Today’s Managers on Adjusting to the Home-Run Surge

The 2016 season featured the second-most home runs in baseball’s history. Though a few people around baseball want to attribute it to the placement of power hitters higher in the lineup or better coaching based on better data, the evidence that both exit velocity and home runs per contact are up across the league refutes the first, and the evidence of the latter is minor. It’s a bit of an open mystery, but it’s certainly possible that the ball is different now.

In any case, the fact that homers are up is irrefutable. And it’s on the game to adjust. So I asked many of baseball’s best managers a simple question: with home runs up, how have you adjusted how you approach the game? Lineups, rotations, bullpens, hooks: is anything different for them today than it was two years ago?

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Terry Collins, New York Mets: No, really doesn’t. The game has changed, that’s the game now: home runs. And we’re lucky we got a few guys who can hit ’em. That’s where it’s at. As I said all last year, our team was built around power, so you sit back and make sure they have enough batting practice and be ready to start the game. We’ve got a good offensive team. Neil. Getting Neil Walker back, that’s big. David back and Ces and Jay and Granderson. We got a bench full of guys that could be everyday players. We’re pretty lucky.

I watched the playoffs, too, and I know what you’re talking about. I talked to Joe Maddon a couple days ago about how the playoffs may change and he said, ‘We didn’t have your pitching. I’ll leave ’em in.’

Dave Roberts, Los Angeles Dodgers: No. You know, I think that guys are stronger. Guys are hitting the ball out of the ballpark. I think that ultimately, for me, [for] the coaches, it’s trying to make it as simple as pitch, play defense, and have quality at-bats to try to win a baseball game. So I think that each game is separate, but I think that influx of homers doesn’t kind of change the way I manage or look at the game.

Jeff Banister, Texas Rangers: I think obviously you watch the game of baseball, you see that it’s changed. I think that you watch the playoffs, and how pitchers were used, some of the guys out of the bullpen; even we used Matt Bush for a lengthy period of time in the playoffs.

However, the rise in home runs, I think that there is also trends in that, too, over the course of a number of years, where you see trends upwards and you see the trends go down, too.

Constructing lineups, I think the information that we gather now that allows us to put players in a lineup, and we’re not — you see managers who aren’t opposed to be taking those guys and putting them in the two-hole and lead them off and really capitalize on that extra at-bat.

Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays: No, I don’t think so. But I agree, there were home runs that were up. I think our pitchers probably caught the brunt of it more than what we would like. You know, I think for the most part, the Rays, we consider our ballpark to be a pitcher’s ballpark. I don’t know if it always played like that this past year.

I mean, you look at Chris Archer’s season and you take away 10 home runs and he basically had the exact season that he had the year before, when we were talking about how special he was. He’s still very special. Where those 10 home runs came from, I don’t think it’s all — nobody quite has to find — I’m sure a couple mislocated pitches, but it did trickle out throughout the American League that we saw quite a bit. There were a lot of what appeared to be fly balls getting out of the ballpark.

I think if you’re managing to try to avoid the home run and you get caught doing that too many times, it’s going to eventually — it’s going to burn you.

Look, lineups are built these days where I think most everybody in the lineup is capable of hitting a home run. It’s part of the game. You just kind of follow that along, knowing that it’s possible.

Bob Melvin, Oakland Athletics: Oh, definitely. You manage the strengths of the team. So we flipped it around here the last three or four years on how we tried to do some things. But, you know, it’s always nice to be one swing away from scoring a couple runs. I think it’s more the on-base thing that we are looking at than potentially trying to add power. We feel like incrementally we have some power throughout the lineup, like you talked about.

Depending on the club, when you go over your scouting report, you are aware of teams that hit the ball out of the ballpark. We feel like we have some guys that are good sinkerball guys; we have some guys in the bullpen that are swing-and-miss guys. You have what you have as far as how you defend against that, the personnel you have. And it has a lot to do with how you set up your scouting reports on guys, whether guys are pull guys or you try to stay down in the zone or whatever. But I don’t think particularly we’re looking to defend the home run. You’re just trying to make good pitches.

Mike Matheny, St. Louis Cardinals: [Bullpen usage is] something that I think we’ve seen kind of evolve over time, and when you have the pleasure of having multiple days off in a week and you get the rest that you need, it’s actually fun to be able to use those guys in that way.

But as far as a 162-game season goes, you can get creative with your roster and you can get creative with all different kind of things to make that happen. It would be nice to have that many options available to go off as what you use in the postseason, but it’s a hard model to sustain.

Watching him come in last year, I thought what a great shot in the arm that was for us to watch [Trevor Rosenthal] late in the season, come in and be able to soak up some innings and do it extremely well.

Paul Molitor, Minnesota Twins: You know, I’ve said this throughout my brief tenure. I like flow of an offense rather than to bank too much on the home runs. Some teams, Torontos and Baltimores and people like that, that relied on a heavy resource offensively. We hit 200 homers. We had one guy that hit 20% of them. It’s something that you welcome. I still prefer good at-bats, good situational hitting, good flow on the bases. It’s nice when you can start to win some games because you know you got guys that can hit it over the fence.

I think all the managers are a little more hesitant to lose outs on the base paths these days in terms of how you manage. I’m a little guarded that way in taking potential — putting outs on the board or being too aggressive offensively — but I still think it has its place.

I think that’s part of the studying going on. Talking about guys with spin rate and launch angles and figuring out how to pitch better and smarter.

I don’t think what I did and what my coaches do — I don’t think we’re going to try to work any harder, we might try to work a little smarter. And if we can figure out how to do that with better resources and application, that’s what we’re going to do.

Craig Counsell, Milwaukee Brewers: Well, it does. I think the playoffs were a great example of how runs were created through home runs. They weren’t created through, you know, walks and base hits and extended rallies. So I don’t know if there’s particular strategies that are affected by that, but it is something that certainly that you know.

At this point, offense is really being created by — the home run is such a key component to creating offense. And I think in our park, it’s critical to look at. So you’re aware of it, but as far as, like, particular strategies that happen during the game, I’m not sure that there are.

Bryan Price, Cincinnati Reds: Well, I think it’s certainly — the response to that is why are we getting so many balls in the air and can we isolate more guys or teach more guys to work down in the zone, or to be able to find that pitch that will create more ground-ball contact. I think that’s the response.

The defense to that and finding that combination of ground-ball/strikeout pitcher. In our ballpark, certain times of the year it’s very hard to keep a fly ball in the ballpark. And in order to win with any consistency, you’ve got to be able to do that with a higher rate, keep the ball on the ground or in the stadium, or you have to have guys that can compete and outslug from time to time.

I think when you start to earmark pitchers and start to look at them the ground-ball rate and strikeout rates have brought on a higher importance with all the analysis that we’re seeing, and it’s the way that we will compete against the home run.

Thanks to David Laurila for his help gathering quotes!