Examples of strategic devolution in sports

[zamboniracer]

@Freddy_the_Pig

The problem with baseball closers is that pitcher workloads fell and managers made an adjustment, but it wasn’t the optimal adjustment.

Yes, firemen like Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage would come in the seventh or eighth inning, typically with men on base. But they would still finish the game. They were closers, in the sense of closing the game, even though nobody called them that. They just weren’t one-inning closers.

Pitcher workloads fall over time. This has been happening since overhand pitching was legalized in the 1880’s and will likely continue to happen. I am NOT going to hijack this thread with a discussion of the reasons, which we have covered dozens of times. Suffice it to say that pitcher workloads have fallen.

So there were fewer complete games and relievers were needed more often–as in, almost every day. And, reliever workloads fell, so that it was less plausible to have a reliever working multiple innings. Mike Marshall pitched 208 innings as a relief pitcher in 1974. That won’t and can’t happen today.

So, you had to pick your spots for your best reliever, as opposed to bringing him in any time you had a lead (and the starter was faltering) and leaving him in for the rest of the game.

The optimal adjustment is to bring him in in the first tight situation and then take him out. The adjustment that was made was to save him for the ninth, on the theory that the ninth inning was always tight. But, sometimes it isn’t.

I think the above is correct. Going from memory only (always a risk I know) the 1-inning closer wasn’t a result of the save statistic, it was the result of the fact that Bruce Sutter was so unhittable early in his career that his manager overused him. Sutter would be burned out by the All-Star break, so his manager hit on the solution of limiting him to the 9th innings in save situations. It was a method of regulating his use, and somehow it spread to all ace relievers on all teams.

[John_DiFool]

Bunting (and base stealing at suboptimal chances of success) were de riguer for years, esp. in the NL. Teams wised up, stopped bunting as often with position players at the plate, and pick and chose their steal chances more carefully, causing their success %'s to go up significantly. Hit and runs are also pretty rare now too.

[VarlosZ]

@ElvisL1ves

Although the trend seems to be reversing, during the Steroid Era of baseball the basics of strategy and base-to-base play seemed to be mostly forgotten, while Home Run Derby took over.

Yeah, but they were right to abandon those small-ball strategies: if your lineup is full of guys who have good power and can and can work the count, then “walk, walk, 3-run homer” is pretty good method for generating offense. As someone suggested above, perhaps now that scoring is down and strikeouts are skyrocketing, teams will have to re-adapt.

@zamboniracer

I think the above is correct. Going from memory only (always a risk I know) the 1-inning closer wasn’t a result of the save statistic, it was the result of the fact that Bruce Sutter was so unhittable early in his career that his manager overused him. Sutter would be burned out by the All-Star break, so his manager hit on the solution of limiting him to the 9th innings in save situations. It was a method of regulating his use, and somehow it spread to all ace relievers on all teams.

The wiki kinda blames Tony LaRussa.

[Jeff_Lichtman]

There has been a change in baseball from trying to control matchups on offense to trying to control them on defense. That is, teams are now more likely to get an advantage by changing pitchers than they are by changing hitters. It’s hard to do both: you need a bigger bullpen if you change pitchers a lot, which leaves you less room on the roster for position players. I think this is why there is less platooning than there used to be.

I don’t have any numbers to show whether the number of pinch hitters has declined. I do know there used to be players who were pinch-hitting specialists (e.g. Manny Mota). Are there any of this type of player any more?

Bill James wrote an essay in The New Historical Baseball Abstract in which he argued that the use of LOOGYs (lefty one-out guys) is counterproductive. I think he made a good case.

[Munch]

@Jeff_Lichtman

There has been a change in baseball from trying to control matchups on offense to trying to control them on defense. That is, teams are now more likely to get an advantage by changing pitchers than they are by changing hitters. It’s hard to do both: you need a bigger bullpen if you change pitchers a lot, which leaves you less room on the roster for position players. I think this is why there is less platooning than there used to be.

There’s also been a pretty big increase in using a shift defense against specific hitters. Again - this is a counter-example to the OP, but it’s an interesting note.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Intergalactic_Gladiator

The NBA going from a team ball concept where an offense of five players is set up and they work the ball to the net to a superstar sport where the best guy slam dunks the ball as much as possible.

Have you watched the NBA in the last, say, twenty years? The modern game is about guards and shooting, whereas as late as the early 2000s the championship teams invariably had dominant centers.

The San Antonio Spurs’ top four scores all finished within four points per game of one another. They and the Heat don’t really have a center at all (Tiago Splitter is a part-time player, really.)

[RickJay]

@Jeff_Lichtman

Bill James wrote an essay in The New Historical Baseball Abstract in which he argued that the use of LOOGYs (lefty one-out guys) is counterproductive. I think he made a good case.

I believe the use of LOOGYs is going down, anyway. But yeah, it was never a good idea. It works, but it’s not worth a roster spot.

I think we’d find most strategic devolutions can be traced to managers and coaches doing things that preserve their jobs even if it slightly reduces winning. A baseball manager who designated the highest profile relief pitcher as THE CLOSER and uses him accordingly will not be criticized for it. I actually had people argue to me once that the Blue Jays could not use Casey Janssen in an extra inning game at home because you can’t get a save in an extra inning game at home and Janssen is THE CLOSER and you can only use THE CLOSER in save situations. So you actually have fans vehemently arguing for a strategy that makes no sense - but it will shield the manager from criticism, so he is likelier to keep his job.

In football I think it’s now widely accepted that coaches are far, far less willing to go for it on fourth down than the stats say they should be. But conservative fourth down strategy avoids criticism. You don’t get criticized for being passive.

[dzeiger]

Are there any stats on the Football “Prevent” defense, which attempts to stop teams from making a big passing play by pretty much allowing them to march down the field with a series of 10 yard plays?

[Procrustus]

Has anyone figured out if the huge increase in “the shift” is working or not?

[Just_Asking_Questions]

A handy example for the OP is basketball pre-shot clock. When a team got a lead, they simply held the ball. Games de-volved into 18-16 snooze fests. The NBA was in danger of dying out because of this perfectly sound for winning but incredibly boring for watching strategy.

[Marley23]

@Procrustus

Has anyone figured out if the huge increase in “the shift” is working or not?

Hitting and scoring keep going down, and I think most observers agree the shift is one contributing factor.

[zamboniracer]

@RickJay

<SNIP>
In football I think it’s now widely accepted that coaches are far, far less willing to go for it on fourth down than the stats say they should be. But conservative fourth down strategy avoids criticism. You don’t get criticized for being passive.

Gregg Easterbrook, now of ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, has been making that point since at least 2007. Link.