GDT Opening Day: March 29th Phillies (Nola) @ Braves (Teheran)

gmwannabe 2018-03-30 13:20:57 UTC #81

Glad i only saw the first 4 innings. as an old schooler this analytics doesn't sit well. but that is the way it is and is going to be. VORP, WCR big deal. i think El is correct. if you are not going to let your starter go through the lineup more than 2 times, you need 8-9 starters on the team. because if your going to use that through the lineup thought, then the starters can go 5 and the next starter can go 4 and the game can be over. embarrassing loss though. but today is another day. hopefully the Big P can get through 5 himself.
gm

rkeden 2018-03-30 14:44:35 UTC #82

I feel like it has all been said, thought and imagined. And I don't want to tell you that I am friggin old and remember that pitchers finished what they started, or at least tried to and were allowed to. Robin Roberts finished 305 games in his career and Steve Carlton finished 254 complete games. In Kapler's world, the only way Nola will finish a game is if we run out of relievers (highly probable) and he is brought in to close out the 9th (also highly probable, if the stats say it will work most of the time). We could have 8 starters and also prepare Florimon, Kingery and Alfaro to pitch late innings. It just seems like that doesn't trust the players to specialize and be really good at a limited number of tasks. Not that I'm not thrilled to learn that Kingery can play nearly every position, including 2nd base. It also doesn't require everyone in the bullpen to warm up in the bullpen every single game as well as actually pitch in the game. How long can pitcher's and their arms survive in this Brave New World?

But, Hey! If the Hockey Blackhawks can pull an accountant out of the stands ( who hasn't played seriously in 12 years) to shutout a playoff-bound hockey team for 15 minutes, maybe that is a plan that we could implement?

EDmuch 2018-03-30 16:04:58 UTC #83

I kind of like seeing the strict "by the numbers" approach to baseball go up in smoke. I admit I am old school, as exemplified by the fact that I have doubted every statistical approach ever thrown out on this board. If this approach is the wave of the future, and it probably is, I think baseball will be harmed by removing the emotional "gut instinct" part of the game. I really don't thin most fans are going to come to the games with their iPads tucked under their arms ready to analyze every other pitch from a statistical standpoint. I think they come to the game to root form their gut for their "home team". And if "the gut" becomes irrelevant as compared to the iPad baseball, watching at the park will be a whole lot less fun. Just my 2 cents.

gmwannabe 2018-03-30 16:22:49 UTC #84

i just hope it doesn't turn into a "dog and pony show".
gm

zambonir 2018-03-30 17:22:56 UTC #85

The new school game is definitely less fun, just because it's slow, and choppy. I'd fix that with rules (minimum batters and the like), not by getting rid of analytics. The only other way to fix it is to not be a team with analytics and beat the teams that have it. A war that is already over.

The thing is, I don't buy the idea that people have been doing it the right way for years or that "gut" and "eye test" is the correct or default approach, and analytics isn't. This is baseball, it has always been built on statistics! Knowing a guy's ERA or batting average never made the game less fun and knowing Hoby Millner's lefthanded opponent's OPS, or that it's much easier to hit Aaron Nola the third time you face him, shouldn't have to either.

Also, we are a somewhat older group, even the more stats-minded among us (after all, SABR's been around for decades. And Davey Johnson was doing computers when the Phillies were doing steroids). The median age of a baseball TV viewer is 53. The game's future fan base has already grown up in the moneyball (and iPad) era. I personally do not want to look at my phone or Twitter when I'm at the ballpark but a lot of people do.

Anyway, one game. Hoby Milner had never given up a HR to a LHB in his career before yesterday. It's been a short career, and maybe he hasn't faced that many elite LHBs. If that's the case we'll find out soon enough. Or it will just be one of three or four bad games he might have in a good season.

andyb 2018-03-30 17:34:48 UTC #86

I am not sure that war is really over though. There are things we don't know all the time. The Royals were seen as an anti-analytic team but their defense was really better than many of the analytics at that time suggested (they are catching up a bit).

Things like shifts are annoying in an old school sense, but I really think that players will learn to slap the ball the other way (like Hoskins did yesterday though not against a shift). So I think we are in the era of teams overshifting a bit as teams adjust. We could also see a breaking point in the bullpen usage when an inning by your 8th best reliever is not as good as an inning by your 5th best starter even on the third time through the lineup at 70 pitches.

Numbers and metrics will constantly change. But there is still a place in the game for old school scouting IMO and you are right that we can solve some of the pace problems with substitution rules and the like.

allentown 2018-03-30 17:57:33 UTC #87

All the pitching changes made for a long game. So did all the problems which the relievers had. The game was whipping right along when the starters were pitching. The bad call on the not-checked swing, with no clear opportunity to appeal the call, may have determined the outcome. It would be better and faster if the 3rd base and first base umpires just automatically reversed a bad no-swing call by the home plate umpire. The team approached and pitched to Freeman with an attitude of outright fear, as if he were Bonds in his prime. It was proper to pitch around him in the bottom of the ninth, but the manager/pitching coach seemed to instill total timidity in the pitchers when Freeman batted.

schillingfan 2018-03-30 18:13:19 UTC #88

Based on recollection only, I seem to remember that on opening day starters tend to go 5-6 innings as they are stretching out still. Last thing I want to see is an injured Nola.

California_Dreamin 2018-03-30 18:20:55 UTC #89

I am remaining non committal on how this is all going to play out but will say two things...I am firmly in EDmuch's corner on what I am feeling right now and my other thought is this.

I am an avid Golden State Warrior fan and have warned Dub fans all season that I hated the Steve Kerr "rest a star a night" philosophy that he employed the first 4 months of the season and said that I believed the basketball gods [little g] would not view kindly this "we can turn it on any time we want" system and that this would turn out badly. It has and all 4 of their stars are now hurt...even though Kerr's goal was to keep them healthy for the playoffs.

Now it seems that the Phils [as are other teams] are almost jumping through hoops to protect pitchers and yet...with Neshek down the Phils already have, what, 4 pitchers injured after merely 1 game.

I believe if you treat players softly, they become soft. If yesterday is what we are going to see this season, this will not end well. If Aaron Nola, with a 5 run lead, is not going to be trusted to get the Phils into the 7th inning of a game, I hate to think how quickly Pivetta, Lively and VV are going to get pulled. They will be unhappy, the bullpen will be overused, and players will eventually gripe, first privately, then publicly.

I hate the way pitchers are used today, absolutely hate it. And I still subscribe to PC and SF's belief that when you used 3-4 relievers in a game, at least one of them is going to be bad. Last night all of them were.

A game that should have been won was lost because of it.

zambonir 2018-03-30 18:26:41 UTC #90

It wasn't the innings, it was the pitch count. 68 is low. He went six full, 89 in his first start last year. Teheren went 1/3 of an inning longer with 90 pitches.

But no question. Every pitch he doesn't throw in April is one he might throw in September. It's not a big deal if Milner gets his guy.

Funny I read an article the other day that lumped the Royals in with the Cubs and Astros. They tanked the same (if less voluntarily), but I don't think they had the same approach.

andyb 2018-03-30 18:50:39 UTC #91

The Royals were always fairly analytical but they bucked the moneyball OBP trend in favor of defense when the public analytics were unclear on the value of that strategy.

From 2014 this is the reaction of an analytics guy to his team winning unconventionally. Since then much of their strategy has been proven correct, but it does serve to show that analytics is ever evolving and all the stuff Kapler wants to try might be deemed unwise by next year.

zambonir 2018-03-30 19:16:20 UTC #92

I was thinking more of the managers love of small ball and sacrifices and stuff, but sure.

The war is over in the sense that nobody is going to ditch analytics. You always use both. One confirms the other. What happened yesterday with Nola could have just as easily happened with Mackanin. Conversely, I seem to recall Bowa loved to stay with his starters too long because the bullpen sucked (and he didn't mind saying so). Regardless of the approach a manager isn't always going to make the right decision, or even the obvious one (Charlie was also good at that. He'd say "yeah, the guy was 1-10 against that pitcher but I just had a hunch." For all we know there might have also been analytics supporting that).

And I still say the Phillies won the World Series because Maddon decided not to bother with the platoon advantage against Jenkins on the second night, since he didn't want to burn a rested Balfour. There are always decisions and whether you use a "book" that's tattered and ancient or an iPad sometimes you still go with your gut. But when the computer says something is likely to happen eight times out of 10, the other two times don't matter (just like the six times a guy with a .400 OBP makes an out doesn't matter). Nothing new school about that.

zambonir 2018-03-31 06:36:06 UTC #93

Gelb did a good job explaining things I thought. None of these numbers are especially complicated or advanced. Could Kapler have just gone with his gut and said, "who cares, Nola's a horse, let him finish!"? Sure. But he might have looked just as stupid on another day (or even this one, we don't really know).

Nola, last season, held hitters to a .642 OPS against an opposing lineup on the first look. It was .548 the second time through an order. And it jumped to .836 when facing them a third time in a game.

– Freddie Freeman was 6 for 16 with two doubles and a homer against Nola before Thursday. He walked on four pitches in his first plate appearance Thursday and grounded out in his second.

– Freeman was 0 for 5 with two strikeouts against Milner, a lefty specialist, last season. Left-handed batters hit .159/.274/.190 without a home run in 75 plate appearances vs. Milner in his rookie season. Freeman, for his career, has an OPS that is 149 points lower against left-handed pitchers than right-handed ones.

andyb 2018-03-31 14:08:44 UTC #94

I get his explanations here. What is worrying to me about the first two games is the overuse of the bullpen with short outings. We used 5 pitchers to get 9 outs from innings 5 to 7.

This is the type of situational substitution pattern that is good for the short term (playing the percentages) but potentially bad for the long term (overuse of the bullpen). A tendency of analytics types is to be very short term focused (in many industries). They produce lots of great situational statistics to help themselves in the short term, like any corporate CEO making sure quarterly earnings grow. Until it all collapses because the short term decisions are bad for the long term.

And Gelb discusses this:

philsphan67 2018-03-31 15:32:06 UTC #95

Just back from FLA, 1st time to Clearwater and it was fun! I am with Andyb here. It is a long season. I heard Smoltz say on mlb network this off-season that he could pitch every other day all season (as in 81 games) if he only got up 81 times. The Phils are using a lot of arms and getting a lot of pitchers up after two games. At 68 pitches with a 5-0 lead I don't get pulling Nola. As a math/physics guy I get the analytics, but I also know that Nola is coming into the prime of his career and should improve those analytics. I also know that Nola pitching in the 6th is better than a back of the bullpen guy in the 6th. 20 years ago, the experts would say the starter has to give you 7 today, now we know we are lucky if we don't go to the bullpen in the 6th and are using 4 more pitchers today. It is a long haul, at 68 pitches with the way Nola was throwing IMO he should finish the inning (at least).

andyb 2018-03-31 15:39:48 UTC #96

I think I just want them to get back to having 1-inning outings in the middle of the game and potentially 2 innings from Hutchison and Thompson. We have 5 pitchers who have pitched in back to back games today. Assume we need 2+ from Thompson behind VV regardless.

zambonir 2018-03-31 16:46:41 UTC #97

It seems like the thing they haven't necessarily addressed is the wear and tear of getting guys warmed up. I don't think anyone has invented a new throwing program (or a way to throw fewer warm-up pitches) that would make is possible to use the one-out guys or other short relievers more frequently.

Still, this is a bullpen with an extra arm (two right now sans Arrieta), and an obvious plan to cycle guys up and down from AAA (that Gelb article even speculated there would be a move today, though not so far). Plus more off-days on the schedule. Our feelings about bullpens and usage are still based on the seven-man days and the pre-analytics days. For it to work though, they have to be right that an objectively "lesser" pitcher can actually get the job done in carefully managed, optimal usage. The Milner over Nola choice was defensible; if a bit small sample driven for my taste (as far as Milner's so-called dominance over lefties and Freeman). If he makes that move 10 times maybe Milner gets eight outs and Nola only gets seven.

andyb 2018-03-31 19:40:55 UTC #98

But if Milner throws in 85 games this year maybe Nola does much better in the second half. I don't think the criticisms are naive at all about bullpen usage. And Kapler deserves time to show his strategy. But he sure looks like he is managing for the short term rather than the long term and just vowing to use 10-12 relievers in the season is really not a good answer to me because over time those last 3 guys are much worse than our starters.