Men at Work

by George F. Will

  Sitting in Montreal, later in the summer, thinking about the Giants’ next series, against Houston in San Francisco, Roger Craig, the Giants’ manager, said he was most interested in what his advance scout could tell him about the other team’s manager. “When we get home we’ll have a report by Federal Express. I’ll look at whether Astros manager Hal Lanier runs Gerald Young on the first pitch a lot, or if he’ll hit-and-run Bill Doran with the count 2–1, or if he’ll put Billy Hatcher on his own to run even when he’s at second base.” This interest in the other manager is related to the fact that Craig calls more pitchouts than any other major league manager. This use that Craig makes of advance scouts illustrates why the Athletics scout themselves, in this sense: They keep track of what they tend to do in particular situations. For example, runner on third, no one out. How many times has the situation occurred recently? What did the Athletics do? What worked? Tracking such situations is La Russa’s way of scouting La Russa. He detects his own tendencies before he becomes so predictable that other managers notice and adjust. “If I always hit-and-run on 1–0, they are going to pitch out on 1–0.”

  Tony Kubek, the shortstop-turned-broadcaster, credits Casey Stengel with inventing the advance scout. Stengel introduced the pioneer in a Baltimore hotel meeting room. The Yankees were going to face Connie Johnson, a black pitcher. Stengel had sent to Baltimore, in advance of the team, Rudy York, the former slugger for the Tigers. York was famous for his ability to read pitchers. “I’ll try,” says Kubek with becoming embarrassment, “to make it seem not as racist as it was right then. We had only two black players, Elston Howard and Suitcase Simpson, and Mickey [Mantle] and Whitey [Ford] made it all seem funny. Anyway, York says that when Johnson throws his breaking ball, when he goes above his head with his glove, you see a lot of white. ‘You know how those Negroes’—he used another term—‘are. They have those white palms.’”

  From such a humble beginning (if it really was the beginning; let’s assume it was, because baseball likes to nail down details about origins) the advance scout has grown into an important institution. Indeed, after the 1988 World Series we had, briefly, a remarkable phenomenon, the Advance Scout Superstar. A story made the rounds that Kirk Gibson had been able to hit his ninth-inning game-winning home run in game one off Dennis Eckersley because the Dodgers’ advance scout had reported this: With a 3–2 count on a left-handed hitter Eckersley always throws backdoor sliders. (Again, that is a slider that looks as though it will be outside but at the last instant bends in over the outside corner.) Gibson is left-handed, the count was 3–2.

  Kubek scoffs at this story. Suppose, he says, that in 1988 the advance scout saw Eckersley pitch 15 games, which is probably a lot more than he actually did see. Even in 15 games, how many times did he see Eckersley go 3–2 on a left-handed hitter? (Eckersley’s strength in 1988 was throwing strikes, and not getting behind in the count. He walked only 11 batters all season in 72⅔ innings. In 1989 he did even better, giving up just three walks in 57⅔ innings.) Eckersley probably didn’t have three occasions all year to throw a 3–2 backdoor slider to a left-hander. Maybe the advance scout saw one of those? Kubek said something like this to that scout during Spring Training, 1989, and the response he got was something between a shrug and a wink.

  Kubek, who is a liberal and therefore is as warmhearted as all get out, thinks advance scouts have a right to do a bit of bragging because they are a neglected underclass. They do important work in baseball’s shadows. La Russa is understandably less disposed toward sentimentalism about that advance scout or anything else related to Gibson’s hit. Speaking even more tersely than usual, La Russa says simply, “Gibson had two strikes on him and was in his emergency stance, shortened up. The only pitch he could hit for power would be something off-speed. Shouldn’t have thrown a slider.”

  That was then. This is now. This is Boston. It is time to be prepared for gathering a different kind of intelligence. In military parlance it is “real time” intelligence, meaning information that can quickly affect the course of an ongoing action. This night one of La Russa’s coaches, Bob Watson, will be watching Bill Fischer, the Red Sox pitching coach, who, Watson thinks, handles pitchout signs for the Red Sox.

  In 1988 Bob Watson watched the manager or whoever else in the opposing team’s dugout was giving the throw-over and pitchout signs. So Rene Lachemann, coaching at first with a runner on first, stood in a position to watch Watson and La Russa in the dugout and warn the runner if a throw-over or pitchout was coming. On the day before this game in Boston, the Athletics had played the Orioles in Baltimore and Watson’s watchfulness had been rewarded. Frank Robinson, the Orioles’ manager, had called two pitchouts on consecutive pitches, and Watson had decided he had deciphered Robinson’s pitchout sign. That may have saved the game by preventing the Athletics from putting on a hit-and-run play and running into an out on a pitchout.

  In the eighth inning, with Carney Lansford the runner on first, and an 0–1 count on batter Stan Javier, La Russa put on a hit-and-run play. Javier, getting the sign from the third-base coach, stepped out of the batter’s box and asked (by staring down toward third) the coach to give the sign again. That was a dead giveaway to the Orioles that the Athletics were putting on some sort of play. At that point La Russa and Watson saw Robinson make the sign that Watson was now sure was the Orioles’ pitchout sign. So La Russa waved across from the first-base dugout to get the attention of his third-base coach, Lefebvre. La Russa took off the hit-and-run and put on the bunt sign. (La Russa has, on occasion, given a hit-and-run sign to his third-base coach, then called time and conspicuously swept a hand across his chest, as though sweeping off the sign, and then given a second sign to disregard the “takeoff” sign and leave the original play on.) The Orioles did not, in fact, pitch out on the next pitch, probably because Robinson saw La Russa waving and assumed La Russa had broken the code. Javier bunted the runner to second, Canseco drove the run in with a home run. So much for subtlety. But if Lansford had been thrown out by a pitchout on a hit-and-run play, and Javier had made an out, the game might have gone another way.

  All that started because Javier was not casual enough while picking up a sign. Some players have a terrible time mastering the art of acting nonchalant when getting a sign to do something demanding—to steal or participate in a hit-and-run play. A few days earlier, in Montreal, Roger Craig had had the same problem with a player. With a Giants runner on third and the pitcher coming to the plate, Craig put on a squeeze play. But the batter, seeing the sign from the third-base coach, did such a double take that Expos manager Buck Rodgers must have known that the Giants were plotting some knavish trick. And Rodgers knows Craig well enough to suspect a squeeze play. So Craig jumped up and made a highly theatrical charade of changing signs—and at the end of that process he put the squeeze play back on.

  The Yankees had a nonchalance problem with the young Yogi Berra who, when on first base, was as talkative as a magpie. At least he was talkative until he got the sign that a hit-and-run play was on. Then he would clam up and concentrate. Before long the Yankees noticed that Berra was being thrown out on pitchouts. Opposing teams had noticed his pattern. The Yankees told Yogi to keep quiet all the time when on base. Then the Yankees, realizing the absurdity of that idea, told him to keep talking even after he had had a sign.

  “Here is something that has just started,” La Russa says, his voice taking on the energy that comes to him when he is describing a new miniwrinkle on an old wrinkle. “The first person I saw use it was Roger Craig against us in Spring Training last year. The second time I saw it was from Tommy Lasorda in the World Series. I don’t think anybody in the American League does it, so the A’s are going to be the first ones. The third-base coach puts on a sign. Or he doesn’t. In any case, he goes through a series of stuff. The hitter reads it. Now the pitcher looks in for the sign from the catcher. The catcher looks in to his manager in the dugout. The manager signals ‘throw-over.’ The pitcher comes set, throws ove
r. Now, every time you throw over or step off, Roger Craig starts having his third-base coach go through another set of signs. Slows the game down a bit, but it puts an element of doubt in the other manager’s mind. Suppose the runner tipped off that he was going and you were in a throw-over or a step-off move. Now the manager who called the throw-over or step-off move says, ‘sonofagun, he’s going.’ And that manager wants to pitch out. But the other manager has just put on another set of signs. So now the pitcher’s manager thinks, ‘He [the other manager] saw his runner tip off that he’s going. He thinks, maybe I’ll pitch out. Did he take it [the runner going] off? Or put it on?’ Another element of doubt. Anytime you can get the other side uncertain in its thinking…”

  In the third-base coach’s box in Boston this night Lefebvre will be thinking, when the Athletics have runners on base, about the positioning of the other team’s second baseman, first baseman and right fielder. If the right fielder is lined up directly between those two infielders, Lefebvre knows that any ball hit hard enough to get between them is going straight at the right fielder. But if the right fielder is shifted, he would field a hard-hit ball while running at an angle that would make it difficult for him to make a hard, accurate throw to third or home. Therefore it would be a good gamble going for an extra base.

  “In baseball,” says Lefebvre, “you take nothing for granted. You look after all the little details, or suddenly this game will kick you right in the butt.” He remembers the eighth inning of a tied game against the Yankees, when the Athletics had large, lumbering Dave Parker on second with no one out and the right-handed Mark McGwire at bat. The Yankees’ right fielder, Dave Winfield, was shaded toward center, playing McGwire deep and to pull. From La Russa came the signal for McGwire to try to hit to the right side. If McGwire put the ball in play to the right he would either move Parker to third on an infield out and Parker could then be scored on a hit or a sacrifice fly, or McGwire could drive the ball through for a hit, in which case the ball would be behind Parker, who would be watching Lefebvre for a sign. Lefebvre, coaching third, would have a decision to make. Parker would be watching Lefebvre for a sign to hold up at third or to try to score. “Now,” says Lefebvre, “when McGwire hits to the right side, it’s not just a nice little ground ball. It’s a line shot.” In that game, McGwire drove the ball into right field. Lefebvre weighed Winfield’s strong arm against Winfield’s difficult task of fielding the ball running back to his left, toward the right-field line, then throwing accurately to the plate. Lefebvre waved Parker around third. Parker scored what turned out to be the winning run.

  When coaching third Lefebvre watches the depth of the opposing team’s outfielders and watches the opposing team’s dugout, looking for the “no doubles” sign, which often is a hand on the back of the coach’s head and means the outfielders should play especially deep. He also tries to spot the other team’s sign telling the outfielders to throw in to second on any single. That sign means a guaranteed run in a situation like this: One night in Texas the Rangers were leading, 3–2, the Athletics had a runner on second and two outs. Lefebvre saw the throw-to-second sign, so he knew to wave in the runner on any single. The Rangers were acting sensibly: The hitter was the potential lead run. If the Rangers tried and failed to throw out the runner heading home from second, the game would be tied and the lead run would have gone to second on the unavailing throw home.

  Generally half an hour before a game, Duncan takes his two catchers, Ron Hassey and Terry Steinbach, into La Russa’s office to chat about this and that. In one such meeting in Oakland, Hassey noted that in an at bat the previous night Dwight Evans adjusted well to a particular pitch. Remember, Duncan said, every hitter has a distinctive stance but teams heavily influenced by the theories of the late Charlie Lau almost have a team stance, or at least a team tendency. So there is a general truth about pitching to them: Pitch inside for effect, and away to get them out—that is, inside to discourage them from diving across the plate. A television set overhead was showing a Mets-Padres game in which Benito Santiago, the Padres’ cannon-armed catcher, yet again threw from his knees and nailed a runner trying to steal second. “I can’t get the ball to third from my knees,” said Steinbach with the severe self-judgment that seems to come easily to most athletes at the highest level of this sport.

  When Duncan goes to his office he brings a lot of paperwork. His office is the dugout. The paperwork La Russa takes to the dugout is simply a card noting the record of each Red Sox batter against each of the Athletics’ relief pitchers. Duncan’s paperwork, on the other hand, is in thick three-ring binders that contain his charts.

  Duncan’s charts on a hitter show what kind of pitches he has hit, where they have been thrown (for example, “mh”—middle of the plate, high), what the counts were, and where the balls were put in play. If a pitch was not put in play the notation might be “kc” (strikeout, called) and where that third strike was (“mi”—middle of the strike zone, inside). A rectangular box represents the strike zone for pitches that have been thrown for strikes and not put into play. These charts record pitches that seem to make the particular hitter uncomfortable; that is probably why the particular hitters have let a lot of these pitches go by.

  Duncan also gathers data on “first-pitch tendencies.” For example, he has noted that out of 15 first-pitch strikes thrown to one American League outfielder, he swung at 10 of them, and that any pitch on the outside part of the plate is the best way to throw a first-pitch strike to him without him getting a hit. Another chart reveals a player with a strong tendency to take a first pitch if it is a breaking ball, so any curve in the strike zone is apt to start an Athletics pitcher off ahead of this hitter. Duncan’s charts are so complete that in Spring Training he can tell his pitchers that the previous season they threw, say, 62 percent of all their first pitches for strikes (he considers 60 to 65 percent good) and he can tell them what percentage of those first-pitch strikes were put into play.

  With these charts handy in the dugout, Duncan can, at a glance, see, for example, that a hitter got eight hits off the Athletics last season, seven of them fastballs, all of them in the middle of the plate or inside. On the chart that displays pitches this player has put into play for outs or swung at for strikeouts, Duncan sees a cluster of fastballs and one breaking ball, all down and in, and another smaller cluster of four fastballs and two sliders on the outside corner, belt-high. When he looks at these two charts together he sees that most of the balls this batter is putting into play are down and in, and three out of ten are for hits. If he is a .300 hitter on down and in pitches, pitch him elsewhere. He is putting the ball in play on high and outside pitches, but a low percentage are for hits. Duncan prepares two such sets of charts on each hitter, one for the hitter against left-handers, one against right-handers.

  Duncan starts the season with charts on the last 40 at bats of opposing players against the Athletics in the previous season. These charts are slowly retired as the new season generates sufficient fresh data. The charts are produced in a two-step process. A sort of first rough draft of the batter’s profile is done during each game by someone sitting in the stands behind home plate. This person measures velocity with a radar gun and notes the location of each pitch. After the game, Duncan fine-tunes this record by watching a tape of the game. He can whiz through a taped game quickly because he is looking only at the other team batting, and he is interested only in pitches that are strikes or that are swung at whether or not they are in the strike zone. In the dugout during the game, when someone gets a hit off the Athletics, Duncan makes a pencil mark on the chart of the playing field, noting where the ball went, and noting also his guess of the kind of pitch (fastball, breaking ball, change-up) and location. These are guesses because the dugout does not provide the best vantage point. The next day, after using tapes of the game to confirm or modify his impressions, Duncan puts the information on the chart in ink.

  Duncan has charts for all balls put in play by particular players off At
hletics pitching, a chart for those balls put in play to the infield, a chart for those to the outfield. The charts show the kinds of pitches hit and the locations—where they were in the strike zone. Duncan’s charts of the strike zone are the clearest possible proof that the de facto strike zone no longer bears much resemblance to the de jure strike zone spelled out in such precise irrelevance in the rule book. Duncan’s chart of the strike zone is divided into three segments. The top of the top segment is at the hitter’s belt. A pitch referred to as “up in the strike zone” is a pitch mid-thigh to belt-high.

  Duncan’s charts are especially accurate at identifying a hitter in decline. A chart on such a hitter will show that most of the pitches he hits safely are pitches thrown in the middle of the plate. That is, he is hitting only the pitchers’ mistakes.

  “I don’t trust my memory,” Duncan says. “That is the main reason I started doing all this. When I was trusting my memory, what I was doing, primarily, was remembering the hits that hurt us. The guy gets a double to right-center field to beat you and it sticks out in your mind. But you forget about those ten balls that he made outs on to left-center field. I wanted to make sure I had in front of me every ball he’d hit, not just the ones I remember.”