Jeff Ballard was emblematic of the Orioles’ 1989 season. In 1985 this son of a Montana oil man had left Stanford with a degree in geophysics and a clutch of Stanford baseball records (37 victories, 428 innings, 316 strikeouts). However, he had been only a seventh-round draft choice and his career soon sagged. Bouncing between Rochester and Baltimore his major league record was dismal. It was 2–8 and 6.59 in 1987 and in Baltimore’s Plague Year of 1988 his record was 8–12 and 4.40. But in 1989 his record was 18–8 and 3.43, both totals being the best of any Orioles starting pitcher. In fact, his 18 wins were more than any other pitcher in the American League East.
What was the difference? His best fastball was still about 85 miles per hour. In 1989 he came to Spring Training slimmed down and with more stamina, but that was not the difference. The Orioles’ new pitching coach, Al Jackson, helped him make two mechanical changes, but they were only part of the difference. Jackson got Ballard, a left-hander, to pitch from the right side of the rubber. That meant that his fastball, which runs away from right-handed hitters, would not run out of the strike zone so often. In 1988 Ballard had been behind in too many counts and had issued too many walks (42 in 153 Va innings). In 1989 batters would have to hit the ball to get on base. The second mechanical change was to influence where they hit it. Jackson got Ballard to “turn over” his fastball. Now as Ballard released it he turned his wrist, pulling down through the pitch and causing it to stay low in the strike zone. Together, the two changes meant putting the ball where batters would be more apt to hit it, and hit it on the ground. Ballard was a better pitcher in 1989 because he could be more aggressive, coming at the batters, throwing fewer pitches. He was “not afraid of the bat.” He was able to let—get, really—the ball be put in play to the Orioles’ defense. That was the story of the Orioles’ pitching staff in 1989. The staff achieved only 676 strikeouts, the fewest by any major league pitching staff in six years. When you have people who can catch the ball, do not waste pitches and energy on strikeouts. Make the other team put the ball in play.
In June, 1989, sitting in one of the large orange chairs that make the Orioles’ clubhouse a strain on the eyes but a testimony to team identity, Cal Ripken, Jr., marveled at the effect the improved Orioles defense was having on Orioles pitching. “It makes them more aggressive. I have been much more busy because of the aggressiveness of the pitching staff. The pitchers say, ‘I’ve got all those people behind me. I’m going to make these guys hit it.’ They are not going to think they have to strike out this guy or that guy. It allows the pitcher to focus on the batter’s weakness and not worry about defensive weaknesses. Mike Boddicker would try to make the hitter hit a ground ball, or not hit to a certain part of the field because our defense wasn’t good in that part. A pitcher shouldn’t have to do that.”
Ripken says that when Mike Flanagan was traded to Toronto in 1987, he had some mildly embarrassing moments adjusting to life with a good defensive team. “He would give up a line drive or a long fly ball to the gap, and he would run to back up third because he was sure it was a hit. Then he would look up and the ball was being thrown around the horn. Flanagan became much more aggressive, not worrying about where they hit the ball. When he was here [Baltimore], he felt he couldn’t make a mistake up [up in the strike zone], because the sluggish Baltimore outfield could not chase down enough fly balls.”
Do not try to sell Flanagan or any other pitcher on Bill James’s distinction. James says: “Offense is making things happen. Defense is keeping things from happening. People would much rather watch things happen.” Actually, James is right, about offense and defense, and, alas, about people. But perhaps people can be convinced that prevention, properly understood, should count as something happening—something interesting, too. Watch Ripken. What’s that you say? You would rather watch the pitcher? Watch them both, they are working together.
Every defensive play begins from an act that looks like offense—not to say aggression. It begins when a member of the team playing defense—the pitcher—throws a very hard ball very fast and often close to the batter who is standing not far away. Roger Angell, writing about the pitcher-versus-hitter struggle, says that only boxing has as much hard one-on-one confrontation as baseball. Angell has a point. However, in another sense, it is always nine against the batter. It is commonly said that the pitcher acts and everyone else reacts. That is not quite right. The game does indeed revolve around a 20-foot circle, the pitcher’s mound. But Earl Weaver was exaggerating a trifle when he said, “The only thing that matters is what happens on that little lump out in the middle of the field.” What is done on that lump depends in large measure on the confidence the pitcher has in his defense, and the reciprocal confidence the defense has in the pitcher’s ability to think clearly and execute the correct intentions.
“I like to learn their hitters and our pitchers and cheat a little bit, and cut down the area I have to cover,” Ripken says. “I’m not blessed with the kind of range a lot of shortstops have. The way I have success is, I guess, by thinking.” Even the quickest player must think ahead because it is too late to think when a hard-hit ball is in play. In 1987 more than 200 players, managers, coaches and general managers were polled on a variety of subjects, including “smartest defensive player.” The winner was Ripken. Branch Rickey, the lawyer who was a catcher before he became a savant, was the author of baseball’s most elegant aphorism: “Luck is the residue of design.” There is design in Ripken’s defensive play, and it begins by knowing how his pitchers will try to pitch to particular batters in particular situations.
In La Russa’s pithy formulations, defense strategy is “how to pitch them and how to play them.” Defense positioning is harder than it used to be. Ray Miller says that as recently as the mid-1960s, 80 percent of all hitters were pull hitters. Today only half a dozen hitters in each league are dead pull hitters. The rest hit the ball to all fields. They may be trying to pull the ball and their bats are slow, but they are so strong they hit into the opposite field. Not all hitters pull the ball, and as the count goes against a hitter, a hitter is less apt to pull. On a 3–1 pitch the hitter can take a full cut. On a 1–2 pitch he has to swing more defensively, protecting the plate.
Tony Kubek says, “You always hear it said, ‘Play the hitter.’ That’s actually about the third thing on the list, or maybe fourth. You play your pitcher, because everyone throws differently. You play the situation in the game. You play the count. For example, 2–0, guys are apt to pull the ball a little more because they’re a little more aggressive. The batter gets behind 0–2, he may hit the ball a little late. Every hitter isn’t that way. According to [Cardinals manager] Whitey [Herzog], Willie McGee doesn’t know if the count is 0–2 or 3–0. Some guys just go up there hacking. You have to know who they are.”
To illustrate “playing the count,” Ripken says that if a runner breaks from first on a 2–0 pitch, the probability is that a hit-and-run has been called, not a steal. Why steal on what may be ball 3? On a 2–0 count the pitcher will be trying hard to be in the strike zone, so the hitter should be able to make contact. Thus when a runner breaks on a 2—0 count the second baseman (if the hitter is left-handed) or the shortstop (if the hitter is right-handed) should not immediately break over to take the throw at second. Instead, he should move in toward the batter so that if the ball is hit he will still be filling what the batter hoped would be an empty hole in the infield. By moving in he will get the ball quicker and still have a chance to force at second the runner who has a running start on the play.
Someday Ripken might not report to work in the middle of the infield. He might go to the corners, to first base or, more likely, to third base, from whence he came to shortstop. On May 30, 1982, Ripken came to Memorial Stadium, got dressed and then glanced at the lineup card to see where he was in the batting order. He noticed a “6” next to his name, indicating his fielding position, shortstop. He thought manager Earl Weaver had made a mistake, had meant to put a “5,” third base. But t
he “6” was no mistake. From that day through 1989 he started every game at shortstop and missed just 31 defensive innings.
Now, there were then, and still are, people—dogmatists impervious to evidence—who say that the “6” was a mistake, that Ripken is too big to be a shortstop. By now they have been shown to be wrong, but they had history on their side.
The position of shortstop was an afterthought and an improvisation. It was not created until about 1845. Prior to that baseball was, like the British game “rounders,” an eight-man game. Then D. C. Adams of the New York Knickerbockers put himself in the lineup as the ninth man and the innovation was adopted. The name “shortstop” may come from the cricket term “short fielder.” In fact, the first shortstops were more outfielders than infielders. They were, among other things, roving cutoff men helping to get the very light (3-ounce) ball back to the infield. When in 1856 the ball was made heavier (5 to 5 Vi ounces), most shortstops became infielders. When the heavier ball resulted in an extra infielder, the extra was, more often than not, a light infielder. Until about 1982 the conventional wisdom was that a shortstop should not, could not be constructed along Ripken’s lines.
Luis Aparicio is the most recent of those rarities, a shortstop elected to the Hall of Fame. At 5 feet 9 and 160 pounds, Aparicio resembled Pee Wee Reese (5 feet 10, 160), who is in the Hall of Fame, and Phil Rizzuto (5 feet 6,150), who arguably should be. (The Yankees’ Vic Raschi said, “My best pitch is anything the batter grounds, lines or pops in the direction of Rizzuto.”) Reese’s nickname was “The Little Colonel,” Rizzuto’s was “Scooter.” The prototypical shortstop is Hall of Famer Walter James Vincent Maranville (5 feet 5, 155), known, of course, only as “Rabbit.” When great shortstops have not been short they have been skinny, like Marty “Slats” Marion (6 feet 2,170) and Mark “The Blade” Belanger (6 feet 1, 170). Marion’s career batting average was .263 and he hit only 36 home runs in 13 years. Belanger ’s career batting average was .228 and he hit 20 home runs in 18 seasons. No one built like Ripken has ever played shortstop for long, much less with distinction. Of course the stereotypical shortstop often was not what the stereotype suggested. Rabbit Maranville is regarded as the paradigm of the good fielding, but weak hitting, little shortstop. But he batted clean-up and made 65 errors for the 1914 “Miracle Braves.” (Their miracle was winning the pennant after being in last place in July. They won 61 of their last 77 games and then swept the mighty Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series.)
Two changes in the nature of major league shortstops were foreshadowed in the 1950s by two men in Chicago. In 1950 the White Sox gave baseball a glimpse of the future with Chico Carrasquel, a Venezuelan, the first of a long line of Latin shortstops, the greatest of whom was his countryman who followed him to the White Sox—Luis Aparicio. Across town, the Cubs had another kind of shortstop. On Monday, September 21, 1953, the Chicago Tribune sports page reported on the previous day’s game in St. Louis, which the Cardinals won, 11–6. The second paragraph of the story said: “Ernie Banks, one of several rookies who will challenge Roy Smalley next year for his shaky shortstop job, knocked his first major league homer. The Negro from the Kansas City Monarchs also hit a triple and a single in driving in three runs.” He would hit 511 more home runs. There had been many fine-hitting shortstops over the years. One, Honus Wagner, is arguably (Branch Rickey and others have so argued) the finest player ever. (Poor Pittsburgh. Once the home of the greatest-hitting shortstop, in 1988 the Pirates’ shortstops got just 16 RBIs, one less than the Pirates’ pitchers.) Joe Cronin, Lou Boudreau, Luke Appling and Vern Stephens all were potent offensive shortstops. But until Banks, it had been conventional wisdom that a shortstop, more than any other player, would earn his pay with leather rather than wood. A slugging shortstop like Banks was considered highly unlikely. A slugger would have to be too big to be quick in the field.
However, at 6 feet 1 and 180 pounds, Banks was built like a shortstop, lean and light and nimble. The largest person ever to play shortstop was Parson “Beacon” Nicholson. He was 6 feet 6. But he played only 10 games at short for Washington’s 1895 National League team. Before Ripken there were several shortstops who were 6 feet 4, but none played the position regularly. Ripken is the biggest real shortstop baseball has ever seen. However, he rightly insists that he is not slow. Perhaps as a base runner he is on the slow side, but he has baseball quickness. Ripken was an All-State selection in soccer and baseball. His secret love, just behind baseball, is basketball, which he plays all through the winter. “I’m about 6 feet 5, 220 pounds, but sometimes I wind up guarding some of the quickest players on the floor.”
He is correct that in the infield it is quickness, not speed, that matters most. Brooks Robinson was painfully slow covering the 90 feet from home to first. But the crucial distance when playing third base is less than 30 feet, and Robinson’s catlike quickness made him spectacular at third.
Shortstop is the most important defensive position. (Or, to stop some arguments before they start, let us say it is the most important defensive position in fair territory.) One reason it is so important is that most batters are right-handed and right-handers more often than not hit to the left side of the infield. Another reason is that the shortstop must cover more ground than the second baseman, and must have a stronger arm for throwing to first base from deep in the hole near third. In 1988 the percentage of batted balls put in play to each position was:
catcher 1
pitcher 6
first base 10
second base 13
third base 12
shortstop 15
left field 13
center field 18
right field 12
When baseball people talk about sound defense “up the middle” they mean primarily the middle infielders (shortstop and second basemen) and the center fielder. In 1988 they handled 46 percent of all balls put in play.
Consider the three tables on page 251. The first shows Ripken’s defensive numbers for his first six full seasons as shortstop, in all of which he was the starting shortstop in the All-Star Game. The second and third tables give the defensive numbers of the American and National League Gold Glove shortstops in those seasons. The numbers for chances, putouts and assists (his 1984 assist total is the American League record) do not suggest that Ripken has trouble reaching enough balls. What he lacks in range he makes up for in two ways. One is his cannon of an arm that enables him to play deep. On a throw from deep short, Ripken’s throws often call to mind Rocky Marciano ’s knockout punches that traveled about eight inches with devastating effect. Ripken snaps off a throw with a short flick of the arm and the result resembles a line drive. The other way he makes up for having less range than some smaller men might have is by using his head to supplement his legs: anticipation.
Sandy Alderson, the Harvard lawyer who is the Athletics’ general manager, says, “The beauty of the game is that there are no absolutes. It’s all nuances and anticipation, not like football, which is all about vectors and forces.” (You expect that sort of talk from this new breed of baseball executive. Alderson said the Athletics signed the aging veteran Don Baylor because of “the talisman factor.” Casey Stengel, call your office. Baseballese isn’t what it once was.) Anticipation, to be helpful, requires the predictable execution by pitchers of their intentions.
When Ripken began playing shortstop every day for the Orioles in 1982, Orioles pitchers were so clever and inventive they sometimes made playing middle infield a bit difficult. Mike Flanagan developed a “BP [batting practice, meaning slow] fastball,” taking a little off his fastball on his own, with no communication with the catcher. Ripken recalls, “Flanagan would play on the hitter’s over aggressiveness. Say it was a 2–0 or 3–1 count. The hitter knows you’ve got to throw him a strike and assumes it will be a fastball. Flanagan would throw a slightly slower pitch than the batter was looking for. The batter’s timing would be off a little bit, which might be the difference between a home run and a pop out. But
that made it difficult defensively because you had to put that variable into your thinking. The catcher would put down the fastball [sign] and you would have to decipher from the pattern of pitches—Flanagan did not give anything away in his windup or motion. You could just tell by what he had done in the past.”
CAL RIPKEN
GOLD GLOVE AWARD WINNERS—AMERICAN LEAGUE
GOLD GLOVE AWARD WINNERS—NATIONAL LEAGUE
Ripken had other sorts of problems with many of the pitchers the Orioles had during the grim years before 1989. “Now with young pitchers,” said the grizzled 28-year-old at the start of the 1989 season, “they will incorporate the BP fastball into their arsenal before they learn how to pitch. Before they learn how it is useful in the scheme of things, they’ll throw it in odd situations, such as with two strikes. That’s the worst time to throw it because the batter is more defensive. You’re giving him an opportunity to get the bat on the ball when that may be all he’s trying to do. You’re letting up and he’s already defensive. That’s the best time to throw your best fastball. But there’s no way I can guess with young pitchers. That’s when defense is frustrating—when there is a young pitcher with control problems who doesn’t know how to pitch.”
Men at Work Page 35
