Baseball Notes

It is often said that if there was a wing for coaches in the Baseball Hall of Fame, there would be one man and one man only in it. Better yet, the wing would probably be named for him.

Leo Mazzone, currently pitching coach with the Orioles, is considered a miracle worker amongst baseball insiders and outsiders. His latest perceived water to wine project is often considered to be phenom, 28-year-old pitcher Erik Bedard. Bedard is 12-4 through August 20 and leads all of MLB with 207 strikeouts, already 36 more than he had in all of 2006. In my last post, a comment was made by a reader that Bedard, while playing for a perennial loser, should absolutely be considered for the Cy Young. And why not? Where would the Orioles be without Bedard? Overall, a 57-65 Orioles team is 18-8 when he starts, brining to mind memories of the mid-70’s Philadelphia Phillies when Steve Carlton would win 25 of the Phillies’ 70 total victories for the year, or something like that.

So an interesting question arises when you start to talk about these two: Bedard and Mazzone. They both arrived in Baltimore about the same time; Bedard as a 25-year-old rookie, and Mazzone as a 20-year veteran pitching coach of fourteen straight division-winning Atlanta Braves teams. They both have been credited with the success of the other; Mazzone training and tutoring Bedard, and Bedard being a young, talented pitcher that Mazzone could use as an example for his Daniel Cabreras and Jeremy Guthries. And the question that I go back and forth on is, if I was running a team, which one would I want? Bedard or Mazzone. Or, more clearly, who is responsible for the success, Bedard or Mazzone?

First, a look at Bedard’s progress over the past four seasons is needed to evaluate the change we are talking about. Below you will find a relevant season-by-season look at Bedard’s most important stats:

Also, Bedard’s RA (or Run Average, adding in unearned as well as earned runs) for the past four years starting in ‘04 reads like this: 5.44, 4.19, 4.22, and 3.09.

What may be best to do is to break these stats up into categories by whether a pitcher can control them or not. Whether a pitcher has to rely on others for the final product of the stat or if it is a result of his own doing. In tracking this, we will be able to narrow down the specific items that would be a result of Bedard’s pitching, and not the Orioles’ team play.

Items Bedard can control:
WHIP
Strikeouts
K/9
BB/9
K/BB
HR/9

Items Bedard can not control:
Starts
Record
ERA+
RA
BABIP
PRAA

It is very evident and important that we see positive trending in every one of these statistics except for HR/9. Bedard’s success has not been limited to one side or the other, but has been due to a number of factors that he can control (such as pitch count, pitch location, allowing men to be put on base) and a number of factors that he can’t (defense behind him, how many runs the offense scores, what the park factors are where he is pitching).

Now, where does Mazzone fit into all of this? Before the season started and Bedard’s tremendous success began, Leo was quoted in this article as saying,

“Great pitchers make for a great pitching coach, and a great pitching coach doesn’t mess up great pitchers.”

And when asked about pitchers’ confidence and their insecurities and how to react to those situations, he offers,

“You can’t teach it. You can’t put it on paper. You can’t do it with a radar gun. You have to read people because the game is always going to be played by human beings, and you can never take the human element out of the game.”

Now all that is well and good when you want to talk about Erik Bedard, who has become one of the premier pitchers in all of baseball. He obviously has the stuff, he just needs the confidence. But what about when you want to talk about the other side; someone who has struggled for three years with their success on the mound; someone like Daniel Cabrera.

I couldn’t have been more shocked when I found this obscure quote on CBSSportsline from Mazzone talking about Daniel Cabrera during spring training 2007,

“Daniel’s mechanics are the way you want them right now. You don’t have to tinker with him anymore. It’s a matter of him trusting himself a little more. It comes with experience and maturity.”

Huh? His mechanics are the way you want them? You don’t have to tinker with him? This is coming off a 2006 season where his 6.1 BB/9 would have been more than 2 walks higher than anyone else in that category if Cabrera had qualified with enough innings. His ERA+ of 94 would have put him in the bottom 10 in that category amongst qualified starters, and his WHIP of 1.58 would have only been better than Mark Redman and Joel Piniero.

But you don’t need to tinker with him?

Looking at these two case studies, it becomes obvious what Mazzone’s philosophy is. Mazzone can’t make the slider bend or the sinker drop or the fastball cut, he can’t magically make pitchers start hitting corners and he can’t decrease or increase the velocity of a pitch as it leaves a pitcher’s hand. Those are all mechanics that have been ingrained in a pitcher’s mind for probably 10 years before he reaches Mazzone. And while Mazzone can try to tweak something here and there, he realizes he is paid for a completely different, ostensibly more important reason.

To be a psychiatrist.

Long before a pitcher reaches the majors, it was the scout’s and general manager’s job to notice mechanics, how a pitcher has developed, whether or not they are moldable, whether they have plus pitches or not. But scouts and GMs are not developing players, much less their minds. That is where Mazzone steps in. He realizes the importance and validity of confidence, security, maturity, belief in a pitcher’s stuff, and belief in the guys playing behind him.

Is it a coincidence that the 1990 Braves had the worst team ERA in all of baseball at 4.58, but when Leo Mazzone took over in 1991, it immediately shot up to 3rd in the NL at 3.49? Is it a coincidence that Steve Avery, John Smotz, and Tom Glavine’s ERA all dropped in the season that Mazzone arrived? The Braves’ team ERA had nothing to do with the team’s improved offense in 1991. The dramatic shift in win/loss record can be attributed to both hitting AND pitching.

Admittedly, this is a hard thing conclusion for me to come to, because Mazzone’s impact on the pitchers can not be quantified, it can not be calculated, and it can not be measured. I truthfully wanted numbers to show that the pitchers like Bedard or even Cabrera* (not to mention Avery, Smoltz, Glavine, Russ Ortiz, Kevin Milwood, Jaret Wright, etc.) are doing it on their own or there was no correlation to Mazzone being a part of the team. But in a famous study done by J.C. Bradbury, the numbers are quite conclusive.

Bradbury found that pitchers under Mazzone have an ERA of roughly 0.63 lower than when they have not pitched for him (as of 2005). He equates that to the effect Coors Field generally has on a pitcher who now makes that his home, except in the opposite direction. And he advocates the Rockies hiring Mazzone to make up that difference pitchers often see when they pitch in Colorado.

There is a real life example of this when you consider Mike Hampton with the Braves before his string of injuries. Hampton in Colorado has ERAs of 5.41 and 6.15. His first two years in Atlanta under Mazzone: 3.84 and 4.28. Both of these cover the Bradbury spread of 0.63 runs from leaving Coors and 0.63 runs for having Mazzone as a tutor.

So getting back to Bedard and Mazzone, if I am picking sides, I have to take Mazzone. His effect on a cumulative pitching staff (we haven’t talked at all about relievers) is quite clearly worth more than what a dominant starter can give you every five days for seven or eight innings.

Whatever it is that he is doing, it’s working. Whether it’s confidence, maturity, or reliance, Mazzone has his pitchers convinced. And his success is the result of work far different than mechanics and proper pitching motion and velocity. His own words describe it best:

“I’ve got a degree in psychology and never went to college.”

____________

*Cabrera’s 9.1 K/9 last season would have ranked second in the AL behind Johan Santana. He is also in the top 20 this year for K/9.