Baseball is a game of decisions. You’ve heard the analogy before; it’s like playing chess. Every aspect, from setting the lineup on game day to a single pitch call, is an effort to outsmart the team in the opposite dugout. In this era of baseball, when coaching staffs rely so heavily on data and analytics, there are more decisions to be made than ever before. Some decisions prove to be far more impactful and a wrong call, something as simple as a pitching change, can define a manager’s entire career. This, of course, is in reference to Rays’ manager Kevin Cash’s decision to pull Blake Snell, his ace pitcher, in the middle of maybe the most brilliant start of his career that just also happened to be during Game Six of the World Series.
Unfortunately for Cash, this moment will characterize him as a manager for years to come. Baseball does not forget. Well, it doesn’t forget mistakes, at least. But what may be forgotten is that Kevin Cash is one of the best managers in baseball, and he just brought a team to the World Series whose entire 2020 payroll of $28 million is less than Mookie Betts salary at the start of this season. The fact that they were even competing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who logged $107 million on their books this year, in the Fall Classic is almost unimaginable. Almost.
In decades past, and even to an extent today, it’s generally accepted that there are two ways to put together a championship caliber team. The first is with big spending. Teams with deep pockets can go out and sign premier free agents to long term contracts that keep them in contention for years to come (see: Dodgers’ Mookie Betts, Yankees’ Gerrit Cole). The second is growing your own talent. Draft and scout well, stack the farm system, and maybe all the young talent can stick around long enough to make a championship run (see: Astros’ Jose Altuve, George Springer, Alex Bregman, etc). Obviously it isn’t as simple as this, there are plenty of other factors in piecing together a successful club, and most clubs that are perennial postseason threats use a combination of these two approaches.
The Tampa Bay Rays diverge from these methods. They’ve proven time and again that money doesn’t dictate success. They’ve had their fair share of homegrown talent, but their data-intensive approach to baseball is what fills in the gaps that money cannot. Analytics are the present and future of baseball, whether people like it or not, and the Rays organization is a benchmark for the rest of the league.
This isn’t to say that pulling Snell in game six was the right move. It’s easy to be a Monday morning manager after seeing how the rest of that inning played out. The next three batters after the pitching change were a combined 0 for 6 with six strikeouts. Those players also happened to be Mookie Betts, Justin Turner, and World Series MVP Corey Seager. The Rays are firm believers in the “Third Time Through” philosophy. After seeing a pitcher twice in a game, a batter starts to adjust and generally has a better outcome in their third plate appearance.
This strategy is especially useful when a team has the weapons to back it up, and the Rays bullpen is an arsenal. There’s the hard-throwing trio of late inning arms, Diego Castillo, Nick Anderson, and Peter Fairbanks, each of whom average 95 MPH or better on their fastball. Lefty Aaron Loup and his right-handed counterpart Ryan Thompson come at batters from the side, with release points 4.21 feet and 3.72 feet off of the center of the plate, respectively. To keep it short, these guys are nasty. Having to get through these arms is a challenge for any lineup.
What’s most impressive though, is how this ragtag group of relievers came together. Most of these players were nobodies in the eyes of every organization in the MLB until they landed in Tampa Bay. Nick Anderson started as an independent leaguer, and didn’t debut in the bigs until he was 28. Thompson spent six years kicking around the minors with three different organizations until the Rays picked him up in the Rule 5 Draft. With the exception of a couple of veterans, the same story follows the rest of the bullpen: they’re all minor league relief-only guys.
That being said, it’s safe to say that Nick Anderson was not the answer for the Dodgers in game six. His regular season numbers were arguably the best in the American League; in 16.1 innings he pitched to a 0.55 ERA and finished with the lowest WHIP (.49) among all relievers. The Nick Anderson we saw in the postseason was a bit different, with an ERA of 5.52 over 14.2 innings. His performance significantly dropped off when the postseason began. Considering the 60 game length of the season, it’s hard to trust his impressive numbers in the first place. Yet the Rays made it this far doing just that.
The unique approach to their bullpen this year elevated the talent even further. Traditionally, if a team has a great bullpen, every pitcher has their own very defined role. The Rays, like most traditions in baseball, completely abandoned that. They had no closer or setup man, just guys who get outs when they’re called upon. This season, 12 of their pitchers notched a save. That much variance usually indicates an unreliable bullpen, but Tampa’s finished third in ERA (3.37) this season. With the tools they had and an approach based entirely on matchups, relief pitchers were called on early and often, and it worked.
Kevin Cash made a mistake, one that will be discussed for decades. It also, unfortunately, overshadows how impressive this team really was. The Rays have pieced together a team of nameless baseball afterthoughts, and came within two games of a World Championship with a fraction of the financial resources their competitors have. Cash and the Rays will take their medicine, but they’re still the gold standard for innovation in baseball. If anything, their season proves that fully investing in the numbers can lead to success. But if the best pitcher in the league is in the middle of making history, maybe take a break from the excel sheet, just once.
