Going Deep

Back-to-back disappointing seasons will make any leader question their organization’s process. Red Sox principal owner John Henry did just that and revealed he felt the club had “perhaps overly relied on numbers” when making roster decisions of late. To those who still think jokes about Carmine – the Red Sox’s statistical database developed under Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington – are funny, Henry’s words likely rang true and signaled the beginning of a much needed change in philosophy. To those who appreciate what an analytical approach to the game can help bring (e.g., three World Series rings in ten years), the comments sounded like a search to assign blame and, perhaps, an over-reaction to last year’s disappointment. In any case, Alex Speier of The Boston Globe notes that the team is not retreating from statistical analysis. Rather it is actually committing more money to its analytics department but will incorporate a different approach in how that information is weighed when making decisions. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach and probably didn’t necessitate the media firestorm that resulted in the wake of Henry’s comments. Sure, Dave Dombrowski is known to prefer a greater emphasis on scouting and player development than on statistical analysis. That’s fine. But finding the ideal (and clearly elusive) balance between the two could lead to another prolonged period of success in Boston.

The second season of the hit show Find Hanley Ramirez a Defensive Position has started. This season Hanley tackles first base, though to some his move back to the infield arguably comes with more risk than his transition to left field in 2015. Dustin Pedroia reminded Hanley of just how important first base is in an ever so Pedroia way. Hanley has a lot to learn about the nuances of his new position, with limited time to do so. Regardless, Jason Mastrodonato of BostonHerald.com reports that the team is focusing on slow, simple, incremental progress. Red Sox third base and infield coach Brian Butterfield is the man in charge of transforming Hanley into a competent first baseman. The pace of Butterfield’s instruction has been planned with a keen awareness of the concerns over Ramirez’s health. Hanley is coming off a shoulder injury in 2015 that sapped his power at the plate, so the coaching staff is doing their best to avoid re-aggravating it. Despite these precautions, P.J. Wright of Boston.com writes that Pedroia is confident Hanley can make the transition to first base successfully. If he doesn’t the Red Sox have alternative options in Travis Shaw, prospect Sam Travis, and even (gasp!) Allen Craig, although fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together could prove difficult.

Quick Hits

On Monday, the Red Sox agreed to a minor-league contract with outfielder Daniel Murphy. As Alex Speier of The Boston Globe notes, this is a smart signing that offers the team solid depth protection against any underperformance from Jackie Bradley Jr. and/or Rusney Castillo.

Hard-throwing, high-strikeout pitchers have been a hallmark of Dave Dombrowski’s previous teams. The additions of Craig Kimbrel, Carson Smith and David Price ensure that the 2016 Red Sox will be no exception to this trend. Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal spoke with each of these pitchers (and others) about the importance of velocity and about how correctly synchronizing pitchers’ body types with the mechanics of their deliveries helps maintain it.

Blake Swihart comes into Spring Training as the likely starting catcher, a considerable advancement on the depth chart from this time last year. This role requires him to take charge of the pitching staff, working as an on-field coach of sorts. Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe writes that Swihart had always done well with this aspect of his position in the minor leagues, but had difficulty with it following his early promotion to Boston last season. Swihart’s comfort grew over the course of last summer, and this spring he is in camp working hard and providing insight to his battery mates.

Swihart’s catching partner Christian Vazquez is still working his way back from Tommy John surgery, making important steps forward as camp progresses. Last week, Jason Mastrodonato of BostonHerald.com noted that the Red Sox were slowing Vazquez down in order to take the long, cautious path with his rehab. Then on Monday, Vazquez had an important throwing session that, as Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com reports, went really well. With this sort of continued, methodical progress, Vazquez could start seeing action in Grapefruit League games soon enough.

The 2016 season marks changes not only on the field and in the front office but also in the Red Sox broadcast booths. Dave O’Brien is moving from radio to join the television side, replacing fan-favorite Don Orsillo. Chad Finn, writing for The Boston Globe, spoke with O’Brien about the transition, reminding Red Sox fans that, despite Orsillo’s departure, they are still in good hands.

David Ortiz is embarking on his last trip through a major league season. Due to his star status, this final campaign will involve a farewell tour of some sort. The exact nature of the Big Papi celebration remains to be seen, but at Boston.com, Chad Finn hopes the farewell tour coincides with a victory tour. Ideally, Ortiz will ride a duckboat off into the proverbial sunset.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

Do you remember the end of the book Moneyball?

In 2002 Billy Beane’s A’s won 103 games, the same as the New York Yankees. The Yankees spent $133 million on player payroll. The A’s achieved the same result with $42 million. But the A’s didn’t win in the playoffs, so despite their success in the regular season, it was all a failure. With the season over, Beane slinks back to his office. He knows nothing is going to change and he’s going to have to scale the same impossibly steep mountain all over again. The payroll isn’t going up enough, he’s not getting a raise or a promotion. More of his best players will leave because he can’t afford to pay them. Beane’s reward is nothing. Then he gets a phone call.

The caller offers him a job, a more highly sought after job than his own; one with a raise, a promotion, a much higher payroll, and a better chance to win in the playoffs. Beane takes the job. A few days later he has a change of heart and decides to stay in Oakland with the A’s. That job he eschewed was with the Boston Red Sox. That call was from John Henry.

Beane’s brief time with the Red Sox was over, but Henry’s was just beginning. Although he didn’t get Beane, the path to success in Henry’s mind was clear. Apply the then-nascent field of baseball analytics, the very thought process that helped bring Beane success in Oakland despite their relatively minuscule payroll, to the Boston Red Sox. Build the best analytics team in baseball and the wins will surely follow.

The path to success in Henry’s mind was clear; build the best analytics team in baseball and the wins will surely follow.

Henry didn’t get Beane, so he got the next best thing: his own younger version, 28-year-old Theo Epstein. Unsurprisingly Epstein did many of the things you might have expected Beane would have done. He brought in high on-base percentage guys like Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller, Todd Walker, and David Ortiz. He fired the old school by-the-gut manager (perhaps a year late, but still) and replaced him with someone who was willing and able to incorporate the percentages into his managing. He traded prospects for ace pitcher Curt Schilling, in part by using analytics to convince him a right-handed fly-ball pitcher could thrive in Fenway Park. Oh, and he hired Bill James, the very man whose writing had inspired Beane in the first place.

That was in 2002. Jump forward 13 years and the Red Sox are three-time World Series champions. They’ve also got a meaningfully different front office for the first time since Beane received that phone call. The Red Sox have gone through two GMs in that time, but though Epstein and Ben Cherington were different people (though their voices sounded eerily similar) they both came from the same analytical-bent background, not one that entirely eschewed on-the-ground player evaluation, but one that placed the it next to analytics as equals, two required pieces to complete the championship puzzle.

But then things went awry. The Red Sox finished in last place three out of four years under Cherington, with the final indignity costing Cherington his job. You can certainly point to logical reasons why the team failed on the field and not all of those failures lead straight to bad decisions from the front office, but when Henry looked at the team’s player evaluation processes, he found a fundamental flaw. This led to perhaps the most surprising revelation of the still-young spring when earlier this week John Henry flatly stated that the team had been overly reliant on analytics, and that going forward they would be run differently.

We kind of all saw this coming with the hiring of Dave Dombrowski last season, who is known as a more traditional general manager, but to hear Henry declare it in such stark terms was striking. There is danger in becoming too wedded to any one way of player evaluation and perhaps the Red Sox front offices under Epstein and Cherington had gone too far in one direction. That’s impossible to say from the outside, even when looking at the decisions the team has made. There are just too many moving parts, from player evaluations signings, trades, drafts, and team performance, to look at any organization over a short period of time and make declarative statements about what they do well or what they do poorly. And if there is a scary part of Henry’s statement, that’s it. If the team has moved too far towards analytics, that’s fine, but the answer isn’t to overcompensate in the other direction.

That’s not to say the team won’t win with an analytic-lite philosophy, if that’s their new philosophy at all. Dombrowski has had success in the past with the Marlins and Tigers with exactly this model, building strong teams through scouting that won many games. If the goal is to build a long-term winning organization, it seems pretty clear based on the last two decades worth of data that the smart teams employ both perspectives in roughly equal measure. That isn’t to say you can’t win with just one, or even have sustained success that way, it’s that watching baseball creates perceptions. Analytics challenges those perceptions. It forces people to confront what their eyes are telling them and to explain it with logic and data. Without analytics teams can get caught in a whirlpool of their own unchallenged thoughts and expectations, and that’s a recipe for bad decisions.

Watching baseball creates perceptions. Analytics challenges those perceptions. It forces people to confront what their eyes are telling them and to explain it with logic and data.

Of course, that could happen by using analytics exclusively as well. The challenge the Red Sox face is to learn the proper amount of both and to apply them at the proper time. Perhaps Henry’s statements to the press are just statements to the press and don’t necessarily reflect the reality on the ground. Perhaps Henry thinks what he’s saying is what the fans and media want to hear. But it’s surprising that after almost a decade and a half of analytically driven baseball decision-making, a time in which the Red Sox have won three World Series championships, that Henry has decided to abruptly change course.

The Red Sox do still employ Bill James and they recently created a position for Brian Bannister to analyze pitching using, among other things, analytics, so they certainly aren’t abandoning analytics entirely. Perhaps they’re just being more selective about things. That could be good. But even if the team has indeed grown too reliant on numbers in their decision-making, the mere fact that the Red Sox are moving away from a philosophy that has led to such tremendous success on the field, even if not recently, is concerning. How concerning? As always, the answer isn’t in the results, but in the process.