Tampa Bay Rays: Other MLB Teams are Cherry-Picking Talent From a Perennial Doormat

in #sports5 years ago (edited)

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By most measures, the Tampa Bay Rays are not one of Major League Baseball’s top teams. Even in Tampa Bay itself, you might wonder if anyone pays attention. The team draws an average of around 14,000 fans per game to its cavernous stadium, which seats 42,000, ranking the Rays franchise # 29 out of 30 MLB teams in attendance. Since kicking off its first season 21 years ago, the Rays team finished first in its division only twice, once going deep into the postseason.

More often, the team has under-performed, finishing in last place in its division 10 times. The team's home ballpark, Tropicana Field, is regarded as one of the league's worst places to play baseball, which may be why it's often mostly empty. A new facility is under consideration.

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If the team is that bad, then why did both the Minnesota Twins and Toronto Blue Jays just hire new managers this fall from the Tampa Bay organization? And why is Rays front office man Chaim Bloom one of the hottest names in General Manager searches, a finalist for the New York Mets, San Francisco Giants, and Texas Rangers job openings? It’s reminiscent of the time when Andrew Friedman (now Los Angeles Dodgers President of Baseball Operations) and Joe Maddon (now Chicago Cubs Manager), both of whom got their start with the Rays, developed celebrity statuses and moved out to larger market teams.

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Tampa Bay executive Chaim Bloom, a noted analytics devotee. Yes, he is old enough to run a team's front office. Source: Tampa Bay Rays via MLB.com.

The short answer is that the Tampa Bay Rays franchise is a trendsetter when it comes to innovation. The team sits in the same division as perennial contenders like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, both of which have much higher budgets than Tampa does. Yet Tampa Bay does something with much less.

When it comes to trendsetting, baseball is all about analytics. Numbers have taken over the game and for good reason. No professional sport has more repetitive attempts than baseball with pitchers throwing to hitters again and again and again, thousands of times over the course of a season. When the ball is in play, fielders have the opportunity to record outs defensively. The nature of the game generates a lot of data; those who can pick through this data learn to spot discrepancies or gaps or trends that become opportunities to exploit an edge.

While a seasoned old manager knows his players instinctively and makes decisions based on gut feeling, the newer generation of baseball people uses data to put each player in the best position to succeed. From pitching matchups to launch angles to exit velocities to wins above replacement, there are dozens of different data sets and measures.

For example, Player A is less effective as a hitter against left-handed pitchers than right-handers, a trend that accelerates when the pitcher’s arm slot is lower, such as with a sidearm pitcher. He hits for power with plenty of home runs, but the majority of them come on fastballs. When he has two strikes against him, he is vulnerable to breaking balls in the lower inside corner of the strike zone, either striking out or hitting ground balls on most of them. So an opposing team possessing this data can try to maximize its chances of getting this hitter out (without him getting a hit) by choosing a pitcher who gives him trouble, pitching around his strengths, and trying to exploit his weaknesses. There are a limited number of pitchers on the team’s roster, so it cannot make a change with every hitter, but generally if teams can make the best statistical decision in most situations, that team can put itself in the best position to win.

Some teams use analytics more than others; Tampa Bay is one of the most analytically focused teams. Though defensive shifts are not cutting edge anymore, they provide an example. A few years ago, teams started moving their fielders to the right or to the left for certain hitters, knowing that those hitters historically tend to hit most batted balls to one side rather than the other. Some of the greatest hitters in baseball history have been “pull” hitters who hit most balls to one side, but the defensive shifts have neutralized much of their offensive advantage by putting fielders where they are most likely to hit the ball.

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Defensive shifts are a reaction to the prediction that given "pull" hitters will hit most batted balls to one side of the field, so the defensive team shifts more of its players there in hopes of stopping the hits. First image from Fangraphs.com. Second image from MLB15 by Majestic. Last image from MLB.com.

In 2018, Tampa’s defense shifted on 30% of hitters in 2018, making it # 2 in shift frequency out of 30 teams. Only one team, the Houston Astros (last year’s champions) shifted more than Tampa did. Tampa employed the defensive shift nearly 10 times more often than the team at the opposite extreme.

But defensive shifts are yesterday’s news. So is locking up a team’s young talent by signing the best players to affordable, long term deals very early. Tampa Bay did that for the first time back when it signed star Evan Longoria to a contract during his first week in the major leagues. Now many small market teams do the same thing, hoping for an overall discount deal in exchange for the small risk that the young player will not continue his progression.

The Tampa Bay Rays also gave baseball Ben Zobrist. This guy was a career utility player, a good hitter and versatile player, but never mentioned among the game's greats. However, it turned out that as analytics improved and statistics like Wins Above Replacement became paramount measures of a player's value on the field, teams suddenly realized that Ben Zobrist scored really high on analytical measures. And so Zobrist suddenly became a hot commodity, sought after by other teams, and he eventually managed to score an impressive multi-year contract from a later team.

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Ben Zobrist, who has ranked higher in statistical measures of value than some better known players. Source: Topps.com.

There are more examples of how even small budget teams are trying to utilize any small advantage to win more games. In 2018, the Tampa Bay Rays team was the first to innovate again, pioneering something new: openers. By the end of the season, several other teams had followed them and this trend went right into the playoffs.

What is an opener? A pitcher who starts a game is normally called a starter. There may be additional pitchers used later in the game, called relief pitchers or relievers. After potential middle-inning relievers, teams bring in their elite relief pitchers finish out games in which they are leading in the score. Known as closers, these late inning relievers are meant to secure a victory by shutting down the other teams from scoring any more.

So now we have not just closers, but openers. In May 2018, Tampa Bay started a game by putting Sergio Romo, a career relief pitcher, on the mound. The team had no intention of letting him continue more than a few batters/outs. He would not be the traditional kind of starting pitcher who would be considered to have made a quality start if he lasted six innings (18 outs) or longer. Tampa Bay started Romo with the intention of taking him out of the game very early. He made several of these “starts” for them during the season. And other teams followed with a similar opener concept, since many of these teams had better deep in their relief pitching than they did with starters.

Here is a video of the first "opener", reliever Sergio Romo's first (short) career start:

This innovation is based upon the conclusion that most pitchers are not that good when they stay in the game very long. If you have a Justin Verlander or a Clayton Kershaw on your team, by all means, those guys are elite pitchers who can get opponents out for most of the game. But very few pitchers are that good.

When statheads crunched the numbers, they began to show that most pitchers’ success fell off sharply the third time he faced the opposing lineup. So if that’s the best time to change pitchers (after the starter goes through the opposing lineup twice), then any pitcher (even a reliever) could start a game and pitch 1-2 innings. Teams are using their relief pitchers far more liberally now because the data showed them that starting pitchers were not getting the job done once the opposing team brought its hitters up for a third time through the batting order. And so, we have seen lots of teams use their relief pitchers heavily and use frequent pitching changes during the game.

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Number of pitchers used per game. Source: theringer.com

In this year’s World Series, analytics-based decisions did not always work out well, as we saw when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts repeatedly put reliever Ryan Madsen in the games, even though the opposing Boston Red Sox were hitting the lights out of his pitching. The statheads said that was the right move, so Roberts kept going to him, while an old school manager probably would have used some common sense and tried a different pitcher (often going with the hot hand) in those situations. Nevertheless, we will continue to see a high proportion of managerial decisions being made based on analytics.

It takes away some of the fun. I miss the old game when decisions were made more spontaneously by managers. But I also enjoy the analytics and what they have added to our understanding of this game. Tampa Bay started and continues to spearhead a lot of the innovation. Not only do they have some very good young players on the Rays team now; Tampa Bay also has a reputation for breaking new ground with new ideas. Right now, that’s just the approach that a lot of other teams want to take. And thus, we see talented coaches and front office people from the Tampa Bay Rays getting cherry-picked by other teams in search of smart people.

References:

http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropicana_Field
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-rays-have-innovated-again/
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/team-positioning
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/22/17379048/tampa-bay-rays-sergio-romo-kevin-cash-opener
https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/spray-charts-from-statcast-data/
http://thefantasyfix.com/andrew-miller/2013-fantasy-baseball-rookie-report-week-18-cole-vs-fernandez/

The two top photos of Tropicana Field are used with Creative Commons license via Flickr.com by arctic_whirlwind.

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I didn't realize they were on the cutting edge of this new trend. I just thought they didn't spend money on players, so they didn't have the talent needed. Then again, I don't follow Rays baseball too closely.

Neither do I, but I've started to wonder why other teams keep hiring their people. They aren't winning, but apparently whatever games they do win are partly attributable to their smarts.

I don't think the manager using data and stats to pitch the players is 100 % spot on if you ask me, a seasoned baseball manager should be doing totally better than that really in just my opinion

Yes, I agree. Experienced managers know more about their players than the stats can reveal.

Well it's always about studying the players just like football managers

Hello @donkeypong , Victory in games doesn't depend upon small or high budget. It's all about hard work and continues struggle.i have seen a lot of teams who played well and won despite of having very small budget. This is my opinion.

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Low budget teams can give themselves a chance to win also.

Hi how are you? I do not know much about baseball but in my country there are good teams and very good players which are a source of pride for us because they have played a good role abroad, so the little I have read is not easy for the world of sports but this team it looks very good.

You had many days without publishing about baseball, after several days of your wonderful stories it is good to learn a little bit about everything for me that I do not know anything about baseball

Sorry, it's one of my topics, so I cycle around to it regularly. :)

Your blog is varied and I like it a lot

@donkeypong sir!
Winning and losing is a part of the game. Winning is not important, important is to participate. practice makes team perfect.Low budget teams also specialize in reversing, because they have nothing to lose. While big teams are under pressure to save their reputation. Wins are those who score goals on the mind of the opposition team, who consider the game as passion. Whether the team is of high budget or low budget.

Usually, players and fans are passionate when they want to win.

Rays is like I've seen them say in their uniform the truth I always hear the Boston team are good yes sir but about the Rays can improve applying strategies is how you see baseball often apply many strategies now we will see how it goes though I still little the kiss my brothers like so I can say a little about the subject

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Its not just baseball teams put blames in managers whenever team Is falling, and It always works whenever new coaches or manager comes in, even if not gonna be long but at least some times

Some players are just like an angel thats sent to the world cos they got talents just like justin valander and the other man

Hello sir @donkeypong ,when talking to baseball, Tampa Bay rays is my favourite team. In games we can't predict that who will win.players who fight for win, they are always on top and pride of the team. Thank you sir for sharing your experience with us

This is my favourite game.Baseball is most famous game in the world.This is very interesting and emoshional game.Peopled loves this game by heart.Very beautiful and big ground.Fans comimg and watching this amazing game.Team winning depand on players working.Which team players working hard day and night practice his team win the match.I play baseball with my cousions and friends every weekand.Everyone so enjoying this game.Your blog really my favourite.Thanks for sharing.@donkeypong.

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