The Extra 2% (30 page)

One of Neander’s most visible contributions has aimed to turn that bit of orthodoxy on its head—and he’s had Maddon’s full cooperation. For the better part of two decades, Yankees right-hander Mike Mussina fared considerably better against left-handed hitters than he had versus righties. He showcased that ability again on April 7, 2008, yielding just one run on two hits against a Rays lineup that featured five lefty bats (including switch-hitters batting from the left side) in a 6–1 Yankees win. On May 14 of that year, Mussina whitewashed a Rays lineup that featured six lefties, giving up just a single run in six and a third innings en route to a 2–1 New York victory. On September 2, same story: lineup packed with lefties, six innings, two runs, eight strikeouts, Yankees win. Finally, in the Rays’ fourth start of the season against Mussina, the Rays set Neander’s plan into action. On September 13, the Rays stacked the lineup with six right-handed batters, including light-hitting catcher Michel Hernandez and seldom-used outfielder Justin Ruggiano; Rocco Baldelli, owner of an ugly on-base percentage below .300 against righties, batted
cleanup
. The Rays shelled Mussina, piling up eight hits and two walks and counting five runs in five innings, on their way to a 7–1 blowout win.

It was only one game, and the Rays knew not to put too much stock in small sample sizes—a terrible mistake in baseball, and in life. Still, they were intrigued. The next season, on the rare occasions when they would face a starting pitcher with large, backward splits, Tampa Bay started deploying same-handed lineups. But the Rays possessed tools that also went well beyond simple lefty-righty splits. Their data sets showed each batter’s bat speed, swing plane, and the direction of all of his hits. Using that information, Neander could then dig deeper, looking for pitchers with particular pitch types and usage patterns who could be vulnerable to a lineup full of same-handed hitters. An obvious choice was Boston’s Tim Wakefield, who had shown a career-long tendency to fare better against
lefty hitters and had a go-to pitch, the knuckleball, that old-school and new-school baseball types alike claimed could be better hit by same-handed hitters. But the Rays weren’t quite ready to take the theory beyond Mussina and an extreme knuckleball pitcher. At least not until they faced a heretofore anonymous young lefty named Dallas Braden.

On May 9, 2010, Braden, an A’s soft-tosser who relied on command and a deceptive changeup, took the bump against the Rays. Less than a year earlier, White Sox veteran Mark Buehrle, another lefty who leaned heavily on his changeup, had thrown a perfect game against a Rays offense that ranked among the best in baseball. To the Rays’ shock and chagrin, Braden matched Buehrle’s feat, tossing just the 19th perfecto in major league history. If one time was a possible fluke, two times equaled a disturbing potential trend, and Neander wanted no part of it. A few weeks later, the Rays entered a stretch where they would face Shaun Marcum, a Blue Jays right-hander who threw his changeup more than almost any other starter in the game, twice in a span of seven days. The Rays loaded their lineup so heavily with righty batters that even the team’s switch-hitters batted right-handed against Marcum, leaving just five lefty starters combined in those two Marcum starts. The Rays crushed Toronto each time, winning by a combined score of 17–4. Four days before the first of the two Marcum starts, the Rays faced White Sox lefty John Danks, another pitcher who relied on his changeup. Armed with every left-handed bat they could find on the active roster, the Rays battered Danks for eight runs and eight hits in four innings, cruising to an 8–5 win. The Rays blog DRaysBay called it “the Danks Theory,” though given the idea’s creator, it could have been dubbed “Neander’s Notion.”

The ideas generated by Click and Neander, combined with Maddon’s open mind, have hatched other offbeat, in-game strategies. One such tactic is the Rays’ approach to defensive shifts. Historically, teams shift their shortstop to the right side of second base against big, plodding, left-handed power hitters, leaving the third baseman to guard the entire left side of the infield. That tack
goes back decades, at least as far as Ted Williams’s heyday. It also misses the point. If “the Splendid Splinter” or David “Big Papi” Ortiz launches a ball into the upper deck in right field, only Superman would be able to track the ball down. But Maddon, Click, and company understand that the relevant stat in considering the utility of shifts is the frequency with which a batter hits ground balls to a certain side of the infield. The Rays thus have shifted frequently against a different Red Sox batter, J. D. Drew, a decent, left-handed power hitter who drives a high percentage of balls in the air to center and the opposite field—but hits an aberrantly high percentage of his grounders to the right side. Tampa Bay is credited with being the first team to regularly shift against Drew. The Rays have also been the first team to shift against Chase Utley, noted John Dewan, author of
The Fielding Bible
and an expert on defensive analysis. When the Rays repeatedly shifted against the Phillies’ second baseman during the 2008 World Series, commentators wondered why they would do so against a relatively fast runner. What they should have noted was that Utley had hit 72% of his ground balls to the right side that year, making him a good candidate for a shift—even if he lagged slightly behind the extreme 80% hitters Dewan says make for ideal shifts.

The Rays’ approach has taken the concept of defensive realignments well beyond the usual shift protocols. They once used four outfielders in a shift against Cleveland’s Travis Hafner, a classic slow-footed, fly-ball-hitting bopper. They often shunt center fielder B. J. Upton way over to right-center against Derek Jeter, knowing that the Yankees’ captain has built an entire Hall of Fame–caliber career around an inside-out swing that sends balls the other way. At the end of games, the Rays occasionally raise the ante. Instead of the usual outfield-in setup used by other teams, Maddon once brought Upton in to stand at second base and serve as a fifth infielder when any decently placed ground ball could have won the game. The Rays have answers ready if you try to shift against them too. Through the 2010 All-Star break, Carlos Peña, the most-shifted-against player on the team dating back several years, was
14-for-24 lifetime when laying down bunts—many of them shift-beaters.

Some concepts have taken time to refine before the Rays could make them work. For all the success enjoyed by the pennant-winning team of 2008, they weren’t very good at base running. According to Baseball-Reference, the Rays took an extra base (for example, going from first to third on a single) 40% of the time, tied for eleventh in the majors. But they also made 68 outs on the base paths, the second-highest mark in baseball and a sign that they were being far too aggressive. Like Click’s tale of Rickey Henderson versus Pete Incaviglia, the net result illustrated how harmful giving away outs can be: the Rays ranked just twenty-fifth in MLB in
Baseball Prospectus
’s catchall base-running stat, equivalent base-running runs. This was a puzzling outcome. The Rays employed several fast runners, including Carl Crawford, B. J. Upton, and Jason Bartlett. Click and others in the front office were acutely aware of the value of successful base running. And Maddon, Mike Scioscia’s former bench coach with the Angels, had seen his former team complete one of the ten most successful seasons of team base running in documented history.

Addressing the club in spring training of 2009, Maddon told his players to remain aggressive in trying for that extra base, but also to be better aware of game situations. The players and coaches carried out that philosophy to some extent; no third-base coach in the game sent runners more frequently from third base on sacrifice flies than the Rays’ Tom Foley. But overall, the Rays took the extra base just 38% of the time in 2009, a mark slightly lower than the team’s ’08 result and also below league average. The good news was that they also made 10 fewer outs on the bases, improving to league average in that category. Many of the Rays’ best subtle advantages result from old-fashioned player development and instruction more than data crunching; their approach to base running fits that mold. In 2009, Maddon and the Rays’ coaches implemented drills brought over from the Angels to help the team improve. The approach taken
was both simple and unusual, said Morgan Ensberg, a former major league infielder who was in camp with the Rays that year.

“We had these drills on getting from first to third based on where the outfielders were,” said Ensberg. “It wasn’t as much about how you round[ed] the bag as much as where the ball was in the outfield and where the fielder was. They put three coaches out in center field and dropped balls in front of each of them, one runner at a time. If the coach got to the ball quickly, you shut it down. If he hadn’t gotten to the ball, go to third. The emphasis and explanation were very clear and very good, and these were easy lessons to learn and use later. Most drills are stupid. It’s so rare to have a good drill in professional sports, since people don’t know how to teach the game. This was brilliant stuff. Just, ‘We have speed? Let’s go!’ Even guys who don’t—let’s go!”

The full effect of the new base-running approach didn’t kick in until 2010. According to Bill James’s website, the Rays took 196 more bases than the average team, the best result by any club in the nine years the stat has been tracked.

Underpinning all the physical improvements the Rays made from the time Sternberg took over has been a new emphasis on the mental side of the game. The first season under the new guard ended with the Rays losing 101 games, their worst result in four years. Afterward, senior vice president of baseball operations and former Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker reached out to an old friend in Houston. Dr. John Eliot had worked as a performance psychologist with perennial baseball powerhouse Rice University, while also serving on the school’s faculty. Would Eliot come work for the Rays and help the team improve its own mental approach, Hunsicker asked. Eliot jumped at the chance.

Major League Baseball requires all teams to have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP). That program gives each team access to a clinical psychologist, ready to treat anyone from players to the grounds crew. The MLB mandate was meant to deal primarily with, Eliot explained, “abnormalities.” If a player has problems with depression,
substance abuse, or spousal abuse, the EAP representative is there to help. The rep can also deal with specific kinds of on-field problems: if a pitcher comes down with Steve Blass Disease (can’t find the plate, often throwing wildly to the backstop) or a catcher contracts Mackey Sasser Syndrome (can’t throw the ball back to the pitcher), he can get immediate assistance.

The Rays’ strategy
—again
—has been vastly different from the approach taken by most others. Maddon had worked with Ken Ravizza, an applied sport psychology professor at Cal State Fullerton, for several years. The focus of Ravizza’s sessions with Maddon, and also with Matt Garza, was to get the most out of each man’s abilities. For Maddon, that meant improving his ability to connect with players and set reachable goals for both himself and the team. Meanwhile, Garza was a supremely talented but highly emotional pitcher who would learn to rein in his frustrations through methods as simple as reading calming messages on the bill of his cap after a bad outcome. In both cases, it wasn’t about treating abnormalities. Ravizza, like Eliot after him, worked to maximize his clients’ potential by emphasizing focus, concentration, and visualization.

Eliot’s focus was on getting the most out of the Rays’ young talent. The Rays had invested tens of millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours, and many high draft picks to build a farm system they hoped would give them an edge over their rivals and enable them to catch up to much richer teams like the Yankees and Red Sox. But those prospects, Hunsicker, Maddon, farm director Mitch Lukevics, and others felt, would need the equivalent of finishing school to thrive in the big leagues. “Everybody talks about five-tool players,” Eliot said. “The guys that are the best are six-tool players—guys with five tools, but also the mental game.”

Eliot interacted with dozens of players at different levels. His favorite pupil, though, was Carlos Peña. A former top prospect, Peña had bounced around with several teams and was fighting for a job in spring training of 2007 when he met Eliot. “Doc, I want your help, teach me everything you know,” he implored. For the first two weeks, Eliot and Peña would hang over the dugout railing, talking
first about sports psychology, then about success in general and how to achieve it. Even with his uncertain status with the club, Peña made an impact on his teammates. Eliot saw what others saw—a relentlessly happy guy with an infectious smile—but also someone stressing over his future in the game. “I kept asking him, ‘Why do you play?’ ” Eliot recalled. “It was to have fun. He needed to start playing the game like he was in Little League, to allow himself to love what he was doing. To stop being so stats-driven and mechanics-driven.” Peña made the team that spring. Then he pummeled the rest of the league, bashing a career-high 46 homers. For the next three seasons, whenever the team would gather for a players-only meeting—to halt a losing streak or just make sure everyone was content and pulling their weight—it was Peña who would lead the way.

For the Rays, employing Eliot and other Mystery Men has been about getting a strong return on their investment. For a fraction of the cost of a major league minimum salary, the team can benefit from cutting-edge statistical analysis, a physicist’s view of the game, or innovative psychological techniques. Richer rivals can build palatial stadiums, pay nine figures for Alex Rodriguez, or draw on the fandom of an entire region. Upgrading a terrible defense, addressing bad base running, providing counsel for talented, young players—all of these steps have been pointed toward a more modest, but equally important and beneficial goal: wiping out weaknesses.

“If you have a team that’s at least average at everything,” said the Mariners’ Blengino, “you’re going to be a pretty good club.”