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Thursday, May 07, 2009
Evidence that Bud Black is a bad manager…
I have been calling for Bud Black’s firing for a while now (as if anyone cares, right?), if only because his team has stunningly underperformed their presumed/supposed talent so greatly over the last 2 years.
I am fairly confident if you looked closely at his decisions that you would find that he is not a good manager, although you would never be able to find how and why his team has underperformed by double digit wins over the last 2 years or so (especially since most of that is probably just plain old bad luck - although you can never know of course).
Anyway, we had a thread about the Padres lineup and how batting Eckstein, who at this point in his career is one of the worst offensive players in baseball, 1 or 2, as he has done all year, probably costs about a win a year, which is not “wood.”
Today, I was listening to the game on the radio, and with runners on first and second, no outs, bottom of the 8th and a tie game, the announcers mentioned that the defense was really playing aggressively for a sac bunt and that it would be hard to execute it. Now, while the decision to sac bunt or not in a sac bunt situation involves game theory, it is “modified game theory.” By that I mean that the offense gets to see how the defense is playing their hand before they make their decision. That is a critical part of their decision-making process of course. The defense is SUPPOSED to play somewhat agnostically so that it does not matter what the offense does - bunt or not. However, if the defense does not, and plays either too aggressively for the bunt or for hitting away, the offense is now supposed to bunt or not bunt 100% of the time or at least some different percentages than if the defense were paying agnostically and perfectly according to game theory.
Of course, the defense may NOT play agnostically if they know or suspect that the opposing manager is “dumb” and will not play optimally, given the defense. For example, if the defense knows that manager is going to bunt a lot (too much) even when they are playing aggressively for the bunt, then it is correct for them to play aggressively. Likewise, if they know that the offense is NOT going to bunt (or bunt less often than they should) even if they are playing way back, then it is correct for them to play way back.
Anyway, although I was not watching the game today, only listening to it on radio, if the defense was in fact playing aggressively for the bunt (first and third charging hard, the “wheel play” on, etc.), OF COURSE it is a mistake for the offense to bunt! You don’t have to be a genius I wouldn’t think to figure that out. One, your success on the bunt is going to go down significantly, and two, when you hit away, you have all kinds of new holes on the infield. Again, does not take a genius to realize that. However, if you are a “chicken**it” manager, you might bunt anyway. I say that because sac bunting when it is not appropriate is a “chicken**it” strategy by a manager. If it fails, he can blame it on the batter. If he hits away and the batter makes a non-productive out or hits into a GDP, the manager gets criticized, post-hoc, for not bunting.
Anyway, you can guess the rest of the story. Black calls for the bunt anyway, by a batter who is not fast (which is always a reason to tend to not bunt as I explain in painstaking detail in The Book), and the runner predictably gets thrown out at third (if there is more than a small chance of that occurring, of course the bunt was probably not correct in the first place).
Anyway, just a couple pieces of objective data that suggest that Black may not be a very good manager…