A Kind of Chip Hale Report Card

Evaluating managers is really, really difficult. There are so many moving parts, so many factors and so many pieces that it’s seemingly impossible to really understand why every decision is made. Some things are obvious – entering the ninth inning with a two-run lead, bringing in Brad Ziegler makes sense. But putting on the hit-and-run? Creating the lineup every day? When to hook your starter? It might seem obvious from a distance, and sometimes managers make their own jobs too difficult, but they aren’t easy decisions to execute and when these strategies backfire, the results can be catastrophic.

So knowing when to employ the right strategy is critical and knowing when the odds are most in your favor is paramount to being a good manager. Again, some of these strategies are obvious, but other strategies are deeply complex. And truth be told, there is an imperfect understanding of certain aspects of a manager’s job – team chemistry is important, but how can it be measured? Picking a recipient for Manager of the Year is often just the de facto award form Most Improved Team for the preceding season. We aren’t good at evaluating managers unless the results are wildly extreme (Joe Maddon and Matt Williams come to mind).

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And last week Ben Lindbergh of Grantland published his annual Managerial Meddling Index – a methodology for evaluating the strategies of managers. It’s often been said that over-managing can do more to harm a team than help it. And as Dave Cameron has pointed out in the past, we know more about what a manager shouldn’t do than what he/she should do. Again, our understanding is incomplete, but we’ve got an idea of the things that are good and the things that are bad. Lindbergh accounted for a number of each in his evaluation, where he judged managers on:

• Sacrifice attempts by position players
• Pinch hitters for position players
• Intentional walks
• Pitchouts
• Hit-and-run attempts
• Challenges
• Lineups
• One-batter-faced pitcher appearances
• Defensive subs
• Pinch runners
• Defensive shifts
• Time Through the Order Penalty (TTOP)

The results are both surprising and unsurprising. There’s isn’t a ton of separation between most managers – no surprise. There’s the “standard operating procedure” for most managers and they’re cut from a similar cloth so there isn’t a ton of variance. But at the poles there lies a big swing between the good and the bad. Guys like Matt Williams and Ned Yost do some things that are absolutely terrible with different levels of success. Even managers are victims of luck, good or bad. Kevin Cash, the Rays’ new manager, was on the extreme other end of the spectrum by rating well above average in most categories without a ton of results to show for it (Tampa Bay’s talent level might have something to do with this).

Chip Hale, Arizona’s first-year manager, finished in the top third of the managerial rankings. There are some things he did very well, some areas where he was just average and some areas that where growth is needed. Let’s take a look at each.

Areas of Strength

The Diamondbacks were tied for the league-lead in intentional walks with 45. Maybe it’s surprising that 45 is the most in baseball, but that’s apparently the case. And in the National League, using the intentional walk is critical when the pitcher is hitting, especially in the early innings when there may be a runner in scoring position and you can guarantee that the opposing manger isn’t going to pull his starter for a pinch hitter. It’s a tactic that should be used judiciously, but not sparingly when the situation calls for it.

The team rated positively in terms of sacrifice hits by position players, meaning they didn’t use this frequently. Far too often managers are giving away outs to move a runner over and we know, based on run expectancy, that it does more harm than good. Yet the old adage of get ’em on, get ’em over and get ’em in persists. The Dbacks’ position players with the most sacrifice hits were Chris Owings (7), Nick Ahmed (5) and Cliff Pennington (4). If there’s any group of players that should give themselves up, it’s these guys.

One thing that’s become popular over the last few years is avoiding the Times-Through-the-Order Penalty (TTOP). What we know is that pitchers fair worse against hitters the more often they face them. Getting through the lineup a third time is difficult and a fourth time is nearly impossible on most nights. The arguments to the contrary are usually built on selection bias. So avoiding this is key and Chip Hale, even though it felt like he had a long hook at times, did this well. Now, I happen to believe that this was partly due to his hand being forced by subpar pitchers, but it is what it is. He got them out of the game before they could be further exposed more often than most of his peers.

More Average Than Good (or Bad)

There are too many attributes to here dive deeply into each one, so I’ll just list them, then do a quick and dirty recap.

• One-batter-faced pitcher appearances (think: specialty relievers)
• Hit and runs called
• Lineups used
• Pitchouts called
• Defensive shifts used
• Defensive substitutions

The D-backs did use specialty relievers on occasion, but given the length needed from the bullpen a lot of nights, there wasn’t the opportunity to burn relievers on one batter very frequently. An average number of hit and runs is fine, I guess. Chip used an average number of lineups this year, which was aided by relatively few injuries to position players. They didn’t use the pitchout frequently or infrequently as compared to other teams. While they used far more defensive shifts than we we’ve seen in the past, the relative rise in shifting around baseball still placed them barely above average. The defense on most nights was excellent when the lineup card was filled out, so defensive subs weren’t needed very often. There, that was quick and dirty.

Areas for Growth

There are always things to improve. For example, I could write fewer words (case in point: that sentence and these parenthesis). In Chip Hale’s case, there were three areas where he was decidedly below average – although I should note that he was not wildly below average. This could best be described as areas that were not good, but not terrible. That’s a good thing as a little improvement should bring him up to average in no time assuming he reads this. Okay, okay…

The D-backs were below average in terms of challenges used in 2015. Using the challenge is a strategic thing due to timing and penalties associated with losing a challenge. But they’re also kind of like timeouts in football – you can’t take them with you. So unused challenges stay unused. There’s two ways to read into this: either there weren’t very many calls worth challenging, or, Chip was simply shy to challenge. Either way, the team may choose to be a little more liberal in their use of challenges next season. For a full and revealing breakdown of D-backs challenges, see Ryan’s post from yesterday.

The team also rated below average in terms of pinch-hitters used to bat for other position players, but this is a little tough to evaluate given the situation. First, the bench was shallow for the better part of the season. Having to carry Oscar Hernandez for part of the year didn’t help and Cliff Pennington wasn’t a great choice in most situations since hitting for the pitcher is discarded here. This wasn’t a team with a bench full of matchup mashers. They had Aaron Hill in addition to Hernandez and Pennington, and their best pinch-hitter (Jarrod Saltalamacchia) was their backup catcher, making him hard insert. If anything, this tells us the roster wasn’t very deep more than it tells us that Chip stuck to his guns too often, in my opinion.

Pinch runners used is the final lagging category. In a way, I’d attribute this to who was already in the game. The Diamondbacks were one of the very best base running teams in all of baseball last year, so the pinch running opportunities were limited since they were so good to start with. That’s a great problem to have. The two backup catchers weren’t faster than anyone else. Hill was only faster than, who, Jake Lamb (maybe), Yasmany Tomas and Welington Castillo? You don’t want to pull your catcher unnecessarily, Tomas didn’t play much in the last two months and Jake Lamb only played half the time anyways. The same could be said for Pennington before he was traded. The way I see it, there weren’t a whole lot of pinch-running opportunities since the fastest players were usually starters. Only when Nick Ahmed, Chris Owings or Ender Inciarte got a night off was there an obvious pinch running advantage.

What We’ve Learned

If we can take away anything here, it’s that Hale has done a fine job turning around the Diamondbacks from a strategic standpoint. When he was hired from Oakland, we were all excited that he might bring some of the progressive strategies the A’s have implemented so well with him. That appears to be the case. But he’s not an outlier in a positive way, even without having any glaring weaknesses, which is to say, non-analytically speaking, he’s alright. The front office likely has a hand in this, too. We’d be remiss to think that Hale works in perfect solitude. Dave Stewart is an old-school guy. So is Tony LaRussa to a large extent. Chip likely brings some new ideas and maybe Dr. Ed Lewis has helped usher in some of these changes. We simply don’t know where all of the credit should go.

But there have been very few WTF moments and that’s maybe that’s the biggest change and the biggest thing to avoid. Don’t over-manage. Let the boys play for the most part and pick your spots. Keep the big picture in mind and push the odds in your favor every chance you get. If you’re not sure that the move pushes the odds in your favor, don’t make it. Sometimes less is more and Chip Hale has done a really nice job in his first year. Heading into year two, we have a better idea of what to expect and that appears to be a good thing, at least for now.