Baseball BeatMarch 18, 2006
Winners
By Rich Lederer

More than anything, I like to read articles and books with insightful writing and analysis. I enjoy them all the better when I also know the author. In Winners: How Good Baseball Teams Become Great Ones (And It's Not the Way You Think), I have found a book that offers everything dear to me.

Dayn Perry, the author of Winners, is not a new name to those of us who spend time reading baseball articles online. He writes for FoxSports.com and Baseball Prospectus. Dayn has also contributed two guest columns to Baseball Analysts.

Winners is a detailed look at the 124 teams that made it to the playoffs from 1980 through 2003. Dayn sorts out the myths from reality by examining the strengths, weaknesses, and common threads of these successful ball clubs. He shares their strategies and principles while entertaining readers with stories of great teams and players.

Courtesy of Wiley, the publisher of Winners, you can read the first chapter (pdf file) in its entirety to get a flavor for Dayn's storytelling ability and analytical prowess.

I had the chance to interview Mr. Perry during the past week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I liked his first book.

Rich: Winners. How Good Baseball Teams Become Great Ones. Nice title. Why couldn't you have left it at that, my friend? I mean, was the parenthetical comment (and It's Not the Way You Think) really necessary?

Dayn: That was the publisher's decision. I'm with you, though--I'm a little put off by haughtiness in titles, and I think the whole shtick is a little played out. However, I think the book itself is substantially more modest in its delivery.

Rich: The book is more than modest. The book itself is a great read. I'm not even against the parenthetical subtitles in the chapters as I believe they help frame the discussion at hand.

Dayn: Yeah, I think those were actually a bit helpful in terms of giving the reader the lay of the land. What can I say? I suppose subtitles are a tricky business. I do, however, prefer the humble approach when it comes to titling. My affection for Philip Roth's "The Great American Novel" notwithstanding.

Rich: Being a St. Louis Cardinals fan, what made you choose Derek Jeter as the coverboy of Winners?

Dayn: Another publisher's decision. Still, when you think of quintessential winning ballplayers in the modern era, Jeter's bound to come to mind. He's also eminently recognizable--even with his nameless back to the lens.

Rich: You claim there's no such thing as a player who "knows how to win." If so, how can Jetes be considered a "winning ballplayer?"

Dayn: Actually, that's mostly a marketing flourish found on the back flap. I don't think I've said anything like that. If you want to conflate this topic with clutchness, I'll say I do believe players respond to pressure situations with varying degrees of success. I believe in clutch performers; I just think it's difficult to identify them mid-career.

Rich: Let me ask you this: are there players who "know how to lose?"

Dayn: On the other side of this, I think there are players who wilt under the glare of, say, Yankee Stadium or the World Series or the All-Star Game or against Roger Clemens or whatever. We all have situations that gum up our ability to respond with poise and efficiency. So, yeah, I think there are players out there who might be quality "low-leverage" ballplayers but might not be ideally suited to the wide stage, however the wide stage is defined. Reminds me of a great line from a Tom Drury novel I read in grad school: "I'm not a loser, but I've lost things."

Rich: In your opening chapter, entitled "The Slugger," you make the case that hitting for power is more important than getting on base. Has anyone banned you from sabermetric circles yet?

Dayn: Not as of yet, but I don't know that I ever had strong bona fides in that regard. In terms of correlating with the scoring of runs, yeah, SLG is more important than OBP, but both are substantially more important than AVG. We knew the latter point already, but some may be surprised to see SLG's superior correlation over the years. I was.

Rich: You make the point that isolated power (ISO), which is slugging average minus batting average, has an even stronger correlation to winning than SLG. That means extra base hits are really the most important, single stat of 'em all.

Dayn: Yeah, I thought that was curious. ISO doesn't correlate well with run scoring (worse than AVG, in fact), but it's common to winning teams. That is, winning teams generally post higher ISOs than non-contenders. So, yeah, as you surmised, doubles and homers are where it's at for winning offenses.

Rich: Your work points out that winning teams were better at preventing runs than scoring runs. Does that mean pitching and defense are more important than hitting in building a successful team?

Dayn: Yeah, but it's by a rather narrow margin. Specifically, since 1980 teams making the playoffs have ranked higher in their league and bettered the league average by wider margin in runs allowed than in runs scored. Please forgive that crime of syntax right there. That sort of dovetails with the traditional notion that pitching and defense win games, but the vehemence with which that's parroted overstates the relationship. They're both vital, of course, and most teams can't get by if they brazenly neglect one or the other. One of the recurring discoveries was that balance is vital--a balanced rotation, a balanced bullpen, a balanced lineup, and a balanced team. Winning teams tend to be solid to very good at everything as opposed to unfathomably awesome at one element of the game and rather lousy at another. There are exceptions, of course, but those are, well, exceptions.

Rich: I agree with you. I think balance is the key to a winning baseball team. Heck, I think balance is the key to life. That said, which championship teams have been the most unbalanced?

Dayn: Interesting question. I wouldn't call them a championship team by any means, but the wild card-winning '95 Rockies were almost completely carried by their bullpen. Other examples ... the '01 Yankees had an awful team defense; the '95 Red Sox, on a park-adjusted basis, didn't have much of an offense; the '90 Red Sox were painfully slow; and the '87 Twins--who, of course, won the World Series--had a pretty awful pitching staff, as winning teams go. So there are a number of exceptions to the "balanced" principle, but it's nevertheless generally how things get done.

Rich: Oh great, Dayn. That'll do wonders for Bert Blyleven's chances of getting elected to the Hall of Fame.

Dayn: Well, let me amend that. Blyleven was above-average that year, Frank Viola was excellent, and Les Straker was solid, but the back of the rotation and almost the entirety of the bullpen (save Juan Berenguer) were not optimal, to say the least. Incidentally, I'm somewhat heartened by the progress Blyleven made in the most recent round of balloting.

Rich: I am, too. And don't think for a moment that I didn't notice the two full pages you devoted to Bert in "The Veteran and the Youngster (or, What Teams Can Learn from a Bottle of Wine)."

Dayn: He certainly warrants them. Like you, I'm a shrill advocate for Blyleven's election to the Hall of Fame. And I hope, at the very least, I demonstrated that he's the greatest Dutch-born player in the annals of the sport.

Rich: Your book is much more narrative than just numbers. Although I love stats, I really liked how you told stories about so many different players, from Pedro Guerrero in the first chapter to Darrell Evans in one of the later chapters. Those were fun reads.

Dayn: Thanks, Rich. That was certainly by design. I don't enjoy reading books that are driven by something other than a narrative, and reams and reams of numbers, while useful for reference purposes, aren't all that interesting. So the book has stories, anecdotes and profiles throughout. The numbers undergird all the conclusions, but stories make the book, I hope, an interesting read.

Rich: Kevin Towers gave Winners a ringing endorsement. If he hired you as assistant general manager, what words of wisdom would you have for Kevin in the aftermath of your studies on how to build a championship ball club?

Dayn: Well, Kevin already has a highly capable and skilled assistant GM in Fred Uhlman Jr., but I'll bite anyway ... (Let's keep in mind that many of these suggestions are best implemented early in the gestation period.) I'd bolster the middle-relief corps, I'd be less hesitant to platoon veterans like Ryan Klesko and Vinny Castilla (Russ Branyan would've been a great fit for this team), and I'd spend some dough to shore up the back of the rotation. Vague enough?

Rich: All of your ideas sound like winners to me.

* * * * *

Dayn Perry's new book "Winners: How Good Baseball Teams Become Great Ones (And It's Not the Way You Think)" is now available at Amazon.com and major bookstores.

Comments

Great interview Rich

Some questions for Mr. Perry. If you don't want to answer them because you would rather have people buy the book, I'll understand. I don't have your book. But I can't buy every stat or baseball book that comes out and I won't have time to read them all.

You say "In terms of correlating with the scoring of runs, yeah, SLG is more important than OBP..."

But usually in a regression with team runs per game as the dependent variable and team OBP and team SLG as the independent variables, the coefficient on OBP is higher. Sometimes 15 for OBP and 10 for SLG (or something in that range-sometimes the difference is even bigger). That suggests a .001 increase in OBP increases runs per game more than a .001 increase in SLG.

Did you run a regression with team winning pct as the dependent variable? If so, what were the independent variables? Was it for all teams or just playoff teams?

You also say: "Specifically, since 1980 teams making the playoffs have ranked higher in their league and bettered the league average by wider margin in runs allowed than in runs scored."

Was any park adjustment made here? Also, when Pete Palmer determines park factors, there is one for pitchers and one for batters. And it is not just the park that is taken into account. It takes into account that a given team's hitters do not have to face its pitchers (and the pitchers don't have to face their team's pitchers). A team might look like a great pitching team, but if they don't have to face their own hitters, who might be very good, they may not be quite as great as we think.

Also, I once did a study on all the division winners from 1969-89 and found, using road game data only, and found of the 80 division winners from this time period, the average team scored 11.45% more runs than the league average. The average division winner gave up 7.3% fewer runs than the league average. That seems to be the opposite of what you are saying. Could things have been different in different time periods, with hitting being slightly more important than pitching?

One more question. Did you do any kind of test for the importance of balance?

You say "One of the recurring discoveries was that balance is vital--a balanced rotation, a balanced bullpen, a balanced lineup, and a balanced team. Winning teams tend to be solid to very good at everything as opposed to unfathomably awesome at one element of the game and rather lousy at another."

Keith Woolner did a study on how much impact lineup balance has on scoring. It turned out to be small, if I recall. I did a study and found that in some ways less balance led to more scoring.

I just ran a regression which covered all teams from 1980-2004 that and I found no value or significance for balance. The dependent variable is team winning pct. The independent variables are runs allowed and scored per game, adjusted for league average as well as the Pete Palmer park effects.

Here is the equation

Pct = -.476 + .049*R/G + .048*RA/G

Both the R/G and RA/G were set up to be like Palmer's adjusted OPS and adjusted ERA. 100 is average and for both going over 100 means above average.

Then I found each team's predicted value, then found the difference. Then I found the difference in each teams R/G and RA/G. Then correlated that difference with the difference between their actual and predicted winning pct. The correlation was just about zero, even if I used absolute difference in R/G and RA/G. So the more balanced a team was (the closer their R/G and RA/G were) they were no more likely to exceed their expected winning pct. And remember, I had converted both R/G and RA/G into an index number like adjusted OPS and adjusted ERA. So if a team had a 110 in R/G and a 110 in RA/G, they were 10% better than average in both. That kind of team will not win any more games than a team with 105 in R/G and 115 in RA/G.

Again, another question for Mr. Perry. How much more balanced are the playoff teams than the non-playoff teams? How did you measure balance? Was the difference significantly different between the playoff teams and the non-playoff teams?

Another question. You say"the '95 Red Sox, on a park-adjusted basis, didn't have much of an offense;"

Pete Palmer has them with an adjusted OPS of 106. That was 4th best in the AL and 6th best in all of MLB. How did you measure their offensive ability or performance?

Another point about the 1995 Red Sox. They had a .344 OBP in road games along with a .446 SLG. The AL averages in road games that year were .335 and .418.

Mr. Morong, I think you have misread what Dayn Perry was stating when he said "One of the recurring discoveries was that balance is vital--a balanced rotation, a balanced bullpen, a balanced lineup, and a balanced team. Winning teams tend to be solid to very good at everything as opposed to unfathomably awesome at one element of the game and rather lousy at another." This didn't mean what you thought it meant ("So the more balanced a team was (the closer their R/G and RA/G were)"....). What he meant was that a team must be at least above-average/good in all areas. This would mean that the R/G and RA/G would be farther apart (a higher R/G and a lower RA/G), just like your study seems to suggest. Balance, in this case, means that a winning team has good hitting, good pitching/defense. If I have misunderstood what you were saying, I apologize.

Rich and Dayn, I enjoyed the interview, and it has made me want to purchase the book. Thanks.

I came up with a theory a few months ago that some might like here.

Here it goes............I'm suggesting that World Championship baseball teams *usually* have the following on their team:

1. Great table-setters at the top of the line-up, and
2. At least one SP who is not afraid of the post-season - a guy who wants the ball in the big game, and
3. A good/solid LHP in the pen, and
4. A good/solid LHP in the rotation, and
5. A back-up INF with good hands, and
6. A 4th OF who can hit, and
7. An effective guy in the pen who can start or relieve (in any inning), and
8. A shut-the-door closer, and
9. A catcher who is not an auto-out, and
10. Two guys in the middle of the line-up who make contact as well as drive the ball.

So, here's the challenge - pick any World Champion, say, in the last 30-something years, and work the check-list for them - most did have all ten on their team.

To Ralph:

I converted R/G and RA/G into an index (like adjusted OPS and adjusted ERA-what Pete Palmer has used in the Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball before that). So if a team has 110 for R/G and 110 for RA/G, it means that they score 10% more runs and allow 10% fewer runs. They would be perfectly balanced since 110 - 110 is zero. The regression shows that this team will win just about the same number of games as a team with R/G of 105 (the score 5% more runs) and an RA/G of 115 (they allow 15% fewer runs).

This link has my study on balance that was published in By the Numbers. Once you get there, it also has a link to Woolner's study. I found that a balanced lineup really did not improve run scoring.

http://www.geocities.com/cyrilmorong@sbcglobal.net/BalanceBTN.htm

Forgot to put that in the last post

I'm still alive and kicking, folks.