attempt to claim that a team who rode defense, contact and a strong bullpen to the second best record in baseball (and the best record in the AL) isn’t “really” that good, because the projections that people cherish don’t properly account for the effects of defense and a strong bullpen.
This isn’t 2014. A team that won 95 games in a fairly strong division beat a team that won 90 games in the worst division in baseball shouldn’t be an unexpected result.
The Royals didn’t have the second best record in baseball, the pirates did.
Hah, you’re right. The Cubs had a better record, too.
So, just replace that with “the best record in the AL,” which explains why no one should be surprised to see them represent the AL in the WS this year.
BaseRuns isn’t a projection system. They were remarkably clutch all season and clutchness isn’t a skill.
Yes, and obviously the Pirates, Cardinals and Cubs were the best teams in the NL. After the Mets, of course.
BaseRuns also doesn’t account for elite defense or the impact of an elite bullpen.
BaseRuns absolutely accounts for elite defense, and to at least some extent, also for an elite bullpen.
Of course it accounts for those things. Outs made by the defense or bullpen are fully credited to the run prevention side of the ledger. What it doesn’t account for is sequencing because it hasn’t shown to be repeatable.
If it doesn’t account for sequencing…then it doesn’t account for the impact of an elite bullpen.
The entire advantage of having an elite bullpen is sequencing. It’s why teams with elite bullpens consistently outperform their Pythagorean Records.
Sequencing refers to the order of discrete plate appearance events, not merely run timing. So if Wade Davis pitches a 1-2-3 inning in a close games, Base Runs per se capture the entirety of that value. What Base Runs might NOT capture is that elite relievers come in mid-inning, with runners on base, and basically cause the opposing offense to score fewer runs than their aggregate output would predict.
So it’s possibly true that an elite bullpen marginally effects run prevention beyond what Base Runs can model, and it might be true that bullpen usage can help a team out-perform its run-differential, but it’s almost surely false that these things explain most of the extent to which the Royals outperformed the record predicted by their Base Runs.
It’s not just that the key Royals relievers were good, it’s that each of them (except Herera) had their best innings in the highest leverage situations. That has nothing to do with usage or team construction.
This is exactly right. If I cared about the opinions of morons I’d listen to sports talk radio or watch mlb network.
What a cry baby nerd.
I have wondered for years – basically since starting to follow FG – why there isn’t a lightly moderated comments section. Require a login, keep your comment history, 24 hour gap between 1st signup and 1st post, ability to hide/show individual comments and to block/mute specific commenters. Really doesn’t have to be more than that.
Because the only service that does that is Disqus, and Disqus is the fucking worst.
Not to mention that it lets the rest of the internet flood in unfettered.
The ideal is the SB Nation system, but it’s proprietary.
Agreed. Sometimes you just have to read the article and skip the comments section entirely because there’s so much idiocy and jackassery.
The past few years saw the Orioles build teams that rely on depth (in the form of some retreads and by attempting to limit the number of sub-replacement level players), defense, and bullpen, middling starting pitching and a mainly home grown core or position players. I think most mid-market teams already understand this recipe quite well.
But the Orioles were based on home runs, not contact hitting. That’s completely different.
The O’s weren’t elite in these categories like KC was. Big difference between the two.
Baltimore spent several years near the top of RA9 pitching WAR, they were definitely elite
I feel like you’re completely underselling the point that there is exponentially more pressure on every single play in the postseason, which would explain all the “routine plays” being botched.
+1
Laurila posted about players who do worse in high-leverage situations a few weeks back — is defense uniquely impacted? Lot of high-profile Es came from young/off-position players this postseason, perhaps the most likely group to have trouble given combination of inexperience and pressure. Also somewhat self-proving, since perhaps most likely group to commit E in first instance.
I’m also curious to know how KC’s playoff BsR compares to regular season. They famously exposed Lester’s pickoff yips last year, and I can see an argument that a team would be more inclined to run in the playoffs than in the regular season. (We talk about e.g. Mike Trout not getting as many SBs to avoid the injury risk, and perhaps as a matter of course KC runs more conservatively in the regular season. But with the season on the line, and an offseason to mend injuries, I can see an argument that a team would run more aggressively.) Are the Royals uniquely good at that aggressive running, and do they thus gain more value there in the postseason? Connected to Weston’s post, does that help them expose defensive flaws at a higher rate than in the regular season?
Could you share with us the error rates that your research turned up, comparing regular season to the world series? Would be really interested to see them.
Hey, look! Someone purposefully took every single word of my comment literally and then wrote a tongue in cheek response! We should do this more often!
Except for the fact that this is a relatively uncommon occurrence, even in the World Series. The Giants certainly didn’t succumb to it last year when facing the very same team.
I actually think the loss of Holland helped. Yost was so rigid last year it almost cost him. Utilizing Herrera and Davis in different situations and for multiple innings ended up being an advantage. Better than simply having them for the 7th and 8th.
This is an interesting point. No sarcasm.
I’ve been thinking the same thing since Holland got injured. Rigid thinking did cost him in the World Series last year. KC was up 2-1 in games and 4-2 in the 5th inning but Vargas was losing it and for some reason Yost never even brought Herrera into the game as the Giants had fun plowing through the other Royals relievers (they won 11-4), I guess because it was too early in the game or he’d pitched the day before or some other stupid reason. Robot thinking. And even in the 7th game, you can say that he could have pulled Guthrie for Herrera before he gave up 2 hits in the 4th, and that’s what let the Giants score the winning run–after all, Bochy had pulled Hudson for Affeldt already in the 2nd. Yost was thinking differently this year–last night he had Herrera pitch three innings when KC was 2 runs down.
This is true. If Holland’s UCL did not completely snap late in the summer, Yost would have continued to run him out there in the 9th inning and he would have surely blown a few saves.
I assume Smelly Muslim is being sarcastic here. The issue isn’t that Holland would have blown leads in the last innings but rather that Yost would have stuck to the same rigid thinking he had last year which led to the Royals losing games in the middle innings.
I assume Smelly Muslim is being racist here. It’s difficult to fathom that this moniker is meant to be, in some way, flattering.
This is spot on. The way I know people who complain about the Royals getting lucky are mostly not serious is that there’s a big obvious example of their luck. In the last two years they’ve had four important players lost to season-ending injury. And each of them arguably made the team better.
– Hochevar last year leads to Wade Davis as setup man
– Vargas gets more Young and Medlin and probably spurs the Cueto trade
– Infante takes a terrible bat out of the lineup
– Holland leads to better bullpen usage
A lot of teams the Royals beat got hurt by injuries. The Royals got helped. That’s unusual and definitely not something you can plan for.
“Like with bullpens, there’s more variation in year to year defensive performance than offensive performance, so betting on defense is a riskier strategy that won’t always pay off.”
I wonder if this has to do more with the “error bars on fielding metrics” than with defensive performance actually fluctuating. Seems to me that other than the effects of aging (young players adding bulk, but losing quickness and older players losing speed/quickness) defensive acumen should be pretty constant.
It probably has more to do with the smaller samples per season relative to offence.
I fear that organizations will make the mistake of overvaluing relief pitchers in the FA market. Although it really helps to have a great reliever in a high leverage situation, you need good starting pitching to end up in that position in the first place. Also, very few relievers seem to put up consistent year-to-year numbers, suggesting that a team cannot reliably expect to sign a shutdown bullpen.
Eventually that will happen, yes. Relief pitchers are currently undervalued and teams like the Royals and the Giants were able to exploit this undervaluation. Now, if the other 28 teams believe that the Royals and the Giants have been to and/or won a pretty good portion of the previous 10 World Series based on this undervaluation, then the price of relief pitchers will inevitably go up because demand for the product is catching up with (and maybe surpassing) supply.
But have the Giants and Royals been getting their relief pitching on the market?
Teams value relief pitching, but that doesn’t make a multi-year commitment to a free agent reliever a good investment.
I think something else interesting on that front is the source of relief pitching. The Royals’ pen (especially without Holland) is basically a collection of failed (or perhaps more charitably, questionable) starters. The Royals acquired Hochevar, Duffy, and Davis (and Finnegan, for that matter) to be starters, and Chris Young pitched both as a reliever and a starter.
Maybe the valuation problem is in thinking that a SP is inherently more valuable than a RP rather than viewing it as a combined overall value for the pitching staff.
If you can turn a back-end SP into an impact RP with a good team defense behind him, that opens up more possibilities for how to handle pitching. Indeed, this is one of the reasons it can be argued that Moore originally overpaid for Shields and Davis. He gave up more value than they were worth, as one of the reasons that can be argued for that is that Jake Odorizzi could have been a pretty good RP, too, in front of that defense.
I suspect the real market imperfection will be figuring out which of your number 4-5ish SP can become lights-out RP.
Matt Moore feels like a great option for TBR to do this with, doesn’t he? Maybe take guys who don’t have good but not elite velo, have some slight control issues, and lack a 3rd pitch. The velo boost alone could increase the efficacy of their secondary stuff, which could induce more out of zone swinging strikes.
I bet there are a dozen guys like this in MLB we could think of. Would be neat to identify a few similar players, then track them (or at least identify common characteristics)
This is exactly right. the change will not be “overvaluing relief pitchers on the free agent market,” but figuring out who to use as relievers to begin with, as the value of relief depth over leaving in 4th and 5th starters becomes apparent to everyone. By the back door, this is finally how we’re going to start seeing entire staffs built the way many analytics folks have long suspected they should be built: with pitchers expected to work in chunks smaller than five innings.
Once again the Royals show themselves to be sabermetric pioneers.
Also how to use them. At the moment people are assuming that the two top relievers should be reserved for the 8th and 9th innings but ultimately people are going to realize that in some cases they should be used in high-leverage situations earlier. And people are making such a big deal of having a certain pitcher be the team’s closer that they just won’t change even if it doesn’t seem like it’s good for the team. Notice that the Royals won the World Series when Davis replaced Holland as the closer but only because Holland got injured, even though it had been obvious for a while that Davis would be better than Holland as the closer.
The issue, of course, is that relief pitchers, like all baseball players, are human beings.
Lots of human beings like to have defined roles. That’s why some players’ offense tanks when they switch positions, or get shifted to DH.
Not only did KC not acquire Davis as a reliever, they tried to switch him back to starting after he had an outstanding 2012 in relief for TB. Only after he failed as a starter a second time did they put him back in the bullpen. Hochevar spent five years as a pretty bad starter before he went to the pen. You can give KC credit for wise roster construction in some respects, but they more or less stumbled into their “lock-down” bullpen formula.
Of course they tried to use him as a starter again. An elite starter is more valuable than an elite reliever. But they probably also knew that the fallback option would be to unleash Davis out of the bullpen. Didn’t he also pick up his cutter in KC?
Maybe I’m going full conspiracy theorist but there does seem to be a plan behind the Royals bullpen.
You aquire guys who have a certain skill set like Duffy, Hochevar, Finnegan, Davis, Crow and even Ventura with the hopes they can start but at the same time with the knowledge that if they cant that they have good enough stuff that they will like play well in relief.
To simply say they stumbled into it seems a bit of a narrow view.
The issue is that players who consider themselves SPs are unlikely to voluntarily become RPs. There’s too much money difference between the two roles to intentionally take a “step down”.
I know if it were me, and I thought I could start somewhere else rather than relieve, then I’d try to demand a trade rather than submit to bullpen duty.
Whoa, whoa: what’s all this talk about “overvaluing” relief pitchers? Seems to me that a reliever with a plus fastball, a plus change-up, and not a lot of miles on his odometer — perhaps because of three years out of baseball — is this year’s new market inefficiency.
I’d sign that fellow to 4 years, $75 million.
Particularly if he now has a matching set of World Series rings for each hand!
What I really want organizations to do is to start leaning on their starters more in pivotal situations or extra innings in the regular season.
There’s got to be something useful, repeatable and fun that teams can do by starting from the Mets’ use of Bartolo and working from there.
Keep in mind, though, that as the price of relievers rises, the price of starting pitching might simultaneously fall, at least from its present valuation. And around we go.
A low number of strikeouts by the batting team will obviously result in more errors and misplays by the fielding team, and this should be mentioned. In the 9th inning last night, if either Moustakas or Perez had struck out instead of grounding out, there wouldn’t have been the possibility of scoring a run on Duda’s bad throw and the Royals would have needed another hit to tie it up.
This is true, but let’s do a little math. The royals struck out around 16% of the time during the season, let’s say for math simplicity the average MLB team was 24%.
So 8% more PA end up with a ball in play. That’s up to 4 more BIP per game for the Royals.
The worst fielding team (by fielding %) in MLB was Oakland at .979. 2% of their opportunities resulted in an error. Let’s double that, just because lots of misplays aren’t errors (throwing to a wrong base, not turning 2 on a gimmie, etc. Plus, the purpose of this is to way overestimate to gauge the high end limit of the effect)
Combining those two numbers — 4% “misplay” rate and 4 extra BIP per game — gives the Royals an extra 26 times on base each year, over our theoretical “worst case” team. One extra base runner per 7-8 games.
Double the already extreme rates, and that’s like an extra baserunner per 4 games.
I don’t think it’s a very significant effect.
The whole discourse in the last few weeks has been rethinking the value of contact hitting, and in this discourse different people have identified a variety of pluses to contact hitting. Taken individually, no one of these factors has a decisive statistical effect, but taken together, maybe they do. I was just adding another comment of this type.
And yet, as was pointed out in the article, the Royals were an extreme contact team ask season, yet they were basically average when it came to reaching on errors
Except it didn’t, according the graph up there.
“Their late-game offensive success was remarkable, but there just isn’t much evidence that it’s something that can be planned on; KC hitters had a .691 OPS and averaged .11 runs per plate appearance from the seventh inning on during the regular season.”
I’d be curious to know how this compares to other teams’ regular season numbers. It is obviously much worse than their playoff stats, but (to the extent that reflects true performance in that context) are they somehow still better than other teams in 7th inning on?
Yeah, having an OPS 30 points lower than the all-situation league average against the back of teams’ bullpens could quite possibly be very good.
According to Baseball-reference, I combined the 7-9th splits with the extra splits, and a league average team performed to the tune of a .245/.313/.382/.695 slash line, and the royals had a .255/.314/.377/.691 slash line.
They weren’t remarkable after the third inning in the regular season
Errr, after the 6th inning
Thanks Nate. Can sometimes be hard to appreciate interesting but specific stats without a point of reference.
No problem. With a name reference like yours, I was honor bound to help.
YOU JUST GOT JAMMED
But is there a reason to believe the Royals were trying to play that sort of high stress baseball for an entire season? The regular season is a marathon, but the postseason is a sprint. Heck, the Royals are a very fast team, but where were all the steals in the regular season? Does that mean that stealing wasn’t part of their ultimate game plan?
You mentioned depth in the last sentence but not really throughout the article. Look at bullpen depth throughout the season and even AAA relievers. 9 of the like 11 RPs to pitch 10+ IP had ERAs in the 2s or lower. One of them was Hochevar recovering from
TJ. Other teams can surely copy that. Not just three good relievers as everyone always talks about but a dozen. Stash the ones who can’t make the roster in AAA (like Coleman and tons of other players with great seasons for the Storm Chasers). Holland could go down, Wade steps in. All three of them could go down and three more good ones will step in.
What I’d like to see is an examination of the relationship between Contact% and RE24-wRAA.
It seems intuitive that high-contact teams will have above-average numbers of sacrifice flies and grounders that advance or score runners, which are positive plays in RE24, but negatives in wRAA.
Well said. IIRC, hitting WAR calculations implicitly assume that all outs are the same, whether strikeouts or batted balls. As you say, there are a variety of positive outcomes that can come from batted ball outs. There are also possible negative outcomes, such as double plays (GIDP’s or lining into double plays).
As a relatively good base running team, the Royals appear structured to increase the positive outcomes from batted ball outs and decrease the negative outcomes. It would be interesting to see someone quantify the impact so that we could have a sense of how meaningful making contact is, especially for a good base running team.
Why is there so much emphasis in the Saber community on using regular season stats to predict postseason performance? The psychology, management, and environment of postseason games are all quite different from regular season games. Can we simply acknowledge, without caveats, that the impacts of adrenaline, pressure, and the playoff environment are not well accounted for in our statistics, and then approach this like a real challenge instead of writing everything off as luck?
it’s been discussed how clutch, whether leverage or playoffs, is not predictive. Yes we can look back and say someone was clutch because events happened. But going forward, we can’t predict “clutch”. Even if we could, the small sample size might prevent those clutch players from standing out!
I’m not saying “clutch” is predictive (and I’m not endorsing any particular statistic that attempts to measure “clutchness”). I’m just asking why it’s so difficult for sabermetric analysts to acknowledge that human factors, like nervousness or excitement, impact performance. It seems like we (I say we, because I do in fact believe in sabermetrics) are putting blinders on by willfully writing off playoff performance differences as inherently random, luck-driven events. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that a team with, e.g., a good clubhouse atmosphere, will play better? I’ve been parts of organizations (not pro sports teams, but I’m not sure it matters) that had constructive, positive atmospheres, and people tried harder and focused better than in other organizations where people were less invested. I think we should try to capture and analyze these factors instead of scoffing at them.
Because teams aren’t inherently worse at fielding in the playoffs, the errors just mean more so we remember them.
For instance, the Mets had a regular season fielding percentage of .986. In the postseason, they committed 9 errors. Seems like a lot. But that’s a .982 fielding percentage in the post season. Almost identical to their regular season performance.
I mean, a .986 FP is tied for 6th in the league.
A .982 FP is tied for 25th in the league.
It’s a pretty big difference.
regular season Fielding %’s are largely meaningless though because the vast vast vast majority of plays are incredibly easy. As lester just showed the difference between a bad fielding team and a good one is .006%.
I would say there could be a pretty big difference between a .982% in 20-ish games and a .986 in 162. You dont have as many routine plays to bring your overall % up.
A player getting nervous on a big stage and making a mistake is a real event that we should analyze. The fact that average postseason performance does not differ substantially from regular season performance does not imply that individual people playing baseball cannot or do not adjust their approaches or perform differently in the postseason versus the regular season.
I’ll work on finishing the rest of this table later, but I put together a table with the 2015 and 2014 playoff teams, that includes their standard fielding statistics in the postseason and in the regular season.
In both seasons, the group had a higher fielding percentage in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.
In 2015, three teams had a lower fielding percentage in the playoffs than they did in the regular season (Pirates, Rangers and Mets)
In 2014, two teams had a lower fielding percentage in the playoffs than they did in the regular season (Detroit and Baltimore)
For four out of the five teams, one play could have put them over their regular season totals. These are small samples, and it’s not uncommon for a team to have a 5, 9 or 15 game stretch where they under-perform by an error or two.
I plan on extending this through 2000, but it won’t be until at least late tonight. For the time being, here are some jpgs of the spreadsheets for 14/15
http://i.imgur.com/9CxU6oc.jpg
We’re really using field in percentage here, and in talking about a series where neither the “inside the park homer” nor the Lucas Duda play were called errors?
Moreover, you’re using the fielding percentage for the entire playoffs. Since we’re talking about the impact the Royals’ aggressiveness and speed had on the Series, the Mets’ defense against the Dodgers and Cubs should be irrelevant.
Plus, small sample size…
1) we’re using fielding percentage because people are specifically talking about errors.
2) You can find two plays in a 5 game stretch that you think should have been called errors, I guarantee that you can do the same thing with any 5 game stretch in the regular season as well, so to think that the regular season numbers aren’t skewed as well is a fallacy
3) I’m not talking about the Kansas City Royals, I’m responding specifically to the ‘nervous on a big stage’
If you want to put together your own data and examine that topic, feel free
“They sacrificed some offensive production to put above average defenders all over the field, and feature a few spectacular defenders in guys like Lorenzo Cain, Alex Gordon, and Alcides Escobar. Regardless of what method is used to evaluate defensive abilities, these guys grade out exceptionally well”
Actually, DRS thinks that Escobar is an average to below average defensive shortstop.
DRS is wrong then. Escobar is an exceptional defensive shortshop.
I haven’t watched him except a bit this postseason, so I have no idea. Just responding to Dave’s statement, which was a bit overbroad.
oh one other thing, price of Heyward goin’ up
My sense of the whole contact issue thing is that it’s simply a function of their defense focused strategy. You want to put a great defense team out there on a budget and you’re thing to the up with a bunch of fast players with weak beats. How to make those guys useful? Emphasize putting the ball in play over TTO. Doubt very much that this was a deliberate strategy to beat the house on clutch.
On the clutch aspect, a commenter on here has been emphasizing the human aspect that stats can’t reach. I completely agree with that and suspect that it’s largely a function of the confidence boost that is gained by a consistent set of guys, playing in a supportive structure, regularly being put in tight situations and coming up trumps, creating a positive feedback loop whereby guys come up lose whereas their opponents are full of nerves (soccer fans will recognize the German national teams success at penalty shootouts in this). The skill – to the extent that there is one – is on the side of management in keeping the bubble from bursting; confidence being an inherently fragile thing in something as emotional as sport.
You want to put a great defensive team out there and you are going to end up with a bunch of fast players with weak bats.
Damned predictive text.
My error was big in Game 4. But a few points:
1. The bases were loaded after 4 straight hits. With Kendrys Morales up. Should never have gotten to that point.
2. Morales’ ball could’ve gone a couple feet left or right and it was unlucky it glanced off the mound towards Correa anyway.
3. We assume the GIDP. Do we nnow he won’t rush his throw or the 1B won’t scoop it out?
4. The gidp would’ve scored 1 anyway, cutting it to 6-4. And Hosmer hit a 2-r HR next inning anyway
5. Royals were 0-11 the day before with RISP vs Keuchel, with most of the outs hard grounders or fly outs. Isn’t that bad luck?
#3 assumes that he makes a poor play anyway
Statisticians don’t assume the double play. In reality though, you do
But the point that there are several other factors that lead to the Astros losing outside of the error is certainly valid. Just furthers the idea that we place a higher standard on errors in the postseason because they stick out more
A retrospective on the Grienke to Milwaukee trade might be really interesting right now. That trade really set up a big part of the core that won this title
Earl Weaver recognized the value of run prevention more than 40 years ago. Brooks, Blair, Belanger, Grich, Dempsey, etc. were vital to bolstering the ERAs of their vaunted starting pitchers. Without having the elite-level closers, their bullpens were still outstanding. There’s nothing new under the sun.
I wonder how much this impacts Jason Heyward’s stock?
“Throughout the playoffs, broadcasters were falling all over themselves to credit the Royals contact hitting and aggressive baserunning”..
Did you actually watch the playoffs? They didn’t do that until late in the Royals/Blue Jays series, and stopped until the Royals were on the verge of winning the World Series..
And it’s not even noon yet.
George Brett tells the “crab legs” story every spring training. that might be it.
Another lesson: if you’re going to run a lot of contact-reliant plays like hit-and-runs, make sure your hitters have fantastic plate coverage.
Take a look at the list of teams with the highest Swing% this season:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=5&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=4,d
The Royals were 9th highest, certainly aggressive. But look at their Contact% compared to the other teams near the top in Swing% – they have the other high Swing% teams by a good margin. How did they do that? By being #2 in O-Contact% and #1 in Z-Contact%.
In short, no matter where you pitch them, they’re gifted at putting the bat on it. #EskyMagic = #RoyalsMagic
The big deal is, and has been, the bullpen. The Royals opponents have 6 innings to score. The Royals offense gets 9 innings to score. Hence, a lot of comeback wins.
But seriously, the Royals do seem to catch more than their fair share of breaks. Sal’s 0-2 slider off the plate that he pulled down the 3rd base line in last year’s playoffs was just ridiculous. (1) he shouldn’t have even swung at that pitch, (2) how the hell did he even pull it? (3) how the friggity-frack did it get down the line?
The ground ball to Correa woulda been an easy DP. That whole play was just ridiculous.
Not just that, but Collins should not have let Harvey hit and then sent him back out for a 9th. Familia gets a blown save on three weak sauce grounders. That’s amazing.
I didn’t even give up a hit in the two innings I pitched!
The point of “Royals force you into more errors” is not right, not wrong. More, it is poorly worded. The Royals force you to make more plays (on defense). More plays forced = more opportunities for error. And, as the Royals are being aggressive, those errors generally bear fruit in terms of runs or at least bases (and at bats).
The advanced scouting that gave us info on Duda’s arm, and Wright’s arm factor into this as well. Aggressive running for the sake of aggressive play is foolhardy. Doing it when you know that the defensive play is in the hands of suspect defenders, is a good idea.
This is right. The Royals don’t force bad plays but know that a percentage will be bad. You just have to get the ball in play for plays, and the Royals do that pretty well.
One lesson is the same one we learned from the ’06 Cards: it’s really really helpful to be in a weak division, where there’s less imperative/temptation to spend a lot of money. With the play-in game, the wild card is so devalued that spending to match a better-resourced opponent (as the Red Sox did in ’04, say) has become terribly risky.
Royals faced a bad bullpen with the Astros which allowed them to get to the LCS. They faced a so-so pen with the Jays and got some help with errors and a HR that was not a HR to face the Mets, not to mention that the Jays had regressed to the 500 team they were in the fist 100 games with a sub-par Price, non-MVP Donaldson, and hurt Encarnacion and Tulo.
The Mets only advanced to the WS because of Murphy’s atypical heroics in the first 2 series against a not very great Dodgers team (ecept their SPing) and catching the Cubs at the right time w/o Russell and a sub-par Arrieta (injury?). Sure, the Mets have a bunch of young arms, but that team on the field behind the young arms is not that great, and the only reliable BP arm is Familia. Mets had the easiest schedule in all of baseball and easiest LDS opponent.
KC is a good team for sure , but their SP is not great and they caught a bunch of breaks. Its not the best team that wins in the post season these days, its the team that catches the most breaks.
Not sure we saw the best teams in the World Series and at times it looked like we were watching a couple of AAA teams play. Glad it ended in 5
Um, that was a home run.
As to the rest–sour, sour grapes.
The last paragraph really nails the general lessons that will be learned from the Royals’ success during the season and, to a lesser extent, in the playoffs.
I would also hope that teams would go back to stressing situational hitting beginning in the minor leagues. Making contact against bullpens like that put out by the Royals should be a priority.
Maybe Dayton Moore and the KC Stat department know something Tom Tango doesn’t.
…huh?
Tango invented RE24 to explain why teams like the Royals perform better than they “should.”
One thing I’ve started recently considering is something I learned in sales, it doesn’t always matter what the process/plan is, as long as there is a coherant one.
The Royals strengths all play off of each other very well. Speed+high contact rate is better than high contact rate and low speed (in theory). Speed also translates to defense. Loading up on pen arms and a great defense makes mediocre starting pitching look better because you don’t leave guys in too long and more balls in play get converted.
I forget who did the study, but they studied the habits of top sales people and they all had some kind of process. The processes weren’t the same, but there was a logic. Perhaps the same is true in baseball. Maybe it’s not entirely aggregate only, maybe there are more correlations than we think. If the Royals were slow, their high contact skills might not translate as well. Or if they had low contact rates, then maybe their speed wouldn’t benefit as much.
The lesson I took away from the playoffs this year is to have a plan. Each team had a pretty disctintly different “style”.
Mets-Throw the ball really damn hard
Astros/Cubs/Blue Jays-1 Ace, hit a lot of bombs
Royals-solid SP, great pen, speed, contact, defense
Cardinals-Depth all over
Maybe this is me using the reverse scientific method though. Looking for evidence to explain a conclusion.
I grow weary of all the writing about a couple of times the Royals reached on an error. It is kind of the equivalent of saying “If the other teams played perfect baseball, the Royals would have lost.” While this is true, it is unrealistic.
The Royals played 16 games in the post season. The chart above would suggest that an average team reaches on an error about 5.5 times in 16 games. Errors happen. They happen to the best of teams (a couple of the Royals comebacks were harder because THEY made errors that led to runs.) They happen alot to teams that play a player like Murphy at second base (-1 DRS every 103 innings for his career.)
The Correa play should have gotten at least one out, he was a young guy trying to make it two on a deflected ball that bounced funny. The first Murphy play was routine for a good second baseman, but not necessarily routine for a player like Murphy with a runner crossing in front of him. (Your heading after that says “Defense Matters…..” and Murphy is a poster child for why.)
The Murphy error in game five just made the score look worse. That game was already over.
As for the Hosmer – Duda play, there are several things that have to go right on that play. Wright’s throw has to be accurate, (which it was) then Duda has to make a throw he didn’t expect to make, a throw that is rarely practiced, a throw he has to make only a couple of times a year, around a guy that is something like 6’4″, 250. That was an unexpected (at least for teams other than the Royals) aggressive play that may have caused the other team to make a mistake.
The other were just errors, which happen, and did not happen at a higher than expected rate.