The Cubs Way

by Tom Verducci

  “I’ve trained myself to do this. The part I’m trying to convince all the sabermetricians about is trends,” he said. “You have to pay attention to trends. Don’t tell me trends don’t matter. Don’t tell me that. You go sit in the dugout. Because everybody wants the large sample size. I get it. I get large sample size. I’m not dumb. I get it. But here’s August 15 to August 30 and this .220 dude is en fuego. So you mean to tell me like I have to treat him like these numbers? No way.

  “The dudes that are solely based on numbers, they can’t see through trends because they don’t believe in them. They believe it’s going to correct itself, and I agree with that, but for right now…Matty Joyce was a great example: great in the first half, horrible in the second half. He gets to like September and he’s hitting like .350 against this guy today. But I know Matty has no confidence. He’s popping up to the third baseman on 2-0 counts. He’s just not right. But I’m supposed to play him based on this friggin’ number? No. Ain’t gonna do it. He’s my classic example. He’s the large-sample-size dude. He’s going to appeal to every sabermetrician, and I love Matt.

  “All this different stuff that’s available is good and I believe in it, but you’ve heard me say it a lot in the postseason: I’ve got to feel it. I’ve got to feel what’s going on right now. And that’s why I don’t sit in the dugout. I’ve got to get up where I can feel everything because when you get isolated in this little cubicle you don’t feel around you. I don’t like it. I don’t think I’m making as good of a decision. I’ve got to feel it.”

  10. PREGAME WORK IS EXCESSIVE.

  Players hit far more before games today than they did 20 or 30 years ago. There is early hitting on the field, hitting in the cage, regular hitting on the field, and more hitting in the cage.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Maddon said. “You’ve got a cage inside. Guys need to get loose. Why do they have to hit on the field? Come on. The biggest thing for me would be groundballs. You need that. Take a couple of groundballs. Throw over to first if you need to do that. But if you don’t have to be outside you can work on something inside. And if you stay off your feet longer, I think it benefits you. It’s nothing you ever did when you were kids playing. You didn’t go out there and practice five hours before you played the game—ever. I don’t know where that became ritual. I think maybe the ’80s. I think in the ’80s it became popular to get that extra work in. Work, work, work. I think it can be very counterproductive.

  “Everybody talks about infield practice. Infield practice the way it was done before was ridiculous. Because you had to warm up your arm so many different times in a day that they never even considered guys getting sore arms just taking infield too often. You want to take infield? The right time to do it is at home before batting practice. Get your arm loose one time, go out there, and take your groundballs. What they used to do is you come out, play catch, hit, take your groundballs, come in, sit around for a bit, go back out and play catch again, take infield, throw again, then come back in and get changed and go back out. That is insane. It really is. It makes no sense other than that somebody said it’s supposed to be that way. So I think the more rest you can give guys the better you are.”

  11. KEEP SIGNS SIMPLE AND TO A MINIMUM.

  Cubs players rarely look for a sign on 3-and-0. That’s because Maddon rarely gives one.

  “Because I don’t like to give them signs,” he said. “I like them to rely on their baseball instincts. I don’t want to insult. If it’s 3-0, you’re leading off, we’re down by a couple of runs, why would you want to swing at that pitch? So you want me to do this [he gives hand signals] to tell you to do the right thing?

  “But I tell them if it’s 3-0, two outs, even runner at first base, I want you to go. I say, ‘Doubles or better.’ You’re looking for doubles or better, especially with two outs. That’s what you’re looking for. I do let them go under those circumstances.”

  When he does give signs, Maddon keeps them simple—American Legion simple. The only twist is that if he’s thinking about a play somewhere in an at-bat—say, a safety squeeze bunt—he might give the sign before the first pitch but place it “on hold,” which puts the players on alert. When and if he decides to use the play, he gives another to put it “on.”

  12. A LINEUP CARD IS ALL A MANAGER NEEDS IN THE DUGOUT.

  Major League Baseball in 2015 approved the use of tablets in the dugout. The tablets do not have connectivity, but they are loaded with scouting information and data. Maddon has no use for a tablet in the dugout.

  “It’s too slow,” he said. “That’s my point. Paper is faster than a tablet could ever be. Paper’s much quicker. You have it in advance. You know what you want to do. I mean, I love it for my research and my work, but in the moment, paper’s quicker.

  “You use it to get ready to do that, but when you’re out there, there’s no piece of paper that I could possibly ask for that I don’t have. I have two sheets with everything I need to know for the game, so why do I need more, technologically speaking?”

  13. FORGET “THE BOOK.” MAKING THE FIRST OR THIRD OUT AT THIRD BASE IS OKAY.

  One of the oldest tenets of the game is that a runner should never make the first or third out at third base. It’s about the risk-reward ratio. The thinking behind the theory goes like this: trying to get to third with no outs is overly risky because you still have three more outs with which to play—you’re likely to score from second with no outs, so the reward is small—and taking a risk to get there with two outs makes little sense because you cannot score from there on an out. The problem Maddon sees with this long-held belief is that it encourages a passive mind-set on the bases. The entire premise is based on playing it safe before the ball is even hit.

  “I don’t mind making the first or third out at third base,” he said. “I don’t give a rip—as opposed to using that line, which you’ve heard a hundred thousand times. I like to get to third base with less than two outs as often as possible. That’s what we say.

  “If everything is set up right and you’re making your reads and this guy makes a great play, so what? I’d rather us be aggressive at third, even making the first out there. But to make the first out at home would really bum me out. I don’t like that at all. It really fries your oysters.”

  Maddon’s slightly offbeat take on the game might rub traditionalists the wrong way. To them it may smack of gimmickry, and from his constant perch at the rail of the dugout, call attention to him. Baseball is a game with great regard for its elders and its lineage. It is a generational game, traditionally taught to sons by their fathers, who learned from their fathers. Its mythology relies on the idea of “timelessness,” the idea that the game came down from on high in perfect form, like commandments in stone, and revisions or rebukes of it can be seen as blasphemous.

  Innovation is not easily accepted in baseball. Traditionalists can be so hidebound by “The Book” that freethinkers like Maddon may be criticized for “trying to reinvent the game.” He gives them plenty of material. Maddon deployed a four-outfielder alignment against Boston designated hitter David Ortiz as far back as 2006. He once intentionally walked Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera with runners at first and second—putting the tying and winning runs in scoring position—to pitch to Brennan Boesch. (It worked.) He once intentionally walked Josh Hamilton with the bases loaded. (He won the game.) In Game 5 of the 2008 American League Championship Series, holding a 7–0 lead, he refused to play “no-doubles” defense in the outfield—“The Book” version of a prevent defense. (He lost, 8–7). He once used an outfielder, Sam Fuld, to kill time warming up on the game mound so his relief pitcher would gain more time to get ready. (It was against the rules, for which he later apologized to the umpires.)

  Maddon has managed postseason games wearing a cap with sewn-in felt earflaps (the “Elmer Fudd” look) and a wool ski cap. He likes to squeeze-bunt with two strikes, to have his second baseman hold the runner on first base with the opposing pitcher bunting
so the first baseman can charge, to play a five-man infield, and to disguise his pitchouts by throwing fastballs just off the outside corner.

  “If guys are really upset with me for some of the things that I do, I prefer they come and ask why I do them, and I would tell them,” Maddon said. “There is always a reason behind it. I never worry about stuff like that. I never have.

  “Reinventing the game? If you look back into the days in the mid-’80s on the back fields of Gene Autry Park we were doing crazy stuff back there, trying different things then. It’s not about reinvention. It’s about trying to stay ahead of things, especially when you are managing the Rays. You have the limited payroll. You are playing the Yankees and the Red Sox. You are playing all these big-market teams often, anyway. How do you beat them?

  “If you try to go with the conventional, you are going to get your brains beat out. They have greater ability to win with more tried-and-true than you do. You’ve got to figure out different angles or ways to get through all that.

  “I never really worried about people saying things like that. I hope that doesn’t sound conceited in any way. I mean, there is self-confidence there, or it’s the fact that I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. It’s not that I’m trying to impress anybody.”

  Three games into the World Series, two of which ended in the Cubs getting shut out, an obvious pattern had developed and it disturbed Joe Maddon as he sat in his office before Game 4.

  “If we’re going to chase, they’re going to kick our ass,” he said.

  A year earlier, the Cubs reached the National League Championship Series despite failing miserably at situational hitting, the art of advancing runners by putting the ball in play. With so much swing-and-miss in their game, the 2015 Cubs regularly killed rallies with strikeouts. Among all 30 major league teams in 2015, the Cubs had the most strikeouts (a club record 1,518), were last in hitting with two strikes (.154), had the most strikeouts with runners in scoring position (404), were last in hitting with a runner at third and less than two outs (.237), 28th in hitting with runners in scoring position (.237), and—in a flaw that became a fatal one against the hard-throwing staff of the New York Mets in the NLCS—24th in hitting against power pitchers (.213).

  Epstein and Hoyer set about fixing the lack of contact in their offense when they went shopping on the free agent market after the season. They signed outfielder Jason Heyward and infielder/outfielder Ben Zobrist for a combined $240 million. Heyward and Zobrist made the Cubs one of only three teams in the league with two everyday players who did not strike out 100 times. The Giants (Buster Posey and Denard Span) and the Braves (Adonis Garcia and Ender Inciarte) were the only other such teams.

  The additions of Heyward and Zobrist, as well as improved two-strike approaches by second-year players Kris Bryant and Addison Russell, made the Cubs a vastly improved situational hitting team. In 2016 they improved across the board in all key contact categories. They improved to 21st in strikeouts (1,339, a 12 percent reduction), 6th in hitting with two strikes (.184, a 30-point improvement), 27th in strikeouts with runners in scoring position (381, a small improvement), 10th in hitting with a runner on third and less than two outs (.332, a whopping 95-point jump), 21st in hitting with runners in scoring position (.252, a 15-point increase), and 16th against power pitchers (.229, a 16-point betterment).

  The bottom line was that the 2016 Cubs were better equipped for the postseason than the 2015 Cubs because they made more and better contact, especially in high-leverage spots. The ability to make contact becomes even more valuable in the postseason because managers rely more on their best pitchers. With extra off days built into the postseason schedule, managers never use their fifth starter and rarely use their fourth starter or middle relievers. The Cleveland Indians, for instance, had as many off days to play 15 postseason games (16) as they did to play their final 142 games of the regular season.

  Because of that lighter schedule, and because of injuries to starting pitchers Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, Cleveland manager Terry Francona opted to use a three-man rotation in the World Series: Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, and Josh Tomlin. That meant that Kluber, who had chewed up the Cubs in Game 1, was back to face them in Game 4.

  The improved situational offense of Chicago, however, was nowhere to be found through three games in the World Series. The Cubs were getting exploited by breaking balls, not by velocity. Francona’s best pitchers all had devastating breaking balls: Kluber threw sliders and curves with various-sized breaks, Tomlin threw a big-breaking curveball, reliever Andrew Miller owned a wicked slider, and closer Cody Allen showcased one of the best curveballs in the game.

  Against them Cubs batters looked like they were playing a losing game of whack-a-mole: the pitches disappeared just when they thought they had them lined up. Often the pitches they whacked at were not strikes, but broke out of the strike zone. Entering Game 4, Kluber, Tomlin, Miller, and Allen had combined to shut out the Cubs over 161⁄3 innings, during which Chicago batters managed only three walks against 22 strikeouts. Maddon and hitting coaches John Mallee and Eric Hinske preached patience and an opposite-field approach, but batter after batter anxiously chased spinning pitches out of the zone.

  Maddon, borrowing on his days as a roving hitting instructor, injected himself into the search for a remedy. He pulled aside both Addison Russell and Javier Baez before Game 4 for one-on-one discussions. The emphasis again was on hitting the ball a little deeper in its course to the plate—a contact point based on hitting the ball to right-centerfield—rather than trying to hit it farther in front, an anxious approach that is exploited by spinning, off-speed pitches.

  “The last game Kluber pitched he had a low pitch count,” Maddon said, referring to how Kluber needed only 88 pitches to cruise through six innings. “Yesterday I guess [Josh] Tomlin was making good pitches. We wanted to stay middle-oppo. We didn’t do it. We knew about the curveball. We were taking the curveball strike and swinging at the curveball in the dirt.

  “We knew what we wanted to do, we just didn’t do it. We can hit spin. But if we can take the breaking ball that is a ball, we’ll be fine. We have to.”

  The pattern raised a dark possibility about the Cubs: maybe they were just too young to win the World Series. Facing elite breaking-ball pitches in the cauldron of World Series pressure, maybe they just didn’t have enough experience to curb their anxiety and show more discipline. Maddon considered the possibility himself. He knew youthfulness was causing them to chase pitches.

  “Of course it is. Yeah. I totally believe that,” he said. “That’s why I keep trying to make a point that the area we’re going to get better at over the next couple of years is hitting. I mean, if you’re a scout, the area you project upon the most is hitting. The areas you project least with would be running speed, arm strength, defense—those are the things that are more static. So if a guy is here now, whatever you see now, like with Baez, whatever you see with baserunning and defense now is what you expect the next five, six years.

  “The thing you can anticipate better is his hitting. All of our guys. So I’m really pleased that the other parts of their game that don’t normally progress are pretty damn good already. The part that has the most improvement is the one they have to improve at. In my mind’s eye, my God, whew! You just anticipate two years from now those at-bats are going to be different. I know they’re going to be different. So that’s the part I’m really encouraged about.”

  Two years. Game 4 was only three hours away.

  Maddon made some tweaks to his lineup to try to jump-start the offense. He moved Russell from eighth to sixth (“Addison is the RBI guy,” he said) and dropped Baez to eighth. Baez represented the most extreme case of youthfulness showing its downside. With two strikes he was virtually already out, because he was chasing the next pitch no matter how badly it was located.

  “He’s reverting just a click,” Maddon said. “So I moved him back down. In a perfect world he should be hitting eighth. Then
you just take what he gives you. You can’t anticipate he’s going to move the ball all the time because he can be so out of control at times.”

  Kluber had the kind of deep array of weaponry to exploit anxiety. His ERA over four postseason starts was just 0.74. In Game 1 he relied on a devastating two-seam fastball that he started at the front hip of left-handed batters and ran back over the inside corner of the plate. The best approach against such a pitch would be to back off the plate slightly to be able to hit the pitch as it runs back.

  “We could,” Maddon conceded. “But the hardest thing to get a hitter to do is move them in the batter’s box. Theoretically, yeah it makes perfect sense. To get somebody to do that is really hard.

  “We’ll have to find out if he has that pitch going on again. What he had the other night was otherworldly. He may. I don’t know. The other thing is our guys have seen him recently. That should help a little bit. When a guy is that good and you haven’t seen him, he’s as good as he can be. That’s a problem.”

  —

  The Cubs’ first batter of the game, Dexter Fowler, dug into the batter’s box against Kluber—from a spot a few inches farther off the plate than where he stood in Game 1. Kluber, on a 1-and-2 count, threw him one of those fiendish two-seam fastballs he had featured in Game 1. This time being farther off the plate gave Fowler room to pull his hands in and get the barrel of the bat on the ball. Fowler dumped a double into leftfield.

  After Bryant popped out, Rizzo, the next left-handed batter, dug in. He, too, had moved off the plate. “I felt like I was a million miles off the plate,” said Rizzo, who typically stands so close to the plate that his toes nearly reach the white chalk line of the batter’s box. Rizzo ripped an 0-and-1 pitch to centerfield to drive in Fowler. The Cubs led, 1–0. They had dented the machine-like pitcher known as Klubot and they had done so by adjusting their feet in the batter’s box. Even one run was a very good start.