Burning River Book Club: Mind Game

Like any Baseball Prospectus book, a common theme of Mind Game is disproving common themes in baseball. This works particularly well with the 2004 Red Sox as they destroyed quite a few conventions on their own. While there is plenty of favoritism towards the team in Boston, many of the situations are still relevant towards other teams with a similar mindset (Cleveland, Toronto, the Cubs and nearly every other intelligent front office).

One chapter that would be particularly interesting to Tribe fans in 2016 looks in depth into teams that had a winning streak of at least 12 games and how they performed in the post-season. This has been a common contention that has arisen among Indians fans this year (as in “if you take away the 14 game winning streak, the Indians were only…”) and while it is generally dismissed, the BP crew look into the legitimacy of those claims. Of course, if you want to know the results, read the book.

They also get deep into the prospect of using your top reliever when necessary, rather than with a one to three run lead in the ninth inning. The fact that Boston’s closer by committee didn’t work out in the early years of the Theo Epstein revolution was not a matter of bad strategy, but bad pitchers. In Cleveland, they have worked this aspect to perfection because they have four quality pitchers who can make it work. The origins of this strategy (which existed far before Epstein and Bill James) are discussed in depth as well as the modern reaction.

Another aspect that is particularly interesting considering the current season is the take on the Red Sox series against the Yankees, particularly this quote:

Terry Francona beat Joe Torre. And Theo Epstein beat the tar out of Brian Cashman. The Sox had a championship-caliber team;the Yankees had a super-sized payroll and nine guys who should have been Devil Rays.

While there’s definitely some hyperbole from Joe Sheehan in there, it’s an extremely accurate take on the Indians over those same Red Sox in the ALDS this year. No, they didn’t have nine Rays, but they had the super-sized payroll, but were out managed by Francona and created better by Mike Chernoff and Chris Antonetti. Rather than spending hundreds of millions on free agents, the Indians actually picked up a Red Sox castaway in Mike Napoli and dealt from a strength (minor league outfield and pitching depth) to get arguably the most important player for any team in the post-season, Andrew Miller.

Quite a bit of the book focused on Francona and not from the typical after-the-fact, rose-colored glasses point of view. The chart below was very revealing as they looked at Francona’s tendencies at the beginning of his managerial career and once he joined the Red Sox.

Chart reproduced from Chris Kahrl & Jonah Keri

As you can see, Francona completely changed his management style when he started with Boston and he brought that style to Cleveland, even to a more extreme level. If anything, he has increased his platoon advantage (essentially denoted by the first and third rows) and his bullpen usage since leaving the Red Sox.

There are two primary failures in this book. First, because it was written by a team, there are many points where the same topic is discussed multiple times. The chapters are broken down in chronological order and cover just the 2004 season, but often times one must look back at previous series or forward to future games to make a point and quite often things get repeated. If they didn’t say the same things over and over again, the book could have been significantly shorter.

Secondly, the authors were obviously excited that “their guys” finally won something. This book could have been written about the A’s, the Rays, the Indians or a handful of other teams who were early adopters of advanced analytics, but the Red Sox were the first to win it all, so it was about them. That isn’t the problem, but instead it’s that they acted like every good thing that happened was due to their analysis department. Yes, many moves made were based in that line of thinking, but Curt Schilling‘s surgery wasn’t one of them. Dave Roberts‘ steal in the ALCS wasn’t really either, yet a chapter is devoted to both.

In a season, there is an extreme amount of randomness, which is a great reason why it took so long for a modern team to win. It isn’t that the A’s of the period were a poor team, they just had some extremely bad luck. The Sox had a ton of things break their way in the 2004 just like every team who has ever won the World Series has. Not everything is because of Sabrmetrics and this comes from a true believer of the modern statistical revolution.

Since it’s in the epilogue, I’ll save one of my favorite parts of the book for last. Speaking of the 2005 Sox, the editor of Mind Games, Steven Goldman again compares them to the Yankees, stating that they should embrace not the Yankees of the same period, but those from 1936 through 1953. In particular, this quote from Casey Stengel really hit home with me: “That’s a lot of bunk about them five-year building plans. Look at us. We build and win at the same time.”

The point here was that the Yankees of the time never stood for the status quo, but always had rookies on the team and were always looking for new blood. This is where the Yankees dynasty of the 1990’s fell apart and where the Boston teams after 2007 had issues. It is also a trap the current Indians team may be falling into. They have dragged their feet with every minor league star and it has hurt them. Waiting to bring up Francisco Lindor in 2015 may have cost them the post-season that year and waiting until there was an emergency to use Ryan Merritt left them with an inexperience pitcher throwing in the ALCS. Even now, they are very slow at promoting the next generation of superstars in Bradley Zimmer and Triston McKenzie in particular and could be not only wasting prime seasons, but possibly making it so they won’t be ready when they are needed.

If this book promotes any one idea, it’s that it doesn’t take a ton of money to make a great baseball team, but you not only have to prepare for today, but tomorrow and the future as well. The point is hit home over and over again with the Roberts acquisition, but is a general theme as well. With all the randomness in the game, all a team can do is give themselves the best chance to win it all and the Red Sox certainly did that in 2004.