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June 8, 2010 – 8:54 pm | by wesleyspence1973
Diary Of A Losing Team, 5/10
Posted: May 10th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 65 Comments »
There was an interesting moment in Sunday’s Kansas City-Texas baseball game that you may have missed while you watched comparatively unimportant events like Boston beating Cleveland in the playoffs or Dallas Braden throwing a perfect game or Tim Clark winning the Players Championship or whatever.
The moment happened in the third inning … Texas had runners on first and third with one out. Vlad Guerrero hit a fairly short fly ball to left field, and Elvis Andrus tagged up. Kansas City’s Scott Podsednik caught the ball and threw home late — arm strength isn’t exactly Pods’ greatest tool. Andrus scored the run.
Royals television showed a replay from behind the plate looking out toward the field, and if you were looking you saw something unusual — and Royals announcer Ryan Lefebvre was all over it. Josh Hamilton at first base completely forgot to tag up. Just forgot. He was halfway between first and second, and he watched the ball go to the plate, and he just ran for second base. It was like he did not know the rules or something*.
*My favorite example of not knowing the rule comes from Hall of Fame Gaylord Perry, who was coaching Limestone College, and remembered one guy who had worked the pitcher for a three-ball count when a teammate was caught stealing to end the inning. Next inning, guy steps back in the box, takes ball 1 and starts jogging to first. He thought the balls and strikes carried over.
The Royals did not see it. And they did not appeal the play at first base. If they had appealed, Hamilton would have been out (the umpire DID see it) and the inning would have been over. Instead, the inning continued, the Rangers scored two more runs, they knocked Luke Hochevar out of the game, and the Royals lost 6-4.
So the question: Why didn’t the Royals see it? I understand that there was a lot going on, and the eyes follow the play, and nobody saw Tim Robbins’ new shoes in Shawshank Redemption. But why didn’t the Royals see it? Why didn’t Billy Butler, who was standing at first base, see it? Why didn’t David DeJesus in right field see it? Why didn’t anyone in the dugout see it? Why didn’t Trey Hillman see it.
And this leads to why the whole thing was interesting to me: There was something CONCRETE about that play. And there’s so little CONCRETE in baseball.
Here’s what I mean … let’s look for a minute at Royals manager Trey Hillman. Look, anyone who cares knows that Trey Hillman probably will not be the manager of the Kansas City Royals next year. Hillman is in the last year of his contract, and his teams have lost 50 more games than they have won in 2.2 years, and they are off to a terrible start. In the Royals baseball community — or, anyway, what’s left of it — there seems to be a new template of thinking emerging … that Hillman is about to be fired. I don’t think so. What I know about Royals GM Dayton Moore tells me that he would not fire a manager in the middle of a season, especially a manager he handpicked for the job. But I could be wrong.
Either way, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Hillman will be managing the Royals in 2011. That scenario would require a pretty dramatic turnaround from a team that from all visible angles does not have the talent necessary to turn around. The Royals are 11-21, and that’s with Jose Guillen, Jason Kendall and Scott Podsednik all performing better than expected, not to mention Yuni Betancourt posting his best on-base percentage since 2007 (even if that on-base percentage is .307). It’s hard to see where the improvement would come from. The Royals are 11-21 with Joakim Soria showing cracks for the first time, with the rest of the bullpen in shambles, with Luke Hochevar, Kyle Davies and Brian Bannister all sporting ERAs in the 5.00s, with Alex Gordon in the minor leagues learning how to play a new position, and with Zack Greinke seemingly cursed. It’s hard to see how good things will suddenly start happening for this team.
So, no, I don’t think Hillman will survive. And, things being what they are, I’m certainly not saying Hillman should survive. The job is to win. The Royals aren’t winning.
But I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what’s fair and what’s not fair when it comes to judging managers. It’s really one of the hardest questions in sport analysis. No matter what happens, good or bad, you can blame or credit the manager. And no matter what happens, good or bad, you can say the manager had nothing to do with it. The “Gardy Can’t Manage” people, for the most part, will not allow a 21-11 record or five playoff appearances to deter them. They win in spite of him. And the Fire Trey Hillman people, for the most part, will not be dissuaded from the notion that another manager would win more games with this collection of talent. They lose, in large part, because of him.
Now, Hillman has sparked a lot of heat — some of it from me — because of the way he handles pitchers, his quirky inconsistencies, his not altogether inspiring clubhouse manner, his hieroglyphical statements to reporters.
He also has done numerous strange things this year:
– The other day, for reasons unknown, he left the much-injured Gil Meche out there for 128 pitches (most in baseball this year) even though he walked seven batters and was more lucky than good and the bullpen was rested and pitchers were warmed up.
– A few days earlier, with the Royals up a run, he pulled a surprisingly effective Robinson Tejeda, who had thrown 1 2/3 perfect innings, with two outs in the eight and nobody on base to bring in Joakim Soria, who promptly gave up back-to-back home runs.
– He has started soon-to-be-36 Jason Kendall 31 out of the 32 games — including bringing him back in day games after night games.
– When Yuni Betancourt loafed and dropped a pop-up, he said action would be taken. But instead of benching Betancourt the next game — an easily defensible decision considering Aviles is probably better than Betancourt anyway — he instead “fined” him. I put “fined” in quotation marks because the fine must have been extremely small. If it was more than a certain amount, the players association could have filed a grievance, and I suspect the Royals would have lost … adding yet more embarrassment to an already ridiculous situation.
– He has managed once again to put a team on the field — a somewhat different team from last year — that according to the Bill James numbers is the worst base-running team in the league, and according to the John Dewan runs-saved statistic is the worst defensive team in all of baseball.
Dewan Team Defensive Runs Saved (available at the awesome Bill James site).
(And, Matt Klaassen writes in, to say that you can now also find Dewan Runs Saved and Plus/Minus, as well as UZR, on the remarkable Fangraphs site. The other day when I wrote that baseball has never been better I forgot to mention that with Baseball Reference — now automatically linked up — Fangraphs, the Bill James site, Cot’s Baseball Contracts and Retrosheet, we are absolutely in a Golden Age).
1. Seattle, +27
2. San Diego, +25
3. Tampa Bay, +24
4. Colorado, +22
5. St. Louis, +20
6. Arizona, +19
7. Toronto, +19
8. Minnesota, +17
9. Washington, +15
10. Yankees, +14
11. Philadelphia, +14
12. San Francisco, +14
13. Oakland, +13
14. Texas, +12
15. Cleveland, +11
16. Cincinnati, +9
17. Boston, +5
18. White Sox, +5
19. Houston, +4
20. Mets, +4
21. Atlanta, +3
22. Baltimore, +2
23. Detroit, -2
24. Florida, -2
25. Cubs, -7
26. Angels, -10*
27. Pittsburgh, -10
28. Milwaukee, -14
29. Dodgers, -20
30. Kansas City, -21
*The Angels thing is fascinating — last year they were one of the two or three best defensive teams in baseball according to Runs Saved.
And so on. There really isn’t much on the positive side to point out about Trey Hillman’s managing — but to be fair there rarely is when a team is playing about .350 baseball.
But all that said, I suspect that some of the criticism of Hillman is either unfair or, certainly, unkind. I mean, take Joakim Soria — Hillman has taken a beating for not using Soria more and in higher leverage situations. But, realistically, he is trying more than most managers. There have only been 18 saves all year of more than one inning — and Soria has a league-leading two of them (he could have had three but gave up those back-to-back homers). And asking for Hillman to pitch Soria in the seventh inning and be some sort of relief pitcher pioneer — breaking away from what every other manager in baseball has been doing for two decades — is probably a bit unfair. If there’s a manager out there who will try to break the closer role dynasty, I suspect it will be an established manager with a winning history and a fat and guaranteed contract and extreme confidence in his own ability and his boss’ patience. La Russa could do it. Torre could do it. Even Piniella could do it. Hillman is not that manager and he has not been given that role.
Truth is probably closer to this: Hillman has looked bad managing the bullpen because every pitcher he has in there stinks on his command. When Royals general manager Dayton Moore says that the bullpen woes should be blamed on him … well, I think he’s probably right.
Then there’s Hillman’s handling of Meche and Kendall: Look, these guys are veterans who want to pitch forever and play every day. Sure, it’s a manager’s job to cut them down, to pull Meche after 7 good innings whether he likes it or not and rest Kendall against his will before his already sub-100 OPS+ tumbles back into the 70s and 80s where it has been the last few years.
But, as bad as it is, Hillman NEEDS these guys on his side. They are, for lack of alternatives, his leaders in the clubhouse. Royals fans may be looking ahead to 2011 or 2013, but Trey Hillman cannot. He has to win now or find himself coaching first base for whatever team that would have him. He may not have the horses, but he has to ride them as hard as he can … because if they turn on him, this thing will REALLY run off the rails.
So what to do? Meche, I’ve come to believe, has a self-destructive streak — he does NOT know his body like Hillman contends. He wants to keep pitching even though he has a bad back and is getting up there in age and he has no feel for when he’s overdone it. Maybe it’s toughness. Maybe it’s stubbornness. Maybe it’s a weird lack of self-control … the whole “I’m fine” thing. Whatever the case, yes, Hillman should be a strong presence, pull the guy, protect him against himself, but I suspect Hillman thinks he can’t afford it. Gil is his pitching leader. He needs him the way Johnson needed Cronkite.
And Kendall. He said something on Sunday to the Star’s Bob Dutton that still has my mind reeling.
“We know we’re going to turn it around. We just haven’t clicked. We haven’t pitched well and hit well (at the same time). Every club that I’ve been on goes through these stretches.”
OK, the obvious has to be said: Jason Kendall has spent most of his life playing on lousy baseball teams. He played nine years in Pittsburgh, and they had a losing record every one of those years. He played for a couple of pretty good Oakland teams, one which made the playoffs, and 57 games for a mediocre Cubs team that also made the playoffs and one 90-win Milwaukee team. That’s it. Teams he has played on have not just gone through “these stretches” they have spent half-decades in these stretches.
That has not been Kendall’s fault, understand. He was a valuable player the Pittsburgh years and a tolerable one the year Oakland reached the ALCS. But Kendall has also become this team’s spokesman and resident leader, and it can be said he has not been around a lot of great teams himself. But, he wants to play every day. And Hillman needs him. And Hillman plays him every day.
The point is … what’s Hillman going to do to make this team better? He pulls Meche and rests Kendall and sits Yuni and configures the modern closer built around Joakim Soria and … so what? That would make the Royals significantly better? Doubtful.
Managers guess right and they guess wrong. They work magic and they blow a game. They play winning hunches and losing hunches too. I think Trey Hillman knows baseball. I think he has worked relentlessly to improved fundamentals. I think he has experimented. I think he has worked as hard as anyone could expect.
But it has flopped. And the issue is still unresolved: How much can you really blame a manager? How much can he really do? How much could somebody else do in his place. I don’t know. That’s the problem with judging managers: Nobody really knows for sure.
Here’s what I do know — the one concrete thing I can say: Hillman could have noticed that Josh Hamilton did not tag up. That’s real. He could have saved his team an out and two runs. He could have done that. Maybe that’s not fair … to ask a manager to see everything. Maybe not. All I know is there was a real way for a manager of a bad baseball team to help his team win a baseball game … and Trey Hillman missed it.
Wikipedia:*
According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed by formerly enslaved black people at the Washington Race Course (today the location of Hampton Park) in Charleston, South Carolina. The race course had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp in 1865 as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, formerly enslaved people exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them properly with individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. The work was completed in only ten days. On May 1, 1865, the Charleston newspaper reported that a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, proceeded to the location for included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day.
David W. Blight in his own words from The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877, lecture 19, To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings:
African-Americans invented Memorial Day, in Charleston, South Carolina. There are three or four cities in the United States, North and South, that claim to be the site of the first Memorial Day, but they all claim 1866; they were too late. I had the great, blind, good fortune to discover this story in a messy, totally disorganized collection of veterans’ papers at the Houghton Library at Harvard some years back. And what you have there is black Americans, recently freed from slavery, announcing to the world, with their flowers and their feet and their songs, what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a second American Revolution. That story got lost, it got lost for more than a century. And when I discovered it, I started calling people in Charleston that I knew in archives and libraries, including the Avery Institute, the black research center in Charleston–”Has anybody, have you ever heard of this story?” And no one had ever heard it. It showed the power of the Lost Cause in the wake of the war to erase a story. But I started looking for other sources, and lo and behold there were lots of sources. Harper’s Weekly even had a drawing of the cemetery in an 1867 issue. The old oval of that racetrack is still there today. If you ever go to Charleston go up to Hampton Park. Hampton Park is today what the racecourse was then. It’s named for Wade Hampton, the white supremacist, redeemer, and governor of South Carolina at the end of Reconstruction and a Confederate General during the Civil War. And that park sits immediately adjacent to the Citadel, the Military Academy of Charleston. On any given day you can see at any given time about 100 or 200 Citadel cadets jogging on the track of the old racecourse. There is no marker, there’s no memento, there’s only a little bit of a memory. Although a few years ago a friend of mine in Charleston organized a mock ceremony where we re-enacted that event, including the children’s choir, and they made me dress up in a top hat and a funny old nineteenth century suit and made me get up on a podium and make a stupid speech. But there is an effort, at least today, to declare Hampton Park a National Historic Landmark.
That certainly could explain the South’s historical antipathy to Memorial Day. They favored their own Confederate Memorial Day.
The Charleston Post and Courier ran a remembrance of that first Memorial Day last year. From it, The Martyrs of the Race Course (pdf), an account of Memorial Day events from 1865 as reported in the Daily Courier. A column by Blight For the Newark Star Ledger on the first “Decoration Day.”
Enjoy the holiday.
* I note this special by Stephen K. Robinson of the 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs Office on The origin of Memorial Day lifts the same Wikipedia paragraph without attribution.
You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.
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Wesley Spence