Jack Morris Pitching to the Score, David Eckstein Doing All the Little Things: The Baseball Intangibles Thread

I was watching this (very good btw, watch it) interview with Lucas Giolito by Chris Rose & then ended up watching one with Tyler Glasnow (who I love) and Glasnow had interesting things to say about this topic. He used the word resilience several times.

Glasnow was asked about how he reacts to getting lit up because he is visibly distressed when he’s doing badly. He gave a pretty long answer on the subject that basically boiled down to: he is naturally a pretty emotional pitcher and when he was a Pirate he spent a lot of time trying to be stoic and spending effort on that instead of his pitching. He says his whole family are “If you feel something (negative), get it out, and you’re fine” and he finds that approach better if he makes a bad pitch in terms of being able to play through it and keep going. He leans strongly on the side that resilience is a learned skill and that you should channel your natural strengths into what can help you build it.

That's interesting because I was thinking only about team resilience, rather than individual resilience. For a team, it's definitely a skill acquired by the manager and the front office. They need to juggle a lot of moving parts and do so every day for six months.

Related to Tracer's point: baseball isn't like football or basketball, where the team revolves around one or two players who are bigger than the team and essentially can call their shots. On even the best teams, there will be key players who will win or lose their jobs over the course of the season. A closer might get demoted but he becomes a 7th or 8th inning guy and the manager needs to shuffle the roles of his relievers and get everyone to buy into it without letting ego and jealousy get in the way. Teams have to navigate through maybe dozens of situations like that every year, and it's all on the manager to make it work. That's definitely a skill.

Clemenza will roll his eyes when I post this (no shame, I’m doing it at myself), but this story immediately came to mind reading your last part. From 2019, the Bochy retirement:

As a former player still coming to terms with the incandescence of his career, Lincecum is hardly unique. But his spirits lifted when asked to name a time when Bochy inspired him or made an impact on him.

Lincecum pointed to a game in late May of 2012 when he gave up six runs at Miami to raise his ERA to 6.41 – when he showed the first real cracks in his Cy Young armor. Bochy and Sabean called him in for a summit.

“He just kind of lifted me up to get me to believe in myself again,” Lincecum said. “You know how emotional I can get. I can get down on myself and it turns into almost a hurricane or a wave and you can’t get out of your own way. And the belief they had in me definitely pushed me to want to be out there more. They knew who I was. I was an emotional player and they wanted me to continue to be that guy.”

Lincecum rode that trust when Bochy asked him to embrace a bullpen role that October, and it translated to this: six appearances, 14 2/3 innings, one run, three hits, two walks, 19 strikeouts and another parade ride on a Cable Car bus to City Hall.

I'm all for managers who are sensitive to every last player. I was the 12th man on my high school basketball team, rarely played, so when I coached kids in school, I made sure that if you were good enough to make the team, you played every game. (I may have bent a bit the one year we made the finals in baseball--but everyone would have played in the games leading up to that.)

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative: something that doesn't really exist, like clutch hitting as a repeatable skill. I'm more inclined to go with something that can't be numerically quantified, so you rely on the eye test, faith, etc. (Why I wondered above if you could quantify resiliency somehow.)

Which immediately leads to a problem. Clutch hitting can be quantified in a number of ways--people have studied it, and they've concluded that with the overwhelming majority of players, it's purely random from year-to-year. So under my definition, it's not an intangible; it can be measured. Under the other definition, it is an intangible; it's not real, not in the sense that the ability to hit HR or steal bases is real.

If you find that confusing, you should. I do.

It may be quantifiable, but if it's truly random it's not predictable.

Maybe that's the defining attribute.

"Leadership" and "grittiness" are two classic intangibles, neither of which can be quantified.

(When Thermo and I went to a Jays game a couple of years ago, we were talking about how there was, historically, an unspoken racial bias to the concept of grittiness--it was almost exclusively granted to white players. We had a hard time coming up with Black or Latin players from the past who were admired for their grittiness (past maybe the most obvious example of all, Jackie Robinson...we eventually came up with a couple of good examples, but it took a while).

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative

it's literally never used as a pejorative

Completely, emphatically disagree. In the earliest days of sabermetrics--late '70s--one of the stated goals was to strip the evaluation of players of all those intangibles like "clutch," "grittiness," etc.

If it wasn't something that could be measured, quantified, and--as Jim Beaux points out--repeated, it was a complete myth.

*checks calendar*

agree with you that things that can't be measured are often dismissed by statheads but the word "intangibles" exclusively refers to the positive qualities you cite eg grittiness, leadership, being a good teammate etc

So you've gone from "it's literally never used as a pejorative" to "well, that was a long time ago" in record time.

Yes, James changed over time--demonstrably so. But I wouldn't have a hard time finding a quote from an old Abstract that's very different to what he says now. (Which is understandable, not having ever worked on the inside when he started out. I think even he'll admit that.)

Huffington Post, sorry, but I think this piece (from 2014) outlines the evolution of sabermetrics pretty well:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-baseballs-intangibles_b_4918434

Critics of sabermetrics often focus on the inability of quantitative approaches to determine the value of real or imagined parts of the game like leadership, chemistry, team dynamics and the like. These aspects of the game are often overstated and generally hard to measure, but that does not mean they are not real. Determining how these aspects of the game can be measured and how it can be determined which players have these elusive characteristics is the next frontier for sabermetrics.

And that's not all that long ago. If you go back a decade or two before that, early sabermetrics not only didn't know how to deal with such concepts, they were often ridiculed.

I was curious about ILB's attitude towards the word going back. For the past 15 years, most posters seem to take a positive attitude towards the concept, or at the very least neutral. But going back to 2006 and earlier, I think it's routinely used as a pejorative: people either make fun of it explicitly or implicitly, often put scare quotes around the word, or seem apologetic about even broaching the subject.

>these are the very-same intangibles that Billy Beane was interested in
'gax, what I was specifically mocking is that THOSE AREN'T INTANGIBLES! Injury history or drug/alcohol problems are ascertainable facts; they're data that the New Analysis breed has never ignored. You hear meatheads talk about anything outside of the triple crown stats as "intangibles." They should save that word for horseshit like "character" and "making players around him better."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 10, 2005 9:18 AM

That is very representative of the posting around that time. So maybe my mistake was in stating that very generally, like it's always been true and remains true today. But, to me, "it's literally never used as a pejorative" is simply factually wrong.

Of possible interest to gyac, a post of mine from 2014 trying to figure out the Giants' third WS win:

Whatever you think of the playoffs in general--and no argument, some of the WS winners are clearly not the best teams--I don't think I'd put the Giants' three-in-five down to random luck. Mathematically, that seems extremely unlikely. There's something there I don't see. Maybe the make-up of the team--something about them that's suited to the post-season--maybe (sorry) intangibles that can't be measured. One obvious thing that you can put down to luck: they've drawn WS opponents that won 89, 88, and 90 games. But my own opinion is that there's more to it than that. What, I don't know.

clemenza what i am trying to say is that no one in baseball or covering baseball, in the 70s or now, has meant something negative by the word “intangibles”. grumpy sabremetricians may dump on the concept that the word represents. but the word, and what it refers to, are a collection of POSITIVE attributes. “we’re not interested in him” “why?” “his intangibles” is a non-sequitur. instead one would say “problems off the field” or something. the word is not ever used as a pejorative.

Okay...maybe there's a nuanced gap between your original statement and the "what I am trying to say" that I missed. The Morbius quote I pulled--"They should save that word (i.e., intangibles) for horseshit like 'character' and 'making players around him better'"--seems like a clear enough example to me of one common attitude at the time, an attitude that grew out of early sabermetrics. Which I guess makes him a grumpy sabermetrician in your eyes. Inside the game, I agree, the concept of intangibles has always been treated with respect. If you go back to the statement by me that started all this--"It's often used as a pejorative"--I don't think there's any kind of suggestion there that I'm talking about the word as used by players and managers.

let’s just agree to, not disagree exactly, but that i’m completely right and you’re completely wrong

Absolutely--and disregard any evidence to the contrary. We're good.

The discussion veered off a little bit into Bruce Bochy, and there's no general managers thread (there should be), so I'll post this here; Posnanski on Bochy (part of a longer post today, "What Makes a Manager"). I think it's a good, even-handed appraisal of his place in history, and will be of interest to at least one person.

But...well, this is where we come back to Bruce Bochy. It seems way off to call Bruce Bochy the greatest manager in baseball history or anything close. He has a losing regular-season record, for crying out loud. He has never managed a team that won 100 games in a season and only once has managed a team to 95 wins. Here’s something crazy: He has never managed a single team to the best record in the league. Heck, in two of his four World Series seasons, his team didn’t even win the division.

That said: None of those regular-season things mean what they used to mean. It’s true that Bochy in 26 years of managing has never won what you might call a “natural pennant” — finishing with the league’s best record — but what matters now, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, is October, and Bochy’s record in October is beyond remarkable.

-- in San Diego, yes, his teams went 8-16 in the postseason but did go to the World Series in 1998.

-- in San Francisco, his teams were a remarkable 36-17 in October, winning three World Series.

-- in Texas, as you know, his team set a record for consecutive road wins, went 13-4, and won the franchise’s first World Series.

Add it all up, that’s a 57-37 postseason record, five pennants, four World Series, all this with teams that never went into the playoffs as a favorite.

This Bochy witchcraft, like so many of the managerial traits we’ve been talking about here, is not easy to explain. Bochy’s presence inspires confidence, and he seems more or less unshakeable, and he doesn’t seem unduly tied to tradition or blind loyalty or anything else that might prevent him from winning TODAY’S game. And, I mean, you just like the guy, which can’t hurt.

But does he run wild like Whitey’s teams did? No. Does he preach the gospel of great defense, starting pitching and the three-run homer as Earl did? No. Does he mix and match and experiment and follow his gut and entertain the sportswriters like Casey did? No. Does he work over his bullpen so much that people call him “Captain Hook” the way they did with Sparky? No.

Maybe you can DESCRIBE the baseball philosophy of Bruce Bochy in that sort of pithy way. I find it hard to do.

But there’s something happening with Bochy, something that every team in baseball wants now. If a franchise could hire a steady manager who will squeeze the most of out of a team’s talents over the regular season, or a mercurial manager who will give them the best chance to win in October, I imagine most teams right now would choose the second. That is, if teams could identify such things.

"Not easy to explain," "if teams could identify such things"--so it does, in the end, circle back to intangibles.

Thanks for this.

Heck, in two of his four World Series seasons, his team didn’t even win the division.

I was rereading Giant Splash & Bondsian Blasts by Baggarly (this is what happens when you travel 10 hours by train), and remembered Bochy’s calmness being invoked itt (including by me!) so this story made me giggle:

The most galling defeat came under dark and drizzling skies at Petco Park on April 20. Jonathan Sanchez dominated the Padres, holding them to one hit while striking out 10 in seven innings. But the Giants were just as stymied by Mat Latos, a hulking right-hander with platinum blond hair and a hard fastball that traveled straight downhill. The Giants managed just four hits in his seven innings, none of them coming at opportune times in a 1–0 loss. It was the 29th time the Giants held an opponent to one hit or fewer in a nine-inning game in their San Francisco era. It was the first time in those 53 seasons that they lost. “I can’t say I’ve been in a game like this,” said Bochy, who remained stoic in front of the press but began spewing blue language as soon as the reporters filed out of his office. “No way we should’ve lost tonight’s game.”

The Giants were 47–41 at the All-Star break in 2010, which was respectable enough but only placed them fourth in the NL West standings. The San Diego Padres set a surprising pace in the division, and the Giants kept coming up short against them. The Padres beat the Giants seven times in eight games prior to the break, and after many of those losses, it took every last bit of Bruce Bochy’s self-discipline to keep from redecorating the visiting manager’s office in Petco Park.

Idk if this precisely fits this thread but it fits better than others I could think of?

I was watching the Red Sox winter weekend clips and there was this 2004 retrospective with Pedro Martinez, David Ortíz, and Jason Varitek. They talked about Tim Wakefield for a while, here is a clip of the relevant portion:

https://vimeo.com/905924215

Pedro saying that he was honoured to throw at batters on behalf of Wakefield, because Wakefield’s knuckleball was too slow? That’s what I call being a teammate.

Also, the Varitek story about Pedro trying to get the team going at a players’ meeting (is there any more cursed phrase in baseball than the all players meeting?) by saying, of Wakefield, “When he has nothing, he has nothing because even when he doesn’t have nothing (ie the knuckleball was working) he still has nothing!” Contrasting Wakefield’s pitch mix with Pedro’s, but Pedro wasn’t trying to insult him, he was pointing out its a team’s jobs to fill in the gaps because not everyone had it at all times and even if a player doesn’t have it he should still try his best.

Also Pedro saying “If you can lean into 77, you can lean into 97!” and you can tell he means it too. Obviously mores have changed re the ethics of throwing at guys but the point behind it remains the same: you don’t fuck with our guy.

There was a separate Pedro interview where he says that he didn’t get on with the Red Sox pitching coach and credits Wakefield with being the one to induct him into the organisation and bring him on.

Also, same event, Rob Bradford interviewed Triston Casas about his rookie season and there were two segments that are relevant to this thread and intangibles, especially for young players joining the league and adjusting. Transcripts very bad (mine!) but have edited minimally:

Bradford: What was the thing that sort of clicked for you that you feel like was the biggest reason for why you were able to take off?

Casas: I think just honestly believing that I belonged there.

Bradford: Oh you didn’t believe that?

Casas: I didn’t believe it. I mean, I was proving it to myself, just like I was trying to prove to everyone else. I mean, .197 in September ‘22 isn’t exactly, like, you know convincing everybody that I’m a great player. .197 through the first two months isn’t either, so I think once I went one time through the league…I played against Trout, I played against Ohtani, even the guys from the Blue Jays, Bo Bichette and Vlad, those are guys I look up to. The thing is I’m a baseball rat, I’m a baseball historian, so all I do is watch MLB Network, ESPN. The problem with doing that is all they show is the highlights. So I associate Ohtani and all these greats with only hitting home runs, and only doing great things but when I finally played against them, they had bad at-bats! I saw them swinging at pitches in the dirt, I saw them roll over…So once I saw all these great players making the same mistakes I did, it kind of settled me down to where I was like, they’re just like me, I’m out on the same field as them competing, and …that just calmed me down.

Casas: You know it’s funny, I made a game-losing error against Colorado randomly, I want to say it was in the beginning of May*. It was battle-tested weather, rain coming down, I remember it was Joe Jacques’ debut. I don’t remember who hit a ground ball to me but it was a lefty-lefty matchup and I bobbled the ball. We lose by a run because we went down by 2…

I was just sitting on the bench during the rain delay** and Trevor Story comes over and he was hurt at the time, he wasn’t playing. He was like, you’re an important part of this team, you’re a part of what we’re trying to do for right now especially because you’re here for a reason but especially in the future. So we talked on the bench for an hour after my game-losing error, and he pretty much calmed me down, he instilled that confidence in me, he said that in the time he’d been injured he’d been having conversations with the front office and with other members of the staff and they believed in me, he instilled that in me, and I guess that calmed me down a little bit because from that point…I felt like it was only uphill from that ***.

Grissom, the team’s presumed starter at second base, quickly joined the plans after being traded from the Braves in exchange for Chris Sale at the end of December in an effort to build some chemistry with Story before camp opens in February.

_otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way._.

Who’s the kid the dodgers keep on payroll for mental healthcare reasons? A happier outcome of the Sal Fansano incident

Andrew Toles. That was a great example.

Andrew Toles. That was a great example.

It's a celebrated day every year

Tolesy was electric coming up too, seemed he had a real career in front of him. Sad but glad the Dodgers continue to do right by him 6 years on

obviously there's a lot of failure in baseball -- you wear down, you fall into a slump, you get babipped, whatever -- but being a pitcher who can no longer throw strikes seems like a special kind of hell. the yips will fuck you up, sometimes forever

Career minor leaguer John Mincone made this response re the mentality of 162 and where players and fans differ that I’ve seen made repeatedly, but rarely all in one place:

If professional athletes let the emotions of fans affect them daily, they wouldn’t have the mental capacity necessary to go out and play day in and day out despite struggling. There is a reason why some very good players flame out early in their careers and some fringy guys may stick around longer than you think. You’re taught early on in professional ball, some in college if they have the right coaching, once the street clothes come off and uni goes on, whatever is bothering you in your personal life goes with it for the next few hours while you compete.. when the uni comes off and street clothes go back on, you wash the game, good or bad, and get ready for the next one. Struggles, slumps, low points will always happen in professional sports. I’m not sure why fans would rather they have emotional messes who sit around and cry with them after losses.. they’re not your friends, they’re professional athletes. Good or bad days, they still have things to be sad and happy about, just like the rest of us. Being upset over them smiling isn’t it.

When he's right, he's right. This is a really really rough look after another despicable loss. When they say "read the room"... the players should be able to "read the ballpark" too. Look around, it's dead, and will only get worse if this shit keeps up. https://t.co/e12OetmlRT

— The 7 Line (@The7Line) June 3, 2024

Made me think of this, of course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Q0kp8CMFQ

The GM saying that is one thing, but fans can shove it imo

I've noticed that with fantasy sports too, so much vitriol towards specific players seems to happen only because they're underperforming in fantasy, can't remember who but there was one NFL player who said people were noticeably meaner towards professional athletes since fantasy sports really took off

but yeah we definitely put weird expectations on how these guys should *live their lives*, I mean when you're watching a game, especially a playoff game sometimes it's the only thing in the world that matters to you in that moment, but the next day your emotions on it have cooled quite a bit. I've been on teams myself and actually coach my son's soccer team now, it's the same thing, when you're playing you're only focused on the game, but after its over you go back to your life, idk maybe it's unreasonable to expect the pros to be different, in fact most of the stories you hear about guys who are constantly obsessing over the game are from people who flamed out early

I'm sure your last sentence is true, but there are also famous cases of great players who internalized every wasted AB and every poor pitch for days afterwards. Two prominent ones: Ted Williams and Tom Seaver (or at least for the first few years of his career--I think he acquired some equanimity as he got older).

And Cobb, of course...who may have been borderline psychotic.

there was one NFL player who said people were noticeably meaner towards professional athletes since fantasy sports really took off

All I can go by is general demeanour, but never-phased-by-anything counter-examples: Stan Musial (happy), Ernie Banks (happy), Greg Maddux (weirdly Zen-like).

edwin diaz was reported to have cried after one of his blown saves this year - that is, showed publicly that he cared.

of course, people came out of the woodwork to say that he should have 'manned up', real men don't cry etc. probably some of the same people who are approvingly liking that tweet, i'd bet

Reminded a bit of this from Joan Ryan’s amazing book about team chemistry:

“Clubhouse lawyers can do more friggin’ damage than anybody on a ball club,” Keith Hernandez told me. He played seventeen years in the major leagues, including on the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets. “Usually the clubhouse lawyer is someone who is dissatisfied himself. He’s not happy about how he’s being used, and he just can’t internalize it. He’s got to spread it like a weed, like a poison throughout the team. He needs to be traded as soon as possible.” The clubhouse lawyer is often a fading veteran riding the bench who pulls others into his bitch-fest. There’s always someone ready to be convinced that — yes! — he’s getting screwed, too. “That’s why you want character guys who won’t get sucked into the misery,” one coach said.

edwin diaz was reported to have cried after one of his blown saves this year - that is, showed publicly that he cared.

of course, people came out of the woodwork to say that he should have 'manned up', real men don't cry etc. probably some of the same people who are approvingly liking that tweet, i'd bet

“Sergio, he had his moments, sure,” Righetti said. “But here’s the thing: he’d come to you. You didn’t have to go to him. Some guys, if they get caught showing off out there, they get upset and embarrassed. They go backwards. You lose them. That wasn’t him. I never had to yell at him. It’s just, ‘C’mere, let’s go talk somewhere.'”

They had one of those talks on the mound in Game 3 of the 2010 NLDS at Atlanta. Romo replaced Jonathan Sánchez in the eighth inning with a runner on base and the Giants leading, 1-0. The two teams had split the first two games of the series. It was a pivotal moment and the most important appearance of Romo’s career. Troy Glaus had been announced as the pinch hitter to face Sánchez. After Bochy went to Romo, Braves manager Bobby Cox burned Glaus to get the left-handed matchup with Eric Hinske.

Hinske hit a towering, two-run home run.

“I went out there. I had to,” Righetti said. “He was crushed. You could see it all over his face. He thought he failed. I told him, ‘Hey, you’re gonna get the win. You’re not going to want the win, but you’re getting it.’ From then on, he never did that again.”

Even in 2012, when Romo gave up a walk-off home run in St. Louis to Kolten Wong as the Cardinals won Game 2 to tie the NLCS. The Giants went on to win the next three games. Romo didn’t allow another run the rest of the postseason.

“It didn’t affect him,” Righetti said. “He handled that well. And he had his signature moment (in 2012). But there were so many more moments. During our run, we were in a race every year. We didn’t have any margin for error. He was as dependable as it gets.

“Shoot, you look at his career, and he’s the best reliever I’ve had.”

I was looking over earlier posts in this thread, and an addendum to the detour on Kershaw's postseason ordeals. In his Kershaw fame-countdown entry, Posnanski has a list of how the best pitchers this century have fared in the postseason:

Randy Johnson, 7-9, 3.50 ERA (3-0 with 1.04 ERA in World Series)

Pedro Martinez, 6-4, 3.46 ERA

Justin Verlander, 17-12, 3.58 ERA (1-6 with 5.63 ERA in World Series)

Clayton Kershaw, 13-13, 4.49 ERA

Max Scherzer, 7-8, 3.78 ERA

Roger Clemens, 12-8, 3.75 ERA

Greg Maddux, 11-14, 3.27 ERA*

Zack Greinke, 4-6, 4.14 ERA (1.80 ERA without a decision in World Series)

Curt Schilling, 11-2, 2.23 ERA (4-1, 2.06 ERA in World Series)

Mike Mussina, 7-8, 3.42 ERA

Subtracting Schilling, who we will talk about in a minute, the overall postseason numbers for perhaps the nine best pitchers of the last 30 years: 84-82, 3.72 ERA in 1,430 innings...So, yes, Kershaw’s record is worse than any of the others. But it’s also marred by four absolutely calamitous innings where things just went very wrong (and relievers did not exactly bail him out). I mean, you can’t just erase those four bad innings, but if you could, his postseason ERA and general record would be right there with the rest of the group.

He also makes the point that Maddux gave up twenty-five unearned runs in the postseason (none of the others had more than 5), letting him off the hook to a degree.

Better note for gyac that he does mention Bumgarner:

"The exception is Schilling*, who is one of the greatest postseason pitchers ever and would be in the Hall of Fame if he wasn’t such a knucklehead.

*Of course, Madison Bumgarner has been incredible in the postseason, too, but he just couldn’t stay healthy and dominant long enough to be in this class."

That list is Smoltz erasure (15-4, 2.67 ERA over 209IP, NLCS MVP... and 4 saves!)

I agree. Also missing is Halladay, who, in a smaller sample, was great in the postseason. (No knock on Greinke, but I'd put Halladay and Smoltz ahead of him.) I think Joe eliminated a couple of guys who didn't support the point he wanted to make...

That’s cool but it wasn’t exactly what I was talking about.

I posted that in connection to discussion earlier in the thread, months ago--nothing to do with recent posting.

lol i can remember losing my first junior varsity basketball game when i was 13 or something and feeling *so* terrible about it on the bus ride home. partly because the coach was a dick, but mostly because i had fully internalized this sort of toxic fandom

high-level pro athletes are almost(?) pathologically competitive, or they wouldn't be where they are. in the NFL, you get the day after the game to mope if you want, then you generally have five more days to prepare for the next one. there's no time for moping in baseball

(that said, i don't think posting that photo after a loss was a wise move -- breaking your fans' illusions is rarely wise, no matter how dumbass they are)

I'd extend the football comparison to starting pitchers vs. position players (or frequently used relief pitchers); a starting pitcher, if he's vulnerable to negative thinking, has a few extra days to get inside his own head.