The latest edition of Acta Sports' BILL JAMES HANDBOOK just showed up, and my first reaction was the same it's been every year for some years now: I can't believe they're still publishing this thing.
I was around for the very beginning, way back in 1989 or '90. At that point, the idea was brilliant: produce a compendium of career statistics for every major leaguer, along with various other numbers. Sure, The Sporting News had been doing the same thing in their annual Baseball Register since the 1940s. But the difference here? The Register wouldn't show up in stores until the following winter or spring, while the Handbook showed up in your mailbox in early November. Which was a boon to, among others, owners of Rotisserie and fantasy teams.
Today, though? In the age of Baseball-Reference.com? I'm surprised and pleased that the Handbook just keeps chugging along.
That said, I haven't really looked at the meat of the book, the player register, in a long time. I still enjoy the book because of the extra material, some of which is written by Bill James himself.
Case in point: a brand-new way of evaluating bullpens, which comes at the start of the usual section containing managerial statistics (statistics, by the way, which are literally available nowhere else on the planet).
Conveniently enough, Bill opens his essay with this:
A couple of years ago, you may remember, it was widely rumored that Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost was a moron. I forget what the complaints about him were, because frankly I am too old to take seriously the notion that various major league managers are bumbling incompetents who should pay more attention to the cutting-edge insights of people who call in to the radio. Anyway, Ned Yost has more or less put an end to his local criticism, by the simple method of putting together a deathly efficient three-man bullpen.
Well, harrumph to you too! I'll bet even Bill noticed that Alcides Escobar isn't the perfect leadoff man, nor is Alex Gordon the ideal No. 8 hitter. Still, Bill's point is well-taken: Do enough of the big things well, and the little things tend to be forgotten or should be forgiven.
Anyway, Bill and his friends at Baseball Info Solutions have "rated" every bullpen in history, compared that team score to the league average, and then assigned a "manager's record" for assembling bullpens.
As Bill notes, you obviously can't assume the manager did all the work; he can only work with the pitchers he's given, so ever since John McGraw there's plenty of other credit to go around. But as Bill also points out, the manager does play a large role here. Every spring, there are 15 or 20 pitchers in camp with at least a theoretical shot at the Opening Day roster, and only three or four of those are locked into the starting rotation.
Bill presents the 10 managers with the best bullpen-assembly records, and those with the 10 worst. Dusty Baker (+221) comes in 10th ... on the good list! Bill again: "Dusty Baker was the Ned Yost of his time. The guys who were too smart for their own damned good were always convinced that he was a disgrace to the managerial fraternity, in large part because they took for granted what he did well, and focused on the things he did not do well."
Well, yes. I suppose they did. Welcome to human nature, where we too often e-liminate the positive and ack-sentuate the negative. Bill wrote the above before Baker got hired by the Nationals, so let's keep a close eye on his bullpen machinations next spring. Maybe Dusty Baker will be the Dusty Baker of his time.*
* By the way, Buddy Black does well here, ranking seventh on the all-time list between Hall of Famers Walt Alston and Al Lopez. Tony La Russa's No. 2, Bobby Cox No. 4. And yes, it's a cumulative statistic so longevity helps.
Surprisingly, Jim Leyland comes out with the all-time worst bullpens; his negative-452 score is by far the worst ever. It doesn't look this metric is park-adjusted, but then again Leyland managed the Rockies for just one season. So it looks like Leyland, for whatever reasons, just had lousy bullpens during most of his long and otherwise fine career.
I'm fascinated by all this, because I've believed for a long time that one of the few things a manager could really control was the quality of his bullpen; there are arms falling out of trees, just pick the right five or six and put them in positions to succeed.
Of course, I've probably believed that for a long time because Bill wrote something like that a long time ago. Even if he's forgotten it.
