”A lot of people on Twitter were blaming Collins for the way he handled the eighth inning; I thought he played the match ups mostly properly although I would have expected Terry to have a longer leash with Aardsma with two outs and a three run lead. Terry decided to play the matchup instead. In the end, his relievers simply failed to execute.”
This was posted on MetsBlog following Friday night’s bullpen disaster. I mean no disrespect towards MetsBlog – who have been tremendous supporters of this site. Rather, as the most influential Mets-themed blog out there, this is a plea towards their influence not only with the fan base but with team management, as well.
Stop giving a free pass to the manager.
Decisions we see from the dugout – and this goes for nearly all teams, not just the Mets – are designed to remove all blame from the manager and put it all on the player. It can’t possibly be the manager’s fault if he plays the matchup and his relievers don’t execute, right?
It’s thinking like this that leads to the decision to carry two lefty relievers all season – even though the lefty relievers by far are the worst ones on the club. Hey, who cares if the lefty relievers have an ERA over 6.00 this season – it’s not the manager’s fault for keeping them on the roster and continuing to call on them in key situations!
Let’s recap the eighth inning Friday night. David Aardsma was called on to start the inning with the Mets holding a 4-1 lead. Aarsdma entered the game having allowed just 1 ER in 8 IP. Furthermore, he had limited LHB to a 2-11 mark, with both hits being singles. Additionally, he had not pitched in five days, so he was well-rested.
Aardsma allowed a leadoff single and then retired the next two batters he faced, including pinch-hitter Chad Tracy, who is a lefty batter. Then Denard Span strolled to the plate. Now seems like a good time to mention that the lefty Span entered the game with a .649 OPS in 316 PA and did not have a HR this season.
The absolute worst thing that could have happened if Aarsdma was left in to face Span was that the slap-hitter would have connected for his first homer of the year and left the Mets with a 4-3 lead. So our matchup-crazy manager decided to bring in a new reliever to get the platoon advantage.
This move could be defended on the basis that as bad as Span is overall, he’s even worse versus southpaws. In fact, he’s dreadful. By far the most likely outcome is that a lefty comes on, retires Span and the inning is over. Except as we all know, that’s not how the inning played out.
This is the role that Tim Byrdak excelled in over his two seasons with the Mets. The veteran was very good when he came in with men on base and was counted on to face just one batter. But if you were going to use a word to describe Josh Edgin, veteran would not be it.
The vast majority of relievers perform better when they start an inning and no one is on base. It’s a credit to Byrdak that he could be as successful as he was entering the games with runners on base. But any ideas on how Edgin performs with a runner on base? Lifetime he has an .884 OPS.
In his haste to get the lefty-lefty matchup, Collins created a situation that turned the hitter into Shin-Soo Choo (.885 OPS), the man so many Mets fans are eager to acquire this offseason as a free agent.
And this is Exhibit A in why fans and people in the media can no longer give Collins a free pass because “Terry decided to play the matchup.” There are many more things that play into the decision besides getting the platoon advantage.
Right now Aardsma is one of the best relievers on the club. He’s displayed no particular weakness versus lefty batters. He was already in the game and he had retired the previous two hitters. Making a mid-inning substitution here was a step backwards, one done only to put the manager in a position where he wouldn’t be second-guessed.
If Collins leaves Aardsma in and the Nationals go on to have a big inning, the critics would say: “Why didn’t you bring in the lefty to face Span – he’s horrible against southpaws!” If Collins makes the change and the Nationals go on to have a big inning, the critics say: “His relievers simply failed to execute.” It’s easy to see why the manager would choose the path he did.
Our manager’s default solution is that whenever a lefty comes up for the other team late in the game, we must jump through hoops to get a lefty reliever on the mound. Perhaps the idea should be to not treat every LHB as the ultimate threat and not view every one of our RHP as incapable of retiring a lefty.
There are lefty batters that you absolutely want to have a lefty reliever face whenever possible. Here are the 11 NL lefties with a .900 or better OPS versus RHP this season, with a minimum of 20 PA: Harper, Choo, Morrison, Gonzalez, Votto, Schafer, Adams, McCann, Schierholtz, Alvarez and Carpenter.
Notice that Span’s name was not on that list. Right now, Span has a .761 OPS versus righties. That’s a pretty good mark. However, given his lack of over-the-fence power and Aardsma’s success versus lefties, combined with the fact he had retired the previous two batters – it’s hardly a situation that screams out for the lefty-lefty matchup. Then when you add in Edgin’s lifetime mark with runners on base (and if we limit it to just runners on first, then his OPS jumps to 1.010) the decision looks even worse.
There’s one more thing to consider. While Edgin fares better against lefties than righties, the hits he gives up are more likely to be for extra-bases against a lefty hitter. RHB have a .137 ISO while LHB have a .195 ISO. In his brief career, he’s given up twice as many homers to lefty batters as he has righty hitters. While he didn’t allow a HR – it was Span, after all – he did allow a double. Afterwards the mid-inning pitching changes continued, the Mets lost the lead and eventually the game.
No matter what guiding principles a manager uses, there are going to be decisions that do not work out. One decision in a vacuum is no reason to abandon a successful strategy. But what we’ve seen from two and a half years of Collins managing for the platoon advantage has been a non-stop string of terrible bullpens. Here are his yearly bullpen ERAs:
2011 – 4.33
2012 – 4.65
2013 – 4.22
Each year the relievers have been worse than the starters and each year they’ve been below average compared to the rest of the league’s relievers.
It’s way past time to connect the dots and come to the conclusion that the current strategy is not successful. Now, we can change the strategy or we can change the people who deploy the unsuccessful strategy. But what we can no longer do is give a free pass to the people in charge who create miserable bullpens on an annual basis.
Here’s a final thought on bullpen management. The goal should be to put players in the highest-leverage roles that they can possibly handle. The goal should be to develop Edgin to be the next Billy Wagner, not the next Byrdak. It may turn out that Edgin is not equipped to be a shut-down closer like Wagner. But we will never know if he’s groomed to be a LOOGY and is pigeon-holed into a sub-optimal role to fit our current manager’s unsuccessful bullpen strategy.
Great article Brian. It seems to me like TC has fallen into the misguided trap of they lefty-lefty matchup always being superior, no matter what the statistics suggest. As you’ve shown here, the stats show that the matchup he ended up creating were not beneficial to the team. This is especially true when you consider that David Aardsma has a career .238/.357/.324 line against left-handed hitters, showing that his success this year is not a small sample size fluke.
Well said. Hear here!!
Just keep asking yourself if Terry Collins has put players in a position to succeed. Do we bring to bear, on a consistent basis, the best players in this organization to win long term?
Example: It’s the 9th inning, and your team is up substantially. You have a choice between a 40 year old pitcher throwing his last season, or a young guy that has recently shown some promise. Quick: do you take the chance of putting the young guy in moderately high pressure situation? NO. The Edgin his 10 pitches the night before must have tired him out too much to bear up to pitching the 9th and bring in Hawkins.
Satin sits, while Murphy plays 1B. Lagares gets seated in favor of .140 hitting and defensively negligent Kirk. (Here’s an idea. Want to give a young player a shot in the field? Try putting Brown out in LF, moving EYJ to CF instead of starting Kirk. Shocker.) Play the 32 year old catcher right into the ground when you have a younger man waiting … and this, the easiest call of all on a Saturday following a night game following a cross country flight. Buck had caught more games than nearly any other catcher in the league, was sporting a 1-14 recent slide.
All I can say, is he must be gddamned dynamite in the locker room and be getting all the support David Wright can whisper into Sandy’s ears.
Well put Brian. This absolutely had to be said. I was simply floored when I read that in Metsblog after the game. Not only was there a twitter blow up, I hope he read the comments to that very article, which near uniquely condemned TC for pulling Aardsma. In his post-game, TC mentioned something preposterous like “I could have kept Harvey in for 150 pitches” to those who questioned his actions, failing to face the plain fact that the decision in question was pulling Aardsma, not Harvey. This intentional misdirection said to me that he was trying to evade the real question.
There are occasions where having a LOOGY provides some comfort in the pen. TC has expanded the LOOGY to a pen management system of LOOGY/ROOGY by playing non stop match-ups batter by batter. He routinely burns through the pen with this completely misguided philosophy. I hate it. I hate that it provides the coaching staff cover for lousy managing.
Yesterday on MLB radio, Casey Stern (a huge Mets fan) used a part of his show to discuss the lefty-lefty righty-righty strategy. He hung the loss, like we all have, squarely on Collin’s shoulders. Not one single person could step up and defend that action and a Nats fan called in to jokingly say “of course you really need to be afraid of Span”…in fact with a big lead and 2 outs the only out of matter was Span. Clearly Aardsma had the situation under control. Edgin had just been called up from LV and tossed into a critical situation where a vet like Aardsma could handle way better. Edgin also has served up disaster in key spots previously.
Im still very angry 2 days later. Im tired of the outdated, inadequate, and preposterous approach we see from Mets coaching (minus Tuff). It is time to release this unimaginative group from the team.
Fire Terry Collins!
Brian, you have covered the situation perfectly. I also agree with all the comments. If you were part of the Chatter the decision was lambasted immediately so this is not a second guess.
Now I want to go further. Yesterday Torres strikes out the heart of the Nat order in the 8th and doesn’t finish out the game. He threw 36 pitches. Why waste another pitcher when you have a 5-1 lead and the pitcher is cruising? At 36 pitches he can’t pitch on Sunday.
Point 2. “We’re not going to bring Ike back to be platooned,” Collins said. “I can tell you that.” That reminds me so much of Jerry Manual when Angel Pagan was leading the Mets for 6 weeks and he told the media that Moises Alou was his left fielder and Pagan was going to the bench. Stubborn, backward thinking, and a question that need not be answered to the media.
I’m not just defending Satin here, what about Duda? (I know he is disabled now). Are the Mets going back to Duda in LF? The team is currently winning with the .595 OPS Lagares playing OF instead of the .500 OPS Davis and with the .791 OPS Duda/ .964 Satin at first.
TC needs to go as he keeps going back to the things that failed and will not change his thinking.
Guys,
You’ve all covered it very well. I can’t believe that at my advanced age I can still get very upset (putting it mildly) at stupidity.
The question I would like to pose is: Does TC’s managing book reflect his own philosophy, or is he managing from a “book”
provided him by Alderson?
norme, that question plagues me.
Wow, fantastic article, Brian. Has the Mets bullpen the last three years been as awful as they seemed? Or were they not put into situations where they could succeed individually, thereby rendering the whole terrible? I’m really tired of watching Collin’s BP management, and I have to think that the FO sees the same thing. You change the players three years in a row with the same outcome and you wonder if it’s the players or the way they are managed. It will be an interesting off-season, to say the least.
Been screaming this for 3 years. 15 years as a scout and I’ve rarely seen a manager handle a bullpen as poorly as TC. I’m no huge fan of Alderson’s, but is it reasonable to think he has put together the worst bullpen in the ML 3 consecutive years? Or might there be another cause?
Simple logic, forget statistics tell the tale. Whenever you go into your bullpen, your using your 6-12th best (or worst) pitcher, and everytime you change one, you are increasing the likelihood that one of them will have an offday. Aardsma was clearly throwing well, again, so why the rush?
Worse, Edgin improves his control as he throws, so Collins compounds the Aardsma out mistake by pulling Edgin after one hitter.
I can no longer count how many games Collins has blown this way.