Gobble Gobble
Posted: March 18th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 49 Comments »
Time to unwind a winding baseball blog post about … something or other.
So, I’m already preparing for the various radio shows that I will probably do after this book hits the newsstand.* And the question that radio people ask, more than any other, is the simple: “So what did you learn while researching this book that surprised you?”
*We have a few fun surprises coming in the next couple of weeks about the book … so stay tuned.
I learned a lot of things while doing The Machine, but I would have to say that the thing that surprised me most was that Sparky Anderson was very much ahead of his time. I did not fully appreciate that. I guess I always thought of Sparky as the grandfatherly sort who might or might not fall asleep during Detroit Tigers games. But with the Reds Sparky was a ferocious competitor* who disliked the sacrifice and was one of the first to use the bullpen the way managers do today. He pulled his starters so much and so quickly that he got the nickname “Captain Hook,” and he was routinely booed in Cincinnati even during the amazing 1975 season.
See, doesn’t this sound like a great book?
*He got the nickname “Sparky” in the minor leagues because of all the fights he got into with umpires. “The sparks are flying again,” one radio announcer yelled. “That’s one sparky fella!”
But my point here is not only to sell the book but more to talk about good and bad managing.
I have asked many baseball people through the years: “How many games does a manager’s moves win or lose over a season?” It’s a pet question of mine, and generally the answers have hovered in the 3-5 games range. Of course, this means nothing. There is no science behind the poll.
And there’s also no agreement behind what “a manager’s moves” even means. Managers moves could be pregame moves (setting the lineup, arranging the bullpen, etc.), or it could mean in-game moves (to hit and run, to pull a pitcher, to sacrifice, etc.), or it could mean subtle moves (telling a pitcher who is struggling that he has confidence in him, resting a struggling hitter for a day to get his head on straight), or it could mean preemtpive moves (having the team work extra on pitchers covering first, instituting a fine for any player who does not run out a ground ball, giving the take sign on 3-0), or it could mean big picture move (naming a player a captain, having a young player’s locker set up to a veteran player) or it could mean public relations move (calling out a player in the paper, giving a player a vote of confidence on the radio) or about 12 million other things.
But I think, mostly, when I ask the question, the people who answer are thinking about in-game moves. How often does a manager win a game with strategic excellence (or lose it by making the wrong move at the wrong time)? That, I would guess, is where the 3-5 number comes from. The best answer i ever got on this topic was from Ray Knight, shortly after he took over as Reds manager*.
*I have told you my Ray Knight story, right? I feel sure that I have … but I did not find it in the archives. It’s probably there. I’ll just repeat it. Ray Knight, you might recall, took over for Davey Johnson as the Cincinnati Reds manager in 1996. Davey was, in my opinion, an outstanding baseball manager. I’ll have to do a full post on him someday. What made him so excellent, at least in my mind, was that he did everything effortlessly. He handled the bullpen, regulated the emotions of the team, gave power to the veteran players without running over them, had players play hard without making a big deal about it, and so on. And he did it all so quietly that he didn’t seem to be doing anything at all.
Anyway, Ray took over, and, well, it’s fair to say that nothing came easily to him. I believe Ray is a very good man, and a good baseball man, but he’s a bit, um, intense is one word you could use. Everything he did seemed to be maximum effort. Every move felt lead-footed. I remember him that year calling a game in May a “must win” game. He was, as a writer said, a football coach trying to be a baseball manager.
He had one other problem: He listened to talk radio, and he took what was said very much to heart. I simply cannot imagine a worse strategy for a big league manager, especially a classic overthinker like Ray Knight**.
**There was a great bit on The Office where three different people were giving Kevin advice about this girl he liked, and he was paralyzed. “I’m a classic overthinker,” he said. That was Ray, too.
And that was the column I wrote. I basically wrote that Ray Knight needed to immediately stop listening to talk radio. The job is hard enough. He needed to try and manage baseball games with his own instincts, his own research, his own philosophy. If he made a mistake, dammit, move on because a baseball season will be filled with mistakes. But he needed to start being his own man.
The next day, I got to the ballpark, and Ray saw me, and I knew what was coming. He pointed at me and said, “I want to see you in my office.” I walked in, closed the door, and got ready for the expected beatdown that columnists must endure every so often as pennance for having this great job where you tell other people what to do. Ray sat down behind the table, and he said, “I read your column,” and then he said — an I am paraphrasing, obviously:
“And you know what Joe-Joe? You are right. You are absolutely, 100 percent right. I’m the manager of this team. I do need to stop listening to talk radio shows. I need to have confidence in my own ability. I need to — what is it you said? — I need to be my own man. You are absolutely right, Joe-Joe, you are totally right, I’ve taken your column and I put it up on my board here (he pointed and, sure enough, there it was on the board) and I’m going to look at it any time I feel like I’m starting to lose my way. You are absolutely right.”
At which point, I looked at Ray Knight and said: “Um, Ray, when I said you needed to stop listening to people, I meant stupid sports columnists too.”
And yes, to answer a couple of brilliant readers, he did call me “Joe-Joe.”
Sorry. Back to Ray Knight’s thought about managing. I asked him at one point late in his first season how many games he thought a manager won or lost with his instincts and strategic moves. He gave the number most give — five games or so — and then said something like this: In baseball, great moves fail a lot. Terrible moves work sometimes. And most managers go by the book most of the time.
I thought that was pretty smart — point being that it’s really hard to tell managers apart (a topic Bill James has written about extensively). Would Buddy Bell or Tony Muser have flopped as manager of the New York Yankees in the late 1990s? Would Joe Torre or Tony La Russa have turned around the Kansas City Royals fortune around the same time?
We can rail endlessly about how this manager abuses the bullpen, how that manager sets up his lineup without any easily accessible logic, how this manager gives up too many outs through bunts and ill-advised stolen base attempts, how that manager always seems to win even though his day-to-day strategies don’t inspire thoughts of Garry Kasparov, and so on. But there are still mysteries to this game. There’s an argument to be made that Bobby Cox is the best manager in baseball history — I might lean toward Earl Weaver or Casey Stengel or someone like that but anyone would conceded that it’s compelling evidence when a man in modern days leads teams to 15 division titles, five pennants (and only one World Series championship — his Achilles heel).
But my point is not to argue the best manager ever but to say that when it comes down to it, I really have no idea why Bobby Cox is a great manager. I have theories, ideas, things I would love to explore (sounds like a major post coming up). But what makes him great is something that I think is not as obvious as, say, what makes Bill Belichick great.
All of which (believe it or not) brings me to Jimmy Gobble.
The Royals released Jimmy Gobble this week, and it’s hard to argue with the move. Gobble last year was 0-2 with an 8.81 ERA. It was a rather stunning move when the Royals offered him a $1.35 million contract in the first place. As it turns out, the Royals themselves were stunned by the move and cut him now — and because of the rules of engagement, they owe him about $220,000.
Jimmy is a good soul who has lived several baseball lives. He began his career with that dubious “Tom Glavine type” tag — it’s probably fair to say that 96% of all pitchers who have been called a “Tom Glavine type” or “Jamie Moyer type,” do not succeed. This is in large part because the most obvious things about Tom Glavine and Jamie Moyer — they are left-handed pitchers who are not physically imposing and do not throw hard — have very little to do with their success. For a few years there, the Royals were the nation’s leading producer of Tom Glavine types (Jose Rosado, Glendon Rusch, Chris George, Jimmy Gobble, J.P. Howell) and the Royals record was a general indication of the wisdom behind harvesting soft-tossing and physically unimposing left-handed pitchers.
Anyway, Gobble began as a Glavine starter, then he worked his way into the bullpen as a long reliever (and his fastball made the requisite jump in mph) and finally he became what he always should have been: A lefty specialist. Many teams do not have the luxury of carrying one pitcher whose only job is to get out left-handed batters. Plus, it takes great discipline and planning by a manager to make a pitcher like that work over a long season. You can probably see this thing coming around to the point now.
Royals manager Trey Hillman has admitted — painfully — that he regrets the way he used Jimmy Gobble in 2008. You can see the basic problem when you look at how right-handed and left-handed batters did against Jimmy:
Right-handed batters: .382/.517/.676 in 89 plate appearances.
Left-handed batters: .200/.246/.323 in 69 plate appearances.
That has to be one of the most extreme splits in baseball history. Right-handed batters were Rogers Hornsby. Left-handed batters were Jim Mason. But even that doesn’t tell the full story. Here are a few batters vs. Gobble in 2008:
Joe Mauer: 1 for 6.
Justin Morneau: 0 for 5
Carlos Pena: 0 for 2
David Ortiz: 0 for 2
Jason Giambi: 0 for 2
And from 2007:
Grady Sizemore: 0 for 8 with five Ks.
Jim Thome: 1 for 6
Travis Hafner: 3 for 9 with 0 homers.
Justin Morneau: 0 for 3
Of course, I’m cherry picking. In 2007, Jack Cust faced Gobble four times, walked three and hit a homer the other time. In 2008, Curtis Granderson got hits off Gobble both times they met. He wasn’t infallible against lefties. But he was awfully good — he got out even the toughest of left-handed batters.
And that’s the general point: As Jimmy developed in his role, he did get lefties out. Now, he was preposterously bad against righties, but it sure seems like a good manager can reduce the sting. For instance, three of the four home runs Gobble gave up to righties in 2008 were: Mike Lowell at Fenway Park (a grand slam), Gary Sheffield (a three-run homer with Detroit leading 12-0) and Paul Konerko (a walk-off home run). Now, frankly, there is absolutely no reason for him to be pitching to any of those guys. Jimmy was in there to (A) Save the bullpen; (B) Rescue a bullpen that was stretched beyond its means or (C) Get an out he was very unlikely to get. Jimmy was the one who gave up the home runs, and nobody is trying to shield him from the responsibility. But I would have to say that a good manager would not have put him in position to give them up.*
*And let me say here that I am NOT saying Trey Hillman is a bad manager. I’m saying that in my view he was a bad manager in 2008. But it was only his first year, and he should be a lot better because of the experience.
In many ways, the Jimmy Gobble story is a perfect little synopsis of good managing and bad. A good manager has an uncanny way of consistently putting his players in positions where they can succeed. There are no perfect players, but more than that, there are very, very few players who do not have serious and easy-to-define weaknesses in their game. Some hit but don’t field, some field but don’t hit, some cannot catch up to hot fastballs, some cannot lay off the outside slider, some throw too many pitches, some cannot get lefties out, some do not walk, some are not aggressive enough, on and on and on and on forever. Seems to me the part of managing that matters most — and maybe this is where Bobby Cox shines — is setting up game after game after game so that more of your players get to play to their strengths.
Does this mean the Royals made a mistake releasing Jimmy? Well, not exactly. The Jimmy Gobble that the Royals released had an 8.81 ERA and could not get out right-handed batters. There’s no room on a big league roster for THAT player. But will a team pick up Gobble, use him exclusively as a lefty specialist, and help him become a valuable big league pitcher.
They might, rabbit. They might.*
*From the classic, “Bugs and Thugs.”
Bugs Bunny as police officer: “All right, where’s Rocky? Where’s he hiding?”
Bugs Bunny as himself: “He’s not in this stove.”
Police officer: Whoa-ho, he’s hiding in that stove, eh?
Bugs Bunny: Now, look, would I turn on this gas if my friend Rocky was in there?
Police officer: You might, rabbit. You might.
Bugs Bunny: Well, would I throw a lighted match in there if my friend was in there?
(Explosion)
Police officer: Well, all right rabbit, you’ve convinced me.
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Did Ray Knight really call you Joe-Joe?
Wow.
As much as people complain about Tito over in Boston, he does get the job done most of the time. He, like some of his players, just has some maddening tics. I can’t really complain about the end result (two WS championships over five years).
I think today’s managers affect the games more by their big picture decisions, rather than in game decisions. Jimmy Gobble’s “place” in baseball is a perfect example.
Managers have decided that they need these lefty specialists, in fact they usually want 2 of them in the their bullpen. Therefore, they have to carry 12 pitchers. Since a major roster is finite, carrying more pitchers means carrying fewer position players. In the AL, when you carry 12 pitchers, that means that you only have 4 guys on your bench at the beginning of the game, one of whom is certainly your backup catcher. You probably carry 2 infielders and an outfielder and that is it. (In the NL, probably 2 of each). That limits the moves you can make in the field by quite a bit. Also, it means you carry backup players who are generalists, i.e. they can do a lot of things kind of well, rather than specialists, i.e. they can do one or two things really well. This weakens your bench. Essentially, major league managers have chosen flexibility in their bullpen over flexibility in their position players.
This is a big change from the 1970s, where an NL team who carried 10 pitchers (which was about right for then) would nearly have a second team on their bench behind the starters.
No longer do you see the slick fielding backup middle infielder who cannot hit at all but can be put in the game in the late innings to shore up your defense. No longer do you see the Manny Mota or Rusty Staub types who cannot play the field anymore but are strictly on the team to pinch hit. No, you need a Mark Teahan or Miguel Cairo who can play nearly every position adequately now.
Contrast the mid 70s A’s to today’s teams. One year the A’s second basemen were such bad hitters that the manager (Dick Williams?) pinch hit for them every time they came up and simply played all 3 of them every game. That could never happen today. Another year, they had an Olympic star on the team simply to pinch run and steal bases. He stole like 40 bases and never once had an at bat.
To me having that bench flexibility trumps having Randy Flores on your team (43 games, 25 2/3 innings for the Cards last year).
But pretty much 30 out of 30 ML managers disagree with me, so I am probably wrong.
Does that mean Jimmy Gobble is a L.O.O.G.y? Left-handed One Out Guy.
Joe,
Glad I’m not the only Bugs fan out there. Bugs and Thugs is a classic. My daughters and I can watch Looney Tunes and resight them word for word. My wife just doesn’t get it.
I’m a little disappointed that you Pozterisked “They might rabbit. They might.” I say it all the time and hope people get it. And if they don’t, it’s one of many ways I use to judge them.
“Davey was, in my opinion, an outstanding baseball manager.”
Say it ain’t so, Joe. Davey Johnson? The dude who started Derek Jeter at SS while DHing Jimmy Rollins in an elimination game Tuesday night, leading to a 2-run deficit in the 9th instead of a tie? The dude who let Jake Peavy get battered by Puerto Rico
because Peavy “needed to get his work in”?
Of course, he’s never managed my team, so I haven’t watched him day in and day out before. Maybe fifteen years ago, he WAS better than he’s come across in the WBC.
@Dan V,
With a guy like Francona (or a Torre in NY for all those years), I think sometimes you have to put up with a little less than they’d like in the X’s and O’s department if the manager can handle the pressures that go with the job. In media markets like that, a big part of the job is protecting the players and helping them keep their confidence up. Both those guys are masters at dealing with the media.
At the end of last season, NESN was running those “Thank you, fan” ads that had random players saying things like “Thanks for the cheers”, etc. Toward the end, they showed Terry leaning up against the dugout, and he grins and says “Thanks for all the advice.” I think being able to do that commercial with good humor says a lot about why he’s succeeded in that market.
Davey Johnson was a terrific manager. I don’t know why he’s not more highly regarded, or regularly talked about when there’s an opening.
The good managing decisions don’t necessarily win a lot of games, but bad decisions will get you a lot of losses. Leaving the starter in one batter, 2 batters, 3 batters too long. Bringing in Gobble to face 4 batters, 3 of which are rightys, is downright crazy. I think the good managers are the ones who make the right decisions at those pivitol moments to keep things from falling apart. The moves that win games are setting the lineups, training drills, locker room chemestry, and setting up your players to allow them to succeed. Managers can only work with the players they are given, but Buddy Bell would lose no matter what team he managed.
I hope Hillman really did learn from his mistakes last year, because he made some really, really stupid bullpen moves.
Joe, this was a beautiful message. I’ve always said*, verbatim, that a manager’s most important job “is to put his players in the position that they’ll best succeed.”
* Well, since Ozzie Guillen lost a game by asking Brian Anderson to squeeze home a runner.
Should all major leaguers be able to bunt? Of course. Are all of them able to? Of course not. So while an individual player is at fault for being a poor bunter, his manager is at just as much fault for asking him to bunt in a critical situation.
Ozzie’s trademark is forcing his players to fit his idea of what their strengths should be, instead of just acknowledging their unique skillsets. He needed a centerfielder? Play Rob Mackowiak there, even though he’s exclusively a utility infielder and corner outfielder. Dangerous lefty-right coming up in the opposing lineup? Only send left-handed relief pitcher Neal Cotts* out there for the lefty, then remove him, even though righties actually hit worse against him.
* We’re talking the 2005 Neal Cotts here. Seriously, he was just sick that year.
Opposing batters’ composite slash lines, vs. Neal Cotts (LHP) in 2005:
RHB: .155/.288/.209
LHB: .206/.284/.275
overall: .179/.286/.241
I don’t care what you Boston people say, but Francona is a good manager. The main difference between losing in ’03 and winning in ’04 was Francona. People obsess about x’s and o’s in the context of one game, but fail to see the bigger picture of the season.
Herb Washington stole 29 bases for the A’s in 1974 (and was caught stealing 16 times, an atrocious rate). In 1975, his only other season, he got cut after going 2 for 3 in steals.
Of course, the Orioles didn’t win with Weaver in ’82, but won with Altobelli in ’83. Sometimes it’s just luck.
Enjoyed your column about picking the NCAAs in 64 seconds. I filled out a bracket just before the first games. It probably will do just as well as if I’d thought about it, or watched any games.
Thanks for the chess reference, although Gary Kasparov has been retired from chess for over three years. Sadly still the benchmark though.
Someone with a pitchers park is gonna sign him to a minor league contract & bring him up late in the season for some bullpen help. What’s pithetic about the Royals releasing him BEFORE the season IMHO, is that Gobble is notoriously worse later in the season. Which, logically, means they could’ve waited a month or two into the season & then traded him for a little value. I’m sure some team would think “Wow, Gobble of 8.81 has improved a ton at 4.25, we should get him and see if we can get him to improve some more”. Releasing him now, wasn’t a thought out move.
I’d like to see how Gobble fits in San Diego.
I always thought Matt Diaz was the perfect illustration of why Buddy Bell was a bad manager and Bobby Cox is such a good one.
Bell looked at Diaz and said, “I need a power hitting corner outfielder who plays great defense and you’re not it.”
Bobby Cox, obviously, could have used a power hitting, great glove left fielder, too, but he looked at Diaz and asked, “What are you good at and how can I use that to help my team?” And Cox has found ways to make Diaz a very valuable and productive member of his team until something better comes along.
The fact that you have just made the Royals releasing Jimmy Gobble this interesting is proof that you are the greatest baseball writer alive.
At the risk of semantically nitpicking Tampa Mike, the main difference between the Sox’ losing in ’03 and winning in ’04 wasn’t Francona, it was Grady Little.
Sparky Anderson was able to be a “Captain Hook” for a number of seasons in Cincy because he had the most rubber-armed reliever that I recall during that decade, Pedro Borbon. It seemed like that guy threw in the bullpen every damn day when Sparky’s starters were struggling. Borbon would frequently enter a game in the 4th/5th/6th inning and carry the load remarkably well for 2 or 3 innings – or at least it seemed like that as a Pirates fan and a Redlegs non-fan but admirer. I often thought that Borbon was one of the most valuable players on that roster.
I think Tony Pena would have been a more successful manager if, instead of calling him “Yimmie Yah-bble,” he just called him “Jim-Jim.”
Godspeed Jim-Jim. We’ll miss ya.
Sir Sid!
I’d love a long post about Bobby Cox. I used to watch the Braves a lot, and when they’d show him in the dugout I always got the impression that there were things going on inside of him I couldn’t begin to fathom. How do you win that many division titles year after year? But it’s almost like he wasn’t thinking as such, or even feeling, more like it was just in his bones what to do. I think the day of managers like that are gone forever.
People in Philly (still feeling a win) look a managing different these days. sure there are the X’s and O’s and thats important. Charlie Manuel doesn’t know that stuff. but he had a brilliant year last year because he motivates somehow. it can be best explained by the microsm of the winning world series game. geoff jenkins lost his job in the outfield. pat burrell, a notorious slumper, was having a bad world series. they both had the biggest hits of the game, jenkins as a leadoff pitch hitter (albeit adter a rain delay). whats the difference between sticking with guys too long and being brilliant? they got hits.
That ´75 Cincy bullpen had four outstanding relievers; I don’t remember whether Sparky used them in the roles we’ve defined now, but Borbon and Clay Carroll were the set-up guys and Eastwick and McEnaney were the closers. I’m also not sure whether Sparky was really using a four-man starting rotation, either, or whether Billingham and Nolan went every four days, Gullett pitched when he wasn’t injured, and then he’d pick whoever seemed to be ready to go fourth and sometimes fifth.
The crazy-ass Dominican santeria chicken-sacrificer in Major League is supposedly based on Borbon.
Oh, yeah, Jimmy Gobble. He’s a LOOGY and does what he does very well. Some team out there is going to need one and pick him up. But the Royals don’t have room for a guy who pitches to four batters a week.
“Now pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota….”
That said, 125 innings of 122+ over 67 appearances is a nice piece to have.
Brian,
But do you say it in an Irish accent? Because it’s not the same without it.
Bugs Bunny probably said throw, not “through”.
I don’t know whether Bobby Cox was a great manager because of his pitching coaches or in spite of them. But I recall game after game when Cox pulled starters at 100 pitches even if it didn’t seem to make much sense. And then year after year he had starters who didn’t break down. I also think the Braves were built for the regular season. Recall the poll (not pole</editor) about the number of Braves who led the team in saves? If the Braves had invested in a true closer, I suspect that they’d have won more World Series. But I think that ran counter to the team philosophy. You can’t blame Cox for not having the right kind of personnel.
“I don’t care what you Boston people say, but Francona is a good manager.”
The only Boston people who say otherwise are the mouth-breathing cretins who are on, or call in to, WEEI. And the occasional bread-dead dinosaur columnist like Shaughnessy, when he’s just trying to stir up sh*t to gain attention for himself.
I loved the Davey Johnson and Peter Golenbock book about 1986, “Bats.” I’m going to reread it together with Jeff Pearlman’s “The Bad Guys Won,” about the same Mets’ season. I wonder if the Torre/Verducci book is as good.
Of course, I’m going to put everything else aside on 9/9/09*.
Little was so bad that you had nowhere else to go but up.
Matt M #7 –
Davey Johnson is an outstanding manager. Just look at his record: in 14 seasons as MLB manager, he has 5 1st-place finishes, 7 2nd-place finishes, 1 3rd-place finish, and one partial season 5th-place finish. He is 264 games over .500 in his career for 19th on the all-time list, despite managing fewer games than 16 of the 18 ahead of him.
EdB #8 –
And the reason he isn’t currently managing is primarily, so far as I can tell, that he is too smart for most “baseball people”. For instance, he doesn’t like giving away baserunners — in 1986, the Mets issued 29 intentional walks, basically less than half the amount of any other team (Pittsburgh only had 55). As has been amply demonstrated over time, especially with regard to sabermetrics, “baseball people” do not have a high regard for intelligence or original thinking.
Holden Cornfield #16/Steve #22/and you too, Joe –
Yes, Bobby Cox puts players in positions where they can succeed. He also is smart enough to adjust his lineup/roster based on performance, rather than his expectations (I cannot remember how many times his bullpen rotation has been changed during the season based on how his relievers were pitching). One of my favorite attributes of his is that he uses everybody on the roster — so far as I can tell, his attitude is “If you’re good enough to make the roster, you’re good enough to play in a game when the situation warrants”; none of that Billy Martin “I don’t play rookies” nonsense.
Actually, I think the primary job of the manager is to manage the roster, or “maintain harmony”, or however you want to say it. Or, as Casey Stengel said (paraphrasing):
“On any ballclub, you have 15 guys who don’t give a damn who the manager is. Then you have 5 guys who hate your guts, and 5 guys who aren’t sure. My most important job is to keep the 5 guys who hate my guts away from the 5 guys who aren’t sure.”
So I’m pretty sure that John Stewart is interviewing Bruce tonight on Comedy Central.
Dennis Reyes was a guy the past couple years the Twins used ONLY to pitch to lefties. The guy would often times throw 1 pitch an outing. And he was an important part of the Twins bullpen, a really good bullpen 2 years ago. More ammo for your Gardy Campaign, which I agree with. Point being, there certainly is a place for Gobble. I’d love that place to be on the Twins this year actually.
Bugs does one helluva Irish cop accent. Much better than his Elmer Fudd one.
Longest… title… ever.
But we’ll read it all the same because we like you, Joe.
Francona is a great manager, definitely the best the Sox have had in my lifetime, and I go back to the 60s.
A lot of sports fans are just manager haters and will blame the manager/coach for anything that goes wrong and not give him credit for anything that goes right. No point in listening to anyone like that.
I mentioned this the last time you wrote about Jimmy Gobble, but almost every left-handed pitcher is going to face more righties than lefties. Mike Myers, who I think epitomizes the LOOGY to most people, has faced righties in 47% of his career. In 2008, he faced one more lefty than righty. And Gobble’s splits are less extreme than Myers’. Ricardo Rincon faced 85 more righties than lefties. Alan Embree has faced 700 more righties than lefties. Joe Beimel has faced 600 more righties than lefties. I’m not cherrypicking, those are just the first lefty relievers that popped into my head.
Thanks for the chess reference, although Gary Kasparov has been retired from chess for over three years. Sadly still the benchmark though.
Yeah but at least Joe spelled Garry with the correct transliteration (or at least the one that has appeared on all of Kasparov’s books).
Any team in the NL East should have a LOOGY, just for R.Howard. He can’t hit it low and away to save his life.
I love the fact that you set up a perfect Catch-22 for Ray Knight. The only way for him to follow your advice was to not follow your advice. He could ignore all media types, yourself included Joe, which of course would mean ignoring the column where you told him, in essence, to ignore your column. But by doing so he would essentially still be paying attention to the media types. Basically, if he did what you suggested, he would be doing what you didn’t suggest. Very Zen. Very David Carradine. It’s sort of an infinite loop, one which would no doubt eventually result in Ray Knight’s head exploding if he thought about it too much.
You’re a devious bastard, Joe Posnanski.
Man. You know how all actors just knew that Brando was the best? Well, that’s how we feel about Joe Posnanski. Just fabulously entertaining writing.
The piece is correct. There is no exact science to figuring out what makes a good manager. Billy Martin was disparaged by a commenter above, but he turned losers into winners wherever he went. The side show was the problem. Davey Johnson was a terrific manager for different reasons than Earl Weaver and Bobby Cox. But they were all good in ways that have not yet been easily calculated. And yes, Francona and Torre are right up there with the elite.
@Paul White (and a little at Joe P.) How could you miss the obvious Princess Bride reference?
@Tampa Mike I know I have had that feeling and even said, “they have to get this guy off the mound” just before he gives up a huge hit. But I have also stood at a craps table and said, “man, the luck just left this table…but I’ll just wait until the dice come around to me…” 100 bucks later, I’m wishing I had gone with my first instinct.
I hope that makes some sense. I just get very tired of judging a manager after he does or does not make a change based on the now known result. Managers don’t have hindsight.
“@Paul White (and a little at Joe P.) How could you miss the obvious Princess Bride reference?”
Okay. Consider comment #41 edited to include this ending:
“Truly, you have a dizzying intellect, Joe Posnanski.”
I may not be remembering all this correctly: when Ray-Ray was hired he went out of his way (-Ray) to tell the media that he was the reason the Reds had a good season in 1995, Davey Johnson’s last year as manager. He also inferred that Davey Johnson was not all that as a manager. Lastly, the more he spoke at his first news conference, the worse it got. It ended up sounding like a huge put down re: Davey Johnson’s abilities as a manager.
I don’t believe Ray-Ray meant for the news conference to go that direction -he just talked a lot and he didn’t have a filter to edit everything that came out of his mouth. When nervous it appeared that he was quite insecure, thus he often over compensated trying to be the man in charge.
When Jack McKeon came along it was not only a relief to the Reds players, but to Ray-Ray himself. I think RayRay got tired of hearing Ray-Ray talk….and I’m not kidding. The man was worn out.
I guess Davey was saving his bullpen last night when he let Roy Oswalt get battered all over the place in giving up 5 in the fourth inning of an elimination game against a team that had given up 11 runs in the whole tourney. Also, the Red Sox should sue the Japanese manager who allowed Dice-K to throw 100 pitches in March.
I believe Texas picked up Gobble. Even if it is just to see what he’s got, good for him. I can’t help but wonder if someone in Texas read your article and thought they’d give the guy a shot.
Texas IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
Mendoza (L, 0-1) 3.0 2 2 2 3 1 0 3.86
Rupe 1.0 3 3 3 1 1 1 4.70
Francisco 2.0 3 2 2 1 2 0 5.14
Gobble 1.0 1 0 0 1 0 0 3.86
Madrigal 1.0 3 4 4 1 0 1 9.00
[...] Brunell’s Lost in Transactions. Apparently the Rangers read Posnanski, because they took a flier on Jimmy Gobble. The Gobblester in the Ballpark? They may have to come [...]
[...] Brunell’s Lost in Transactions. Apparently the Rangers read Posnanski, because they took a flier on Jimmy Gobble. The Gobblester in the Ballpark? They may have to come [...]