BtBS: Joe Maddon: The AL’s Most Active Manager

Introducing “Touch Score”! (No, it’s not the number of girls Mike Connors uhh, dated)

Touch Score

I tried to find a way to sum the hitter side and batter side to give us an idea of how often a manager touches his line-up and bullpen. I took pinch hits plus pinch runs and divided it by innings per appearance to create TOUCH SCORE. This doesn’t TELL us anything at all, it’s just a means of gauging manager action.We all know that Joe Maddon is the master of all things baseball. He is a profit, a psychic and a mastermind.

...Hyperbole aside, he is well known for being unconventional and using platoons and substitutions more than most. I was curious to see just how extreme he is in this regard relative to other managers, and I identified three areas I could look at to determine how “unique” Maddon’s management style really is in terms of being hands-on and strategic.

1) The number of pinch-hit and pinch-run appearances he uses.

2) The number of players that got regular playing time for him.

3) Reliever usage.

None of these are indicators of better strategic thinking, though I’m sure there would be logic behind each decision. Personally, I find the first two to be great and interesting and perfectly in line with The Extra 2% idea. The third I find to be incredibly annoying, because it means 18 times a year I have to watch Jays’ games with dragged-out late innings full of short reliever stints.