Looking Forward to 2007 - Los Angeles Dodgers

“Luck is the residue of someone else’s doo-doo.”

Don Malcolm
Special to BTF

“UNFATHOMABLE WISDOM IN IGNORANCE”

The above phrase would make an awfully good epitaph for Dodgers GM Ned Colletti (and let’s face it, Ned, sooner or later we’re all gonna need one).

In the attack-dog world of neo-sabermetrics (imagine an entire gaggle of 30-somethings still daubing on acne medication while simultaneously shouting at the top of their lungs…), he is the latest anti-Christ, lambasted in overwrought (and lamentably oversyndicated) blogs as “a walking pocket of pus”—in short, yet another Enemy of the State (or People, or whatever side you think you’re on).

What is worse, of course, is that his retrograde policies, as applied to a franchise that was bleeding more than “Dodger blue” after a tumultuous 2005 season, coincided with the team rebounding into the post-season in 2006.

And worst of all, there are all those pre-season polls and projections trumpeting the Dodgers—retooled for 2007 with nothing but questionable acquisitions (old players, mediocre players, pitchers with recent injury histories, etc.)—as odds-on favorites to be the NL representative in the World Series.

Why, it’s enough to make a neo-sabe choke on his rubber nipple.

Colletti clearly does not care for statistical analysis beyond the won-loss column. And while that is clearly a backward stance, the utter simplicity of it is oddly bracing in a world where increasingly esoteric formulations and ersatz economic jargon have concatenated into a calamitous cacophony (read: “much ########, spoken loudly”).

In short, there is an unfathomable wisdom in Colletti’s defiant ignorance, and it is (evidently) as ungraspable by him as it is by those who come either to praise or to bury him.

What Colletti believes in, from all available evidence, is what that venerable 70s funk band Hot Chocolate sang about in their big hit “You Sexy Thing.” Namely, he believes in miracles. It’s a chaotic world: over-planning and painstaking analysis are just not gonna tame it. Go with the flow, ride the wave, do your own thing (even if, in doing it, some of it contradicts). It’s OK to do a free-form freakout while wearing a three-piece suit—hey, it’s actually more authentic this way than growing your hair long or performing all those linear regressions.

Bottom line: don’t be afraid to get lucky. Because if you’re afraid, luck will never be on your side. The Dodgers’ 2006 season is a case in point.

“LUCK IS THE RESIDUE…”

…as it says at the top of the article, “of someone else’s doo-doo.” That, of course, would be Paul DePodesta, a figure of martyrdom in the over-illuminated world of baseball number-crunching. The Icarus of sabermetics, DePodesta rode the success of the A’s and the attendant hype in Moneyball to being the Dodgers’ top dog (aside from Farmer John, of course), but bad luck and an ill-placed hot dog bun caused his house of computer printouts to come crashing down on him, forever typecasting him as a paper tiger. After a disastrous 2005 season, DePodesta was the first “numbers-wonk GM” to own the most unwanted piece of paper—a pink slip.

There were, however, several curious numbers that didn’t get much attention at the time of DePodesta’s dismissal, figures indicating that much of what happened to him and to the 2005 Dodgers was simply bad luck. In fact, those numbers still haven’t gotten much attention (and if you stop reading right now, they never will).

The study of team performance by quality of opposition (sometimes called “Good vs. Bad” or GvB in spirit of acronymic acrimony) shows a fairly predictable relationship between a team’s performance against “good” teams (those with a .500 WPCT or higher) and its performance vs. “bad” teams (those with losing records).

While there is some variation to be found, teams generally win 25% more games against bad teams than they do against good teams. The exceptions to this rule are usually very good teams (those that win in excess of 100 games) and very bad teams (those that lose 100 games or more). There are, of course, anomalies along the way, and from this perspective it’s clear that the 2005 Dodgers, with all of their warts (excessive injuries and clubhouse dissension, among others), were one of them.

The 2005 Dodgers were a .450 team against “good” teams (36-44). On average, then, they “should” have won about 46 of their 82 games against “bad” teams, which would have worked out to a season total of 82 wins.

Instead, however, they played only .428 ball (35-47) against bad teams. Just over two-thirds of these games (68%) came against three sub-.500 teams (Arizona, Colorado, San Francisco) in their own division: the Dodgers were 22-34 in those games.

When we break those numbers down a bit more, we can see where the real anomaly springs from. When we look at GvB numbers in close games (those decided by one or two runs), we see that the 25% WPCT ratio drops to around 14%. The Dodgers were actually over .500 in close games against good teams (22-21), but they were a woeful 14-27 against in close games against bad teams. (Much of this occurred over the final two months of the 2005 season, when the Dodgers were playing without starting outfielders Milton Bradley and J.D. Drew. Their record in close games vs. bad teams after August 1st: an awe-inspiring 2-14.)

So instead of winding up at around a break-even record in ’05, the Dodgers skidded to a 71-91 mark, and DePodesta soon found his head on a post.

Flash forward to 2006. Colletti, hired in November 2005 after eleven years as the Giants’ assistant GM, had traded away the volatile Bradley, quietly parted with DePodesta pet Hee Seop Choi, signed Nomar Garciaparra to play first base, and had stocked the Dodger roster with a gaggle of ex-Giants. When the Dodgers lined up to play at the beginning of ’06, no one other than Colletti was especially sanguine about their chances.

But that’s where the luck comes in. The 2006 Dodgers had a hell of a time beating teams with winning records: they had only a .333 WPCT against good teams. Where they were fortunate—extremely fortunate, in fact—was that they only played 57 games against good teams last year. Their record against bad teams—with 23 more such games than in ’05—was just peachy (69-36).

Now the fact that the schedule is so absurdly skewed in this manner is just one of the things wrong with baseball today, but (as usual) that’s another essay. The Dodgers’ good fortune did have to be taken advantage of, and take advantage of it they did.

But there’s more—much more. Take a look at the #3 batting slot for the Dodgers in 2005 and 2006:

2005, .266, .368, .476
2006, .282, .365, .465

Now those numbers look pretty much the same, don’t they? The 2005 team, which had problems scoring runs, got 31 HRs out of the #3 slot; the 2006, which scored nearly 140 more, had 26 from the guy batting #3.

Interestingly, however, the #3 slot in ’05 drove in 84 runs, while the #3 slot drove in 117 in ’06. That’s a pretty sizeable difference in RBI totals, given how essentially similar the overall performance measures look.

There are two reasons for this. The first reason is the one that will resonate in the little world of sabermetrics: the Dodgers’ #1 and #2 slots were pretty poor in ’05, with OBPs of .341 and .315 respectively. Last year, those averages were up—thanks in part to Colletti signing a very veteran ex-Giant (Kenny Lofton) to bat #2: the OBPs for those slots rose to .366 and .353.

The second reason will be a bit harder to swallow, but let’s chew on it anyway. In addition to the performance of the batting slots immediately in front of the #3 hitter, there’s also the performance of the #3 slot when men are in scoring position. Here are the performances of the #3 slot in RISP situations in 2005 and 2006:

That’s right. The #3 hitter for the Dodgers had more RBI in RISP situations in ’06 than the #3 hitter for the Dodgers had for the entire season in 2005 (the aforementioned 84).

And there was a similar level of improvement in the #5 slot:

Again, the #5 slot for the Dodgers had more RBI in RISP situations during ’06 (96) than they had in that slot for the entire 2005 season (90).

In terms of driving in runs, these two slots produced close to 50% of the increase in run scoring for the Dodgers in 2006.

The uptick in the Dodgers’ RISP performance could not have come in two more strategic BOPs.

Colletti probably thinks that it’s part of his repertoire as a GM.

And those 105 games against bad teams? Who’s to argue with luck, especially when the team bats .291/.365/.453 in those games (as opposed to .249/.310/.395 vs. good teams)?

Hell, Colletti has no idea that these stats even exist!!

And with good fortune like that smiling on him throughout 2006, he doesn’t have to, either. His bliss-filled ignorance allows him to machinate by the seat of his pants, and the payoff of a bumper crop of young talent (catcher Russell Martin, outfielders Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, pitchers Jonathan Broxton and Chad Billingsley, and first baseman James Loney) gives him a lot of leeway.

Even the team’s injuries in 2006 (to Garciaparra and Jeff Kent) come at points in the year where things were able to remain stable. Veteran Olmedo Saenz steps in when Garciaparra is absent early in the year. Rookie Andre Ethier gets hot when injuries force Kent to vacate the #5 slot in July. In September, manager Grady Little flip-flops Kent and J.D. Drew in the batting order: both men get hot at the same time (1.000+ OPS).

And so on. Time and time again, the 2006 Dodgers found a way to make the most out of what they had.

Here’s another example—one that might actually be more planned than accidental. Colletti worked hard to provide the team with better relief pitching in 2006, from the rather un-sabermetric notion that emphasizing run prevention might allow the team to win more games where their run scoring was not all that robust (for our purposes, let’s say 3-5 runs).

It turns out that the 2005 and 2006 Dodgers had one thing exactly in common: both teams scored exactly 3 runs in exactly the same number of games (22). The difference, of course, was in the team’s won-loss record in those games. The 2005 club was 3-19 in such games. The 2006 club was 9-13.

When we break out the data by GvB, we see another pattern of exact similarity and total disparity. Against good teams in 2005, the Dodgers were 2-8 when they scored three runs. (By the way, the average WPCT in the NL in 2005-06 when a team scores three runs was .338, 246-482.) The 2006 Dodgers were also 2-8 in such games.

The total disparity? The 2005 Dodgers were 1-11 in games against bad teams when they scored three runs; the 2006 Dodgers were 7-5 in those games.

Overall, in games where they scored 3-5 runs, the Dodgers were a break-even team in ’06 (31-31). That compares with 18-38 in ’05.

The biggest difference: the Dodgers had only 35 games in which they scored two runs or less in ’06—as opposed to fully one-third of their games (54) in ’05. Only the Braves had fewer games with 2- runs scored in ’06.

So one could say that by focusing on creating viable options for run prevention, Colletti let the hitting take care of itself. No focus on perennial hot-button issues like OBP, but an acquisition of veterans who could post at least modest improvements in the clearly vulnerable areas. These combined efforts produce a net gain in WPCT at most run scoring levels:

RS, ’06 gain
1, +7
2, +1.5
3, +6
4, +2
5, +2.5
6, +2
7+, -4

You’re reading it right. The Dodgers gained seven games on their ’05 performance simply as a result of games in which they scored one run. How does that work? Well, in ’05, the Dodgers had 25 such games (a total exceeded by only one club in the past seven years—see if you can figure out who it is) and went 2-23 in those games. Last year, they had only 11 such games (1-10). By avoiding fourteen such games, they stripped away seven sure losses.

Colletti’s wildly flailing, semi-conscious approach (seen as such by both the mainstream press and neo-sabe ideologicals) seems to have produced a flatter distribution of run scoring. If that is something he can replicate with his free-form, wipe-your-ass-on-the-nearest-tree-stump approach, then his “ignorance” is, indeed, some kind of primordial wisdom arrived at in a completely non-scientific way.

SO WILL THIS #### WORK AGAIN IN 2007?

Oh, Crissakes. Let’s compare the sizes of our divining rods, already. Colletti’s aboriginal “genius” is that he keeps stirring the pot, tossing fresh meat at his manager, who seems to have the demeanor to take anything in stride (after all, he survived one of the most ignominious defeats in the history of Red Sox ignominious defeats just four years ago).

That approach keeps things fresher, for sure, but one does wonder if these guys can keep it up if 1) they don’t get key RISP performances in the right parts of the batting order (slots 1, 3, 5 seem to be most pivotal) and 2) if they actually have to play a schedule in which half their games are against good teams.

Still, all things considered, the Dodgers have more pitching depth than they did in ’06, and while Drew is gone, they may still have a batting order that has enough firepower up and down the lineup to produce an extra run from any scenario when needed. Adding one run scored to your total provides the most benefit in WPCT when you go from one run to two runs (+.178), and from three runs to four runs (+.167), and that seems to be the (unspoken) axis around which Colletti is aligning his team.

That said, Colletti will need to stay lucky and get better-than-career-average years from his two free-agent outfielders (Luis Gonzalez and Juan Pierre). If that doesn’t happen, though, don’t be surprised if the Dodgers either trade for some power or simply reach into the farm system and give prospects like Matt Kemp, James Loney, and even Andy LaRoche a chance to contribute. Stirring the pot is Colletti’s stock-in-trade: as befitting an aboriginal type (“unfathomable wisdom,” and all that), his other gravestone epitaph—one more unsavory but still somehow on point---speaks to an onanistic dedication to his task: “It ain’t the meat, it’s the motion.”

Whoo-hee! Time to duck out before ye olde tomatoes hit their mark, so let’s conclude with some ersatz numbers, shall we? My old-style, unWARPed abacus indicates that the Dodgers will drop about forty runs off their scoring total in ’07, but that the pitchers could shave off fifty to sixty from their opponents. That works out to around 89 wins if Pythagoras is not too pickled, and while it is clearly an inelegant team, devoid of sabermetric sizzle, it will probably keep the natives entertained as they wait for a real powerhouse to emerge when the kids are ready to take over in ’08.