5:40pm: The two sides “will have” a deal, tweets Fancred’s Jon Heyman, who adds that the expectation is for a new four-year deal to be completed by tomorrow.
12:30pm: The Dodgers are “getting close” to striking a new contract with manager Dave Roberts, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). It has widely been anticipated that the sides would line up on a deal.
Roberts has overseen three productive seasons in Los Angeles, reeling off division titles and taking the club to the World Series in each of the past two seasons. Of course, the Dodgers have lost in both trips, though it’s tough to judge those results too harshly. Along the way, Roberts has worked closely with the front office to deploy a supremely deep and flexible roster.
All indications have been that the Dodgers would keep Roberts at the helm, though the mechanism for doing so hasn’t been certain. There has been plenty of optimism for a new contract, though it has also remained possible that the team would simply exercise its $1.1MM option over Roberts. It seems likely he’ll receive a significant pay bump over that salary level, which was reached when he was hired as a rookie skipper.
This means losing another World Series
I second that. Complete idiot at managing skills.
You mean third that…hahahahaha
Yea…Let me take out Rich Hill who gave up one hit and go to Madson one batter later to blow the game for 3 times in the same series and somehow it’s Madson’s fault for “not doing his job”…every RP isn’t going to have a 0.0 ERA…so I’ll 4th that…keep it going! lol
“I had a conversation with Rich, and we talked about it,” Roberts told reporters. “He said, ‘Keep an eye on me. I’m going to give it everything I have. Let’s go hitter to hitter and just keep an eye on me.’ So right there, I know Rich did everything he could, competed, left everything out there.”
Yep, all Roberts fault. Don’t let facts stand in your way of your narrative.
+1
When was the last decade the Padres made the playoffs???? Every time I think the Pads have turned it around they decide to trade all their good, young, talent and the rebuild begins again. You can disparage Dave if you like, but he’s already led the Dodgers to as many World Series appearances as the Padres have in their entire history.
Hill was almost through the lineup for the 3rd time. That they hadn’t gotten to him yet was a bonus for the Dodgers since opponents have an .811 OPS 3rd time through. Hill pitched the entire season without once facing a batter for the 4th time. Plus Roberts went out to ask Hill how he felt, and before he could ask, Hill handed him the ball. There isn’t a manager in baseball that would not have taken Hill out.
Blatant ineptitude on the “big Stage”.
…and so many millions were watching !
…. but ‘in-your-face idiocy doesn’t really seem to matter; does it ?…
Sheeeeesh.
Are you really comparing the roughly 200 million dollar Dodgers to the Padres?
Dave Roberts was also a coach for the Padres before they let him go. San Diego has a great tradition of getting rid of managers/coaches/baseball ops personnel only to watch them find greener pastures elsewhere. Along with Roberts, Bruce Bochy, Bud Black, AJ Hinch, and Theo Epstein immediately come to mind.
Hey Padres, here’s a hint: maybe it’s not the coach’s fault. Maybe its the players…..
Lolololol…You could do this with almost every team in the league…watch baseball much?? You do realize that none of these guys had only worked for Padres their entire career…i mean a child could formulate a more well conceived argument.
I actually watch baseball quite a bit, thank you.
Do you realize that Bochy/Roberts only coached for the Padres and Black was a first-time manager (only for the Padres) before their respective current positions?
My point – which you conveniently sidestepped in favor of levying personal attacks – in my original response was that the Padres have let multiple managers/coaches go only to have them find quick (if not immediate) success elsewhere. This is especially pertinent given that the article concerns Dave Roberts. This lends a bunch of support to the fact that since Kevin Towers left, management has done an extremely poor job of evaluating on-field talent vs. dugout leadership when qualifying long-term success, which has proved to be to their detriment.
I am also a Padres fan. So please, stop trolling and embarrassing the rest of us. As some poster said above, it’s fine if you don’t bother with the facts getting in the way of your narrative. But I will. And I’ll be the first one to admit that a large part of the Padres’ woes is due not only to develop major league talent, but the inability of ownership and management to identify and retain quality managers/coaches.
2007
WC game vs Rockies.
Maybe they made it after. Not sure. All I know for sure is trevor Hoffman blew a save. Matt Holliday scraped his face on the ground scoring the winning run.
Yeah, let me know when Holliday actually touches home.
We’re still waiting for Holliday to touch home.
Edit – I see somebody already posted that. Cool. The fact still stands.
Go through every other team….see a trend… names after names working for different organizations…Zaidi just signed with Giants…how many teams did he work for? Whether they are fired or quit what is the difference these days? Whats really sick is that you could be embarrassed by what some stranger posts on this comment board….like did he really just type that…lol, get some help dude seriously. There are facts and then there are facts that YOU say is a narrative. That is life in a nutshell though.
Dave Roberts sucks at managing the big game. not a narrative. until he wins I will say it whenever his name is mentioned
I’ve read that Roberts didn’t have intentions of removing Hill but rather walked to mound to check up on Hill. However, as Robert approached the mound Hill handed Roberts the ball, Roberts took the gesture as Hill coinciding that he had nothing left. At the very least, Roberts is accountable for the communication breakdown.
My thoughts exactly
Roberts wasn’t in charge during the Series, folks. Just this week on MLB Network Radio’s Inside Pitch, he was asked point blank about using Madson, and not using Beuhler. To the former, he responded, “THEY wanted the match-ups,” making him and Honeycutt bystanders. To the latter, his response was short and sweet: “Not allowed.” Then, he started his PR defense about how good the Sox are, etc.
Let the know-it-all SABR-geeks and egghead ‘analysts’ chew on that this off season.
He has to have learned not to pull Hill when he is crusing by now. Got burned by it in 2 consecutive WS.
Rich Hill himself said he was tiring, and that he needed Roberts to keep an eye on him and be ready with the hook.
But that doesn’t fit your narrative though.
Even the president criticized Roberts…lol
“When I said ‘Keep an eye on me’ – I never said ‘tired.’ I never said, ‘I want to come out of the game.’ I never, ever want to come out of a game,” Hill said
How does this fit the narrative Cam?
He’s competitive, of course he’s never going to want to come out.
But what else do you think “keep an eye on me” means? He didn’t want Dave Roberts checking out whether his stirrups were looking top notch, did he? No. It means the blatantly obvious.
I have no idea what the President has to do with this.
That means if he sees him struggling, get out there and pull him. You don’t pull him after a strike out. He’s a pitch away from an inning ending double play at that point and at less than 100 pitches.
Shhesh…idgaf if he is tired its the world series, pop a couple of greenies and do this!
That was 100% damage control. Watch the tape, Hill literally puts the ball in Roberts hand and pats him on the butt as he walks away! Roberts was coming out just to see how he was feeling! I was stunned, I’ve never seen anybody bag out of a game like Hill did. And this is coming from a Red Sox fan who loved seeing him pitch in our uniform and finding success with Oakland, the dodgers.
Rich Hill was two pitches away from his postseason career high – he was in uncharted territory. Boston’s hitters are lethal third-time-thru-the-order. He completely lost Bogaerts on that walk earlier in the inning. He gave up two loud outs on liners the innings before. He asked Roberts to keep an eye on him after the 6th. When Roberts came out to check on him, he gave him the ball within seconds and headed off.
Roberts had to take a lot into account when he decided to pull him. It is what it is – but his thought process was accurate. Sometimes, the results don’t fall the way we want them to.
So what? He just struck a guy out. He should have faced another batter at least. Hill was fine
Roberts pulled a Joe Maddon and over-managed the game. They couldn’t hit Hill, why would you take him out? Throws curveballs, doesn’t matter what his pitch count was.
“Let’s take out a guy throwing a 1 hitter – Then replace him w/ a guy who let ALL 5 inherited runners score in the 1st 2 games… AM GENIUS!!”
Keep defending this choke job, Cam.
Fyi, When you have to resort to “the Dodgers FO knows more than you” you lose the debate
Xabial, considering the amount of absolute garbage you spew on here, I haven’t bothered to read this one.
Whatever you have to say means absolutely nothing – and that’s your fault for being a spamming tool.
“Xabial, considering the amount of absolute garbage you spew on here, I haven’t bothered to read this one.
Whatever you have to say means absolutely nothing – and that’s your fault for being a spamming tool.”
Translation: “I have nothing, and you hurt my feelings.” Roberts is the man”
Good jabs landed by all!
Thanks for the entertainment.
But yeah, leave a guy in until something happens. Stats from regular season don’t mean jack during post season.
Gave Yas all thumbs up too!
It was a choke job for sure
I mean its the world series. Hills last start of the year. He has all offseason to rest.
Hill is a coward and quit on his team
I never read what xabial writes, I just like to down-vote his comments every time.
A lesser-reported but equally significant mark against Roberts in my eyes is the fact that he essentially threw Hill under the bus after the game by even mentioning what the pitcher had said and all but throwing up his hands in front of the media and saying “Not my fault.”
I can’t think of any truly great managers who would’ve shared whatever Hill said *so* publicly and so soon after the fact.
Trump tweeted some bs about hating when starters get pulled after cruising only to have ‘nervous’ reliever getting shelled. (Not a direct quote, but I’m reasonably certain that he said nervous)
“Trump tweeted some bs” is probably a statement one could use accurately several times a day about every subject. It’s sort of amazing he felt it was important enough to tweet about this.
i don’t think the problem so much is pulling Hill, who’s not known for durability and whom he realistically would have needed again later in the series… so much as swapping him out for a reliever who hadn’t been effective at all in the series so far….
Roberts reliever selection was very questionable. Watching them blow high leverage spots, while the best relievers he had sit quietly on the pine, unused, was frustrating.
Choked. 1 of the biggest WS choke jobs. (x2)
Thumbs up coz I hate the Dodgers
i’m not defending Roberts, who i do find as a bit lacking in the game management department, i just think it’s painfully naive to say his mistake was simply not leaving Hill in.
There were several very good reasons not to, and just assuming Hill would have been fine is assuming a lot that you can’t prove. If you want to go after Roberts, go after his choice of relievers at that point, that was where, in my opinion, the big mistakes were made.
I have to agree with xabial here
If you dont have any good options to go to, dont go to anyone but Hill for that inning. Baez and Urias were the only dodger pitchers not pitching terribly in the WS and dave himself said they were not available for game 4
If you’re going to argue the Dodgers really had all of 2 good bullpen arms than they could never have won the Series anyways and all the fault lies with people far above Roberts for not giving him a championship caliber team, that Roberts somehow gets to the WS anyways
again, i think it’s incredibly lazy to just jump to the conclusion that everything would have turned out differently if he’d have just left Hill in and therefore Roberts sucks
Agreed, the Red Sox were winning that series regardless of whether or not Roberts made the right calls. They were the far superior team, plain and simple.
Sure Hill might have given up a run. But 3? Doubt it. Its really not lazy to say you should keep in a guy throwing a 1 hitter, coming off a K with a pitch count under control
Or at least leave Hill in for the LH hitter that Alexander came in to face. Even if he was tired, Hill is still the better choice for one more batter there than Alexander.
Yep. This is not good news for us Dodger fans.
“Mr. Roberts, the Red Sox are on the phone. They want to know your ring size.”
They already know it. Roberts is a 2004 hero. Maybe he’s a gift that keeps on giving?
In World Series appearances so far
Dave Roberts zero wins
Alex Cora one win
This, coming from a “fan” of 3 MLB teams.
Been there and done that, Yelsnit. He won’t take your legitimate comment very well. Disproportionately angry.
He’s also a creepy as puck Eileen stalker.
The comment isn’t legitimate.
Not my fault you’re narrow minded.
You may want to add the Brewers and Nationals to your list of teams that you are a “fan” of. I hear they are going to be pretty good next season.
Throw the Cubs and Astros into that as well!
Drop the Mets tho
Not sure what, if any, relevant meaning one can draw from wins vs non-wins here.
@MetsYankeesRedSox
If you have a point in the 1-0 (Cora over Roberts) no one seems to know. As usual with you.
Robert’s needs to just manage the baseball team and stop being so analytical. Go with who is hot and get rid of Honeycutt.
Honeycutt is not the problem it’s the front office
“Roll with the hot hand, ignore the numbers” is a great way to not win 3 consecutive division titles and back-to-back pennants.
Honeycutt has been great with the pitchers
I like Roberts. I just think he is playing the cards he is given. His bullpen is Trash. Front Office wont spend on the pen.”, whats he to do?
The front office also filled the team with platoon guys
They need to fire him and replace him with someone who can win the division, the NLDS, the NLCS and a 4th game in the WS.
Correct and so easy to find. Sarcasm off.
Firing a manger based on moves they make is pointless. Fans will never like the moves a manager makes. If its not Roberts is the next guy who people will question. This is why firing Robers would be stupid to all the people wanting it
I agree entirely. Baseball is a game that requires unique decisions involving changing variables in evolving circumstances. There is no definitive answer to the question of whether to replace a pitcher, for example. The test of the manager has to be how well he sifts through those variables over time. I think it’s also notable that I’ve met very few fans of the game who didn’t consider themselves superior to the manager currently in their sights.
Newsflash … second-guessing the manager and the front office, and criticizing players who don’t perform the way we want is a big part of being a fan. That is PRECISELY why we’re all here.
In a nutshell, I think Roberts has made some poor decisions in the postseason – most glaringly obvious, going to Madson multiple times in high leverage spots.
But, the bottom line is, this latest Dodgers incarnation has done more than any other in the last 30 years. They were tipped pitches away from taking the WS against HOU, and got beaten by a BOS team that had historically incredible hitting with 2 outs. It sucks, but these things happen.
This FO has done what no other Dodgers FO could do in decades – stop whining and complaining, and respect what they have achieved.
It pains me to say this, but some Dodgers fans really are the most childish and idiotic around.
Reminds me of Bobby Cox. A great manager for the regular season, but not the guy you want for post season games.
Yeah, back-to-back NL pennants is just awful.
Thank you, Karkat, for bringing logic into your post.
anyone could do that blindly with the roster that he was handed
The biggest nonsense being spewed is that the Dodgers lost because of Roberts, or Freidman, or analytics, or Trump. The Dodgers lost because the Red Sox were by FAR the better team. They won 108 games, and they were playing their AAA roster from mid-August onward. They should have been 3-1 favorites. It’s no mistake that the only game LA won was the freak-a-zoid 18 inning affair.
The best team doesn’t ALWAYS win….but they do most of the time. And in 2018 the Sox were the best team in MLB, by a LOT. The Dodgers had little shot from pitch #1.
Doesn’t guarantee anything for 2019; there were some career years there (tho, frightingly, Mookie might get better). But 2018 was just their year. LA didn’t lose the WS, the Sox won it. And would have beaten anybody else.
Well said.
truth. I thought the Red Sox would win in 4. Even with a different manager, the Dodgers- or ANY NL team- weren’t going to beat the Red Sox in a 7 game series.
In the past twenty years the team with the best record has only won five times – 25%. May go up from 25% as you go further back, but the best team does not win most of the time.
In those same twenty years:
There were 6 occasions where the best team had ten or more wins than the champion.
The best team in 2001 had 116 wins, the champion had 92. Difference of 24 wins. The Sox had 16 more wins, so clearly the Dodgers had more than a little shot.
The average win total for the best team was 101, the average champions win total was 95.
The average champion had the 4th best record.
Best team won in 2018, but it’s not normally the case.
Yes, Baseball, because of it’s sort of silly playoff/division system (specifically, a one-game playoff for a team that won 97 games while the Indians got a full series) the best team doesn’t always win. The Red Sox were the best team, by far. Madson was terrible, yes, but the bullpen was a big issue for the Dodgers this postseason, and Hill basically took himself out of the game. Hill is a great pitcher, an even better person, but durability is not his claim to fame. And even with that game, the Dodgers would have almost certainly lost the Series. The Dodgers were great, and yes, they are a team that uses analytics heavily, which many people here seem to find a fault.
But you know what? Boston is the most analytically driven team in baseball. For pete’s sake, Bill James – the father of modern baseball analytics – works in their front office, and has for a decade. They were the better team, period.
And yet Cora had the freedom to go against the analytics, and Pearce got the MVP.
Steve Pearce? He is a player that would not even have a job were it not for modern analytics. In “old-school” thinking, his skill-set is not desirable – poor defense, can’t hit right-handed pitching, no baserunning or “small-ball” value. The whole point of “sabermetrics” or modern analytics or whatever you want to call it, is to find value in unexpected sources. Pearce is a guy that would have never seen the light of day under a guy like Lasorda or Cox some other old-school manager. Boston’s front office found his skill set limited but highly useful against an LA team with lots of left-handed pitching. That’s contemporary baseball analytics at its best.
Well, if we’re going to keep arguing the same points over and over, the big nonsense you are spewing is not asking why the Red Sox were the far better team, and why they’ve won four championship in the last 15 years. As if those questions aren’t even relevant? Answer those questions straight up, or give it rest.
Like many counting stats, wins really don’t mean much; there’s too many variables attached to them. The Rays, as their fans point out, won 90 games. Big deal….did they make the playoffs? No. They would have been better off winning 60. You get better draft choices and aren’t deluded that you’re close to being competitive. Getting to the playoffs is often is more of a geometric progression than simply an arithmetic one.
There wasn’t one area in the “game as played” that the Dodgers were better than the Sox; offensively, defensively, game skills. Given that perspective, it’s easy to see how the mistakes Cora made (there were definitely some) had a much smaller effect than the mistakes Roberts made. The Dodgers had a very small margin of error in which to operate.
I think the answer is clearly that the Red Sox had the better team and the better plan. They did what was necessary to give themselves that margin of error, which is how you win the big prize most of the time. So my question remains the same. Why can the Red Sox that make that happen, but not the Dodgers? This is the issue for those of us who look at the larger picture instead of fixating on every decision a manager makes.
Random possible answers…
1. Contact-orientation. Let’s face it, nobody plays defense anymore, especially around the infield. DD knew this in July when he obtained Kinsler; at least that tightened up (with Mooreland) one side of the IF (ya, the error, I know…).
Especially in the AL East, the IF defenses are hideous; that’s why Tampa and Boston ranked #1 and #3 respectively in BABIP. The Dodgers are still in the “3 true outcome” fantasy.
2. Versatility doesn’t mean ability. Ya, Kiki’s cool, and plays anywhere; but does he play everywhere at a championship level? I know it’s a small point, but in a short series, small points get magnified.
3. ALL stats are just vague generalities. Shrinking metrics developed over a 162 game season into a short series decreases their viabilities.
The Sox are (a) just more athletic and (b) less nutty than the Dodgers. There are no Puig-s or Manny-s on the Sox, at least not to the degree that they seem to influence the Dodgers. Again, who knows? The Sox might have more. But it doesn’t seem to affect their play.
Every team is using advanced stats these days to a greater or even greater extent. I’ve asked many times here how any one team can know they are collecting better data and interpreting it more intelligently than the competition. Nobody has ever tried to answer that question. Shame, since the answer is totally simple: your team wins. Winning is the only way any team can prove that what they think they know, they really do know.
So ask me why, and I say in the end it’s all about having the better plan and executing on that plan. That’s why Boston has won four championships in 15 years and the Dodgers are still looking for their first in 30. Somebody has the better plan, and it isn’t the guys who run the Dodgers, I’m sorry to say. I’m even sorrier to say that the guys who run the Dodgers don’t seem to have the humility to admit it. Better plans come from admitting that your current plan isn’t working.
The three most successful teams this decade have been SF, KC and Boston, three teams that don’t live and die by the “saber” (metric). If a team is looking for metrics to answer all their questions, they’re asking them to do things that they are unable to do.
The new metrics (some of which aren’t “new” at all; Branch Rickey understood OBP, Boog Powell launch angle) have undoubtedly increased our knowledge about the game. But all stats happen within certain circumstances, some of which are (at least to date) un-quantifiable. And it’s those very circumstances which create the stat, not the other way around.
I wouldn’t be too discouraged as a Dodger fan; the core is strong, the FO bright, and they have lots (and lots) of money. They just ran into 2 better teams.
And they need to look past the numbers, and look at Puig and say, “This guy is really NUTS. Let’s move on from him”.
Everybody is looking for the better model of what happens within a baseball game. It’s like any of the social sciences, where models can become better and more predictive over time, but the systems are inherently not deterministic so they will resist being described fully that way.
The only way you can know if your model is any good at predicting is if it produces the outcomes your theory says it should predict. It’s like building a model to forecast the weather. You will know your model works better than the others when it accurately predicts the future more frequently than another models. If your model isn’t predicting as well as others, then it’s the model needs to be changed, not reality.
When I hear Friedman talk about outcomes, it’s never that. It’s always about how they are taking the right approach but they just got unlucky. Does anyone on the outside looking in see it that way? Not really, and for a good reason. We can see it’s more about preparation than luck.
As for Puig, I think you have that kind of backwards. He may be a goofball sometimes, but he plays with a rare passion for the game that has nothing to do with numbers. His occasional mental lapses aside, he’s highly entertaining to watch play the game. And isn’t baseball supposed to be entertaining?
My problem with Puig is this: I’m reasonably certain that if a ball is hit to RF, Mookie Betts will do the right thing with it (whatever the right thing is). With Puig, there’s a question mark. And Murphy’s Law being the 11th Commandment, he’s going to make it an adventure at the worst possible time.
When Freidman was with the Rays, he got (took) credit for their almost immediate success. Actually the Rays’ success was due to a fabulous farm system he had inherited (and promptly destroyed, BTW), some decent trades (some good, some not so, like everybody else) , and a down cycle from the rest of the AL East. He was always less the “wonder boy” that everybody thought he was.
But he was at the forefront of the metric approach, an approach of highly debatable worth. It’s popular; the reasons too varied to get into here. Suffice to say it’s more marketing (like everything else in MLB) than reality. MLB fans are numbers-obsessed; always have been since the day Batting Average was designed. You can argue metrics saved MLB at the turn of this century, with the proliferation of Fantasy Leagues, websites, etc. Otherwise, it was going right down the toilet.
Again, not that metrics lack value. Black kids underperform white kids on SATs; that’s a fact. But to conclude that that fact means black kids are dumber than white kids is chicanery. You have to probe into the reasons this is so. All metrics occur within a certain context; just citing the numbers really doesn’t do anything useful.
I think Andrew is still stuck in that Level-1 type reasoning. Others (Sterns in Milwaukee, Luhnow in Houston, DD in Boston) have grown past it. They don’t deride metrics (tho I suspect DD does so in private), but try to work them into a larger context.
MLB is just too random and accidental to quantify with that type of precision. There’s truth to the vague generalizations metrics give you; but they are generalizations, and they are vague.
Uh, bob, Boston has the biggest analytics department in baseball, by far. Bill James works in their front office., and has for years and years. SF has a very strong analytics department as well, although they use a different sort of “grading” system, as has been reported by many.
KC lost 100+ games this year.
BlueSKyLA, teams use stats that we don’t even remotely have access to, so it’s hard to say what teams are using which stats. That’s your answer – MLB teams have been hiring analytics guys from the internet and publishing world for years now, starting with Boston’s hire of Bill James a decade ago. We don’t know what teams are looking at – they have internal evaluations and stats and much more nuanced and complete numbers than we’re ever going to get as fans. Teams aren’t looking at WAR; that’s stuff for fans or casual observers.
The Dosgers have been a consistent winner since they really beefed up their analytics department, even playing in a division with a team with superior/equal financial firepower. That they haven’t won a WS is unfortunate, but I dont think 800++ games of success are negated by the 12 World series games they’ve played over the last two years. Any team can win an individual game under any circumstances; Hell, the Orioles won three games against the Red Sox this season; with the right sequencing, that means the Orioles could have taken the Red SOx to a seventh game, right?
Baseball is probabilistic, a characteristic that lends itself to mathmatical modeling. That differs from randomness, which means the probability of something happening is 50-50. The game is in some respects chaotic, which in statistical terms means that some events have consequences that defy prediction; the defensive error made with two outs that leads to five runs, for instance. The trick is to know the difference, to know when your model is actually predictive. Quite a few of the newer statistics in baseball that fans love to cite these days haven’t proven themselves to be predictive, and as such should be treated with more skepticism than they are getting.
Front offices, most if not all of which are now collecting proprietary data and building propriety models in an effort to get an edge over the competition, also have to use caution in assessing whether their data and models are really doing that for them. I think this is the problem with Friedman. He always talks with certainty that his approach is the right approach, and he sticks by that story even when his team gets blown out of the water by a team with a clearly superior approach. Something is wrong with that picture. You should only show that level of certainty when your approach wins. Outcomes are all that matters. If you think you’ve won on your spreadsheet when you’ve lost on grass and dirt then you aren’t being honest, either with the fans or yourself.
As for Puig, I could agree with you entirely but without a doubt he’s highly popular with the fans, and not for no reason. His occasional brain faerts are more than compensated by his exciting and enthusiastic style of play. He’s just fun to watch, weirdness and all.
Managers and management personnel have just replaced “The Book” with the spreadsheet. Ask any manager why he did such and such n a certain situation these days, and he’ll drag out some obscure metric, often referring to it in rather nebulous terms. But it’s a useful dodge in the days of fantasy baseball.
We don’t know what goes on in the locker room; maybe Roberts took Hill out because Hill’s drugs were wearing off. Think he would have said that to the press? I’m not suggesting that was the case; but all kinds of things go one that we’re not privy to. And all of those things influence outcomes.
The whole sport is too dependent on accidents. There’s nothing wrong with trying to “model” those accidents, as long as you realize that at the end of the day, they are accidents.
Is there something wrong with Friedman’s models? Could be. Is there something wrong with the dependency on the model. Could be.
They aren’t accidents, really, they are events with unpredictable consequences. No matter how good they may be, models tend to break down at some level. They can only predict so much variability at best, and then are exposed to events that resist modeling no matter how much data you collect.
In the sciences the big movement from the 1940s (when computers first starting coming in) was determinism. The theory was if you can collect enough data you can predict anything. This turned out to be a much more difficult problem than expected and it really bothered people in the sciences. In trying to figure out why this was the case, chaos theory emerged. The basic concept is that small things that are hard to measure or predict can have huge consequences. So we got the “butterfly effect” and other chaos-based explanations. In baseball the equivalent might be called the “bad hop effect.”
So in baseball while it might appear to be a statistically sound to not to steal bases very often, does that model take into account how the pitcher behaves differently when faced with the base stealing threat? It might be difficult to measure but we know intuitively that something happens. So what I am saying overall is that a good scientist knows when their model is failing to predict outcomes, and goes searching for better explanations for why things happen the way they do. I’m not sure we’re seeing that in baseball, but I am more sure it isn’t happening with this team.
Good thesis. And, good luck getting any SABR-metrician (or “true believer”) to admit to the existence of anything resembling chance or chaos theory, including the human element. Even though they use the crutch of probability as a convenient excuse. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few.
I have yet to see one of these arrogant statisticians test any of their metrics with a GOF calculation. A few have done tolerance/accuracy computations to determine a viable sample size for a given “stat,” but they aren’t often published. One example is BABIP, where FanGraphs notes that it’s unrealiable until you have at least 3,000 data points! And that should be one of the simpler calculations!
Like I said, there are a few who are truthful about the scope of their analytics. Some will even admit that quantifying defense and pitching is – as Bill James says – “problematic.”
But those numbers, no matter how tortured and derivative are still fun to look at.
Mathematical models are all about probability, so their use in baseball isn’t inherently incompatible with human elements, as these models are used frequently in the social sciences. But both the social or hard sciences hit walls in using probabilistic models for prediction. Not that they are useless, so much as they are limited in usefulness. Understanding the limitations of your model is key to understanding its usefulness.
You put your finger on one element of some of these newer statistical models in baseball that has always annoyed me. Some (as with BABIP) analyze thousands of data points and still can’t produce a stable model. The defensive stats are similarly unstable despite the huge amount of data driving them. This tells me they are probably reading more noise than signal. Models producing that kind of result beg for skepticism and a lot of critical analysis of their validity (which mostly, I do not hear).
@davidc
Sorry, just noticed your response. I don’t think anything I’ve said argues with your point about team stat gathering and analysis. Mostly agrees with it actually. Mainly I am adding that some teams seem to be better at either the gathering and analysis of the data, or in recognizing its applicability and limitations. I suspect it is some of both, particularly when comparing the two World Series teams.
You could also say that the Dodgers have become consistent winners since they tripled their payroll. It isn’t tripled now but it was in the year or two after Guggenheim took over. All that financial firepower made a difference, don’t you think? So to me the question is, now that they’ve throttled back to a payroll matching the other big-market teams, can they beat those other big-market teams?
As to your thesis about the Orioles, I think the wheels kind of fly off when you consider whether they had the talent (and especially the starting pitching) to have better than the slimmest chance to win a best of seven against anybody.
I guess I don’t think a 7-game series is the best arbiter of talent; yes, the Dodgers spend a lot of money, but they also found tons of value in reclamation projects – Taylor, Turner, Hill….guys that other teams gave up on because of a particular flaw that the Dodgers figured out how to exploit.
And yes, if you played the O’s versus the Red Sox in a 7-game series 100 times, the O’s would win about 30% of the time. There’s certainly plenty of evidence that the best team hasn’t always won the World Series.
So the Red Sox were playing their AAA roster from August on you claim? I think not
Exactly right. The “real W. S. “ was Boston vs Houston.
The World Series went the way it should have- a wipeout.
Even a good manager wasn’t going to help the dodgers.
I agree that the Red Sox were the better team. Not only that, but the Dodgers over-achieved. The Brewers and the Cubs were better in the regular season. Dodger pitching was shaky all year. None of their hitters besides Muncy and Turner really performed, and Turner was hurt half the year.
The Dodgers need some upgrades and for Corey Seager to come back strong.
Haha, I love all your comments. I couldn’t agree more with all you. Dave Roberts will mess it up again in the playoffs… That is if they get their.
It’s not all Roberts. He doesn’t manage good in the World Series but the front office is in his ear telling him what to do as well and the reason they keep him around is because he will do what they want while a other manager would tell them to kick rocks and he’s managing it how he wants.
You had a one in three chance, and you blew it.
Lol
Smart money would have gotten someone better
Oh well
Under the Friedman model, it appears the manager has less autonomy that conventional manager – GM relationships, so it matters less who is in the dugout. Firing Roberts unfortunately would not be a palpable solution. It’s a bummer that baseball seems to be lead by analytics and micro managing situations.
I blame Trump for it
I blame both Roberts and Hill. Hill had just struck out the batter with Brock Holt a left handed batter coming up. Roberts now managing Hill for a third season did not need to visit the 39 year old veteran to discuss how to pitch to Holt. By going out there he gave Hill the opportunity to give him the ball. There are a lot of pitchers that sometimes want out. If Roberts stayed in the dugout Hill pitches to Holt. Who knows he might have given up a base hit. But Roberts should have stayed in the dugout and let Hill pitch.
The Dodgers need to run more.
So 4 years of world series losses, got it.
I don’t know about you, but I sure wouldn’t complain if my team made it to six World Series in a row
Personally, think Roberts would be a great 1st base coach or bench coach. He’s connected to the players enough that it would be awkward to just flat out fire him because of all the relationships he’s made with the players, but it would also be an awkward shift of position from Manager to Bench Coach, because how much respect would the players really give the new manager? Still think that this is the right move for the dodgers to be honest, though.
Manager Dave Roberts is to manager Alex Cora what player Dave Roberts is to player Ichiro Suzuki.
Roberts and the Dodgers’ FO were totally out-managed by Cora and his employers as a result of their more balanced blend of traditional game management and analytics.
I have been a Dodger fan since 1965. Saw Sandy Koufax pitch in 65 with my Little League team. To me Roberts is good in dealing with all the egos on the team and I feel the president of the club and the GM tells him how to manage. I felt Roberts had made a lot of Bonehead moves during the series with the starting lineups, no bunting, no hit and run, pitching choices, plus The Hill move and putting in a relief pitch who was having a difficult time finding the plate was beyond stupid. I think it’s time for a new manager, one that does not make stupid moves. The Dodgers spent a lot of money so they were expected to make it back to the World Series with or without Roberts. No outs, a man on second and they don’t score. The no bunting policy really made me angry. Launch angle batting was more important. Time for change. Will it happen no because Roberts does not mind being told what to do by the GM. Sometimes you have to throw the analytical numbers out the door and manage by feel of the game.
Dphotos It’s like you reached into my mind, grabbed my thoughts and wrote them down.
Everything you blame on Roberts is the responsibility of Andrew Friedman. So yeah Friedman should fire himself.
This is Roberts fault too. If Roberts is not able to manage and be just a baby sitter he should move on. I belive some of the mistakes were made by Roberts and yes Friedman and Zaidi too. Don Mattingly was not going to have any part of Friedman and Zaidi calling the shots on the field so he moved on to Miami which had very little talent this year. The Dodgers will not win a World Series with their way of thinking. Baseball stategy cannot be decided by 100% of analyicial numbers. Have you ever watched the Japanese national baseball team play the Americans? They do a very good job of competing againist players who are more skilled but the Japanese play small ball. They bunt and steal. The Dodger rely on home runs. Look what happed to the them when they faced good pitching? The Dodger failed again. The Dodgers must work on their pitching too. I know Clayton Kershaw is coming back but he is the not the Clayton Kershaw of old. His velocity has diminished and he is injury prone. Ryu is injury prone, Hill is 38. You have unknowns about Wood, Stripling, Maeda and Urias. I dont know about the health of Kenley Jansen and his heart. I was not happy with what I saw with Madson and Alexander when under pressure with men on base in World Series game play. I liked what I saw with Walker Buehler and I believe him to become the ace of the club. I wish the Dodgers had tried harder to keep Zack Greinke. He pitched 207 innings this year with a 3.21 ERA. I would like to see the Dodgers get two top line healthy starters for 2019 vs trying to sign Machado or Harper and another catcher. Just learned Turner Ward is moving on to the Reds as their hitting coach. He was an excellent hitting coach and Chris Woodward is going to manage Texas. Hey I know we all are in here to give our two cent opinion but as fans we care about our favorite team and we are the ones that support this team. Without us there would be no large TV deals, radio and TV advertising. Don’t get me started on the TV contract with the Dodgers. I am just glad my area of the city is supported by Spectrum.
Roberts was hired by Friedman to implement the Friedman game plan. Friedman is never going hire let alone tolerate a manager who does not follow his game plan. This is the flaw in your logic as far as Roberts in concerned. If Roberts wasn’t there, Friedman would hire another implementer and quite likely one with a weaker set of personnel skills, and that would be a net loss to the Dodgers. The vast majority of a manager’s responsibilities happen outside of games and off the field.
So yes, I completely agree the team needs to take a more creative approach that utilizes some aspects of the game they currently neglect. But understand, if the approach they are taking now is not producing optimal results, the primary responsibility for that falls to the front office, not to the manager. Not on this team anyway.
Roberts seems happy to be a very expensive baby sitter. If I were a club looking for a new manager Roberts would be in the middle of my list. We really dont know if Roberts can manage by himself. I personally believe that Roberts was trying to manage himself when he took Hill out. In the first place Roberts should of sent his pitching coach out to talk to Hill. Hill viewed Roberts coming out to talk to him so he knew he was out of the game so that is why he gave him the ball. Don’t forget the bonehead move a few years ago with Roberts taking Hill out while pitching a no hitter. He has made a number of questionable moves with people scratching their heads asking what did he do. Maybe Friedman can accept Roberts making a few bad moves. Friedman owns Roberts and not many managers would be accepting of being a robot manager. Like I mentioned before Roberts has a good ability to control the egos. I do believe it was Friedman’s game plan to put in Madson even though Madson had a history of not pitching well with men on base in a pressure situation but I guess Friedman’s computer told him to put in Alexander and Madson. Two big mistakes. Friedman will most likely have to find a new GM because Zaidi will most likely be moving to San Francisco for the job of club president. I still believe the Dodgers will always do well but not good enough with the leadership of Friedman and Roberts to win a World Series. Very few respected managers would ever take a position with Friedman as their boss. A manager wants to be able to run the team how he feels fit. I agree analytical numbers will always have a place in modern day baseball as we see that with the field shifts used by many teams now but they also have to have a good manager. Cora did an excellent job with managing the Red Sox’s. He was a good player but not great but he knows the game of baseball and knows how to lead. I do not see the Dodgers winning the World Series any time soon with Friedman as the president. It is my hope the owners of the club see this and will replace Friedman with a new president. Unless they are happy with coming in second place all the time. I wish Cora was the Dodgers manager.
Slamming advanced “analytics” is just tiresome when the Red Sox, the team that basically created front-office analytics departments, just won another World Series after an historic regular season.
The days of managers in the mold of Sparky Anderson, Tommy Lasorda, and Dusty Baker, are gone forever. Roberts is a modern-day manager for an analytics era, and also for the era of big player salaries and big player egos. This doesn’t mean he makes no decisions on his own, but that overall he, his bench, hitting, and pitching coach are expected to play the front office game plan. Replacing him would change nothing for the better on the Dodgers, so long as Friedman is in charge.
It’s no secret that I am not a Friedman fan. The good things he’s done are overshadowed by the bad ones, and even more so, by the apparently lack of flexibility and an inability to accept responsibility when things don’t work out. He also totally stinks as a communicator, which is a real flaw when a big part of your job is talking to the fans. He can hardly hide how much he despises the fans, especially when they try to make him accountable.
To be more specific, when the Dodgers needed a setup man to take some of the weight off of their closer, who did Friedman go out to get? Ryan Madson (and that total nonentity, John Axford). So this is who Roberts was expected to use in high-leverage situations. That was the best tool put in his kit by Friedman. And who gets the blame for that? Roberts, of course. And do we ever hear Friedman acknowledge that maybe he could have made better choices? No, of course not. That would mean admitting that maybe he isn’t the smartest guy in baseball.
So there you have it, the closed loop.
So-called “advanced” analytics were around long before Bill James.
The book called “Percentage Baseball” was the first analytical approach to baseball, and it was published in the early 1960s.
Your hero worship of Bill James indicates that you probably haven’t read much of his work, and definitely never subscribed to his old newsletter.
The one good thing about Bill James is that he’s learned to be intellectually honest over the years, and he keeps the attacks on his detractors out of print – probably at the behest of the Red Sox.
Yes professor Wendell Garner wrote Percentage Baseball and the proponent of sabermetrics informaton has been around baseball for a while but now many of the owners are now embracing it by hiring Presidents and GM’s with masters degrees. Moneyball by Michael Lewis helped with the acceleration of analytical based systems as with Billy Beane. The Dodgers hired Paul DePodesta and gave it a try but he was unsuccessful at it. Andrew Friedman was more successful at it but you can’t use analytics for 100% of your play decisions. Dodgers will never win the World Series and will have to enjoy being second best until they can learn to make on the field decisions by using bunting stealing and hit and run at the correct times during the game.
@dphotos –
Yup. Analytics have their place. But this sport still requires eyeballs, experience, and instincts. A “baseball IQ,” if you will.
And if you read Moneyball or any of James’ essays, you know that a lot of those guys had an arrogance that was visible in their very real and visceral hatred of scouts, managers, and most GMs.
Andrew developed that arrogance in Tampa, where for some reason, whenever he spoke to the TV guys (e.g.), they treated it like the Pope was descending from the chair of Peter. Contrast that with Dombrowski, who’ll let you bend his ear if you see him at the grocery store, even when you suggest they trade Swihart for Trout. It hurts that Andy isn’t exactly the warmest and fuzziest guy.
And he seldom was questioned in Tampa, where, after he spent the farm system he inherited, he left the team in shambles. His drafts, labeled the WORST of any professional sports team (even the NFL Bowns’), by Fangraphics, always got ignored by the media.
But he’s good with charts and graphs, and saying all the buzz words. MANY GMs, given the Dodgers revenues, could have achieved a similar record.
As for the value of metrics, you force me to remember my days hearing lectures in the Philosophy of Science (my classmate was Issac Newton; I threw an apple at him, for which he was eternally grateful.) I’d encourage you to think that we’re in the middle of the saber revolution, not the end. They’ll be a synthesis, where player’s marital relations and drug use (especially drug use) are viewed as important as their wRC+.And that while launch angle works for SOME players, it seriously compromises others. And that “pitch count theology” (my term) has resulted in more arm injuries than the days when we didn’t see 100 pitches as any type of threshold; “you build it up, not wear it down” (Nolan Ryan’s term).
For years and years, MLB teams were owned by fat old white guys who had the imagination of a corpse. Then guys like Risendorf (sp) and Henry came along and modernized things, both corporately and artistically. They brought along with them guys like Theo, who if nothing else, brought in computer technology and showed that by spending money, you made money. Lots and lots of money, depending on market size.
It’s not a bad revolution, just a transitional one. My guess? A lot of these metric-enslaved GMs will be gone in 5 years, replaced by guys who HAVE experience playing the game, HAVE a college education, and understand both sides of the game.
Thanks for those insights (and some laughs).
A person has to be born with that kind of arrogance. He sure isn’t faking it. Friedman has the kind of attitude that I associate with the coder who had one good idea when he was in college and even since thinks he is God’s gift. Fat old white guys with the imaginations of corpses might well beat creepy young ones with the emotional intelligence of hammer.
So Tampa has baseball fans? The difference between running a small-market team as if it was a small-market team, and a running a big-market team as if it was a small-market team is kind of immense. The mindset should change, but it hasn’t, much.
Maybe you’re right, the all-geek all the time approach is transitional. I’ll be watching what happens with Friedman. His contract is up in 2019 and I have not heard a word about it being extended. Hello, Stan Kasten? Are we having fun yet?
>bobtillman:
Very insightful post, with a logical perspective. We could use more of that around here, but I get it.
One question: WTF is your problem with “fat old white guys?”
We’re not all fat. 😉
I actually began subscribing to Bill James’ newsletter when it was still photocopied and stapled and sold out of the classified ads section of the Sporting News. But nice try!
It is so important to have played the game. You don’t have to be a super star. You just have to understand baseball strategy during game day conditions , you have to understand personalities, have to know what spring training is all about and the summer grind with all that travel and few days off is about Know when someone is faking that they are fine and really injured. Know when players have personal problems that effect game play. Know how to use a bunt to move a man over, how to steal and when to hit and run. Need a pitching coach to teach how to hit to the opposite field to break a shift. Playing the game in Little League, high school, college, minors and then the majors even what the Japan league is like is so important . A GM that sits with his computer and calculator all day does not have a clue.
It is my hope the owners fire both. The Dodgers will always make money due to the LA fan base. Maybe the owners are happy with being second best. The Dodgers will never win the World Series with this President, GM and manager.
The analytics people – nearly all of whom never played the game – consistently fail to consider that baseball is played by human beings. Unpredictable human beings. Until they back off and let the field personnel do their jobs, we might as well get used to teams full of platoon players, starters who aren’t allowed to go 4, different lineups every day, no bunting, stealing, or hit and runs, alot of strikeouts, idiotic shifts, and poor defense.
The Red Sox have the biggest analytics department in baseball.
So what. Did I even mention the Red Sox?
Saber smuckers-that is an interesting compilation- thank you.
I wonder if the 4th best team won 25% of the time?
Given that 75% of the time one of the other teams other than the one with the best record won,and assuming that both wild cards count for one team(especially inasmuch as there was only one wild card until 2012),that means on average each one of them had about a 10% chance of winning,unless perhaps #4 heavily skews the result.
That means that #1 still has a 2 1/2 times chance of beating anyone else on average for the WS title.
Surely not a slam dunk,but clearly in the driver’s seat.
In any series, the best team always wins. That’s why they play the games. Whether from preparation, skill, or even luck, the winner is the one best suited to succeed in the given situation. That is true by definition.
That’s just not true at all. The Padres over the Cubs in 1984 is a quite obvious example off the top of my head – The Cubs were clearly better, had three bad games, allowing the Padres to get decimated by the Tigers in the WS. The Cubs would have at least put up a fight. (And I’m a Padres fan, btw, and the 84 team was the first team I saw in person. Two great players, two very good players, a weird pitching staff that never struck anybody out and a great bullpen. Odd team.)
They succeeded at every situation presented at the time they needed to succeed. They won. Ergo, better team. By definition.
Did you watch the World Series? The tigers made them look like a little league team. It was awful, especially as a Padres fan, like I was -and am. The Cubs were the better team and would have put up a better challenge, although that Tigers team was pretty damn special.
Metrics puppet.
Yup.
Terrible manager. I feel sorry for the Dodger players. A lot of talent run by a guy who has little clue. period and he obviously can’t manage a pitching staff and the platoon thing ( ignore all of his power bats) was awful. How guys like this get to manage a major league team is beyond me.
You have to understand the Dodgers president Friedman calls all the shots on the field. Roberts is just a baby sitter. I know Roberts has made some bad moves. I do believe 1/2 were his own mistake trying to manage and the 1/2 is Friedman call the shots with the analytical numbers. Either way with that team in place the Dodgers will never win the World Series. No small ball, no hit and run and stealing was used during the Series. Very poor leadership.
Analytics wonks don’t believe in small ball, bunting, hit and run, or stealing bases. They don’t understand it, and they can’t quantify it properly, if at all.
You might, maybe, read some articles about all those things. It’s not that those things aren’t important; it’s just that you can analyze success rates and determine whether the risk of an out is worth it. Stolen bases only really are useful at a high percentage rate. Outs are fixed – you only get 27 of them in a game, so making stupid outs is something to avoid. Bunting is so easily thwarted by pitchers that it’s hard to consistently use it as a strategy. Teams don’t hit-and-run any less or more than they ever have.
And, Boston is run by “analytics wonks.” The Yankees are, the Dodgers are, the A’s are, the Astros are, the Rays are, the Cubs are….you get my point, right?
You can analyze anything, but that doesn’t mean the analysis is useful in predicting outcomes. The only meaningful verification is the outcomes themselves. A scientific approach starts with a theory, the theory is supported by observation, and the theory and the observation are verified by your predictions being proven to be accurate by ground truth. Any less rigorous approach is little better than throwing numbers at the wall and smiling on the pretty ones.
Agree
@davidcoonce74, I used to get Bill James’ newsletter. My job involves a fairly high level of mathematical analysis. I love some of the analytics, but many are pure junk.
Tell me what your hero Bill James says about that pseudo-stat WAR. Tell me what he says about trying to quantify defense and pitching. Until you do, you have as much credibility as anyone else who uses numbers they don’t understand just so they can present a facade of knowledge.
Yes, but all the teams using these “theories” are winning. Oakland won 97 games with the lowest payroll in baseball this year.
Oh man, I honestly don’t care what Bill James has to say about WAR. He’s a cranky old man and his political takes are even worse. The point is, the teams using analytics are winning and the teams that aren’t aren’t winning.
Maybe Magic Johnson can start pitching. His out pitch would be the sky hook curve.
Wasn’t that Kareem’s shot?
Dodgers should trade Muncy to Settle for Segura, put Bellinger at first full time and put Verdugo to center field . Then trade Kemp to American league if possible. Then sign Joe kelly , Eovadi and Herrera . Sergura can play short and 2nd as Seager will not play ever day and Bellinger will get better against left handers if he plays against them. The only thing left will be catcher ie Grandel and Smith.