Eating Crow 2.1: Crowley's Affect on the Orioles '85-'88

Terry Crowley was the hitting coach during the dark stretch between the '83 World Series win and the '89 Why Not? season (of course the answer to that question was because after Bob Milacki and Jeff Ballard . . . we had awful, absolutely dreadful starting pitching). Anyway, Crowley, fresh out of retirement, plied his trade and tried to mold Oriole hitters. If he has influenced his teams, we should see a decrease in plate patience measured as pitches per plate appearance. We may also see an increase in contact rate as he teaches hitters to actively pursue pitches on the fringe of the zone, which are often poorly hit.

The null here would be:
There is no difference between Crowley-influenced Orioles and non-Crowley-influenced Orioles.




Methods
This section will be handled simply. Crowley's team hitting will be compared to Ralph Rowe's teams (81-84) and Tom McCraw's (89-91). The measures will be P/PA and contact rate. These measures are explained more in depth in the first entry on Terry Crowley. This study will assume that the player's are relatively uniform in quality and openness to be taught.

Results

Pitches Per Plate Appearance
Ralph Rowe's years with the Orioles are notable in that his teams we slightly above the league average in pitches per plate appearance. The differences are not great, but are significantly above the league average (Rowe = 3.71 +/- 0.02; MLB = 3.67 +/- 0.01). Crowley's team only had one year noticeably above the MLB average and it was his first season. I wonder to what extent Rowe's hitting concepts were still being applied as it was Crowley's first year coaching and hitters typically stick with what works until they struggle. It appears as if, under Crowley's watch, the hitters are getting less patient. It is also interesting to note that in 1986 and 1987, there is a weird blip in terms of P/PA. I have no explanation. I know 1987 was the year in which an uncharacteristic number of homeruns were hit. Finally, McCraw's first and second year were typified by a major correction in P/PA. His third and final year had the team back at league average. The main explanation here would be Mickey Tettleton leaving, Worthington replaced by Gomez, and Ripken changing his approach. It appears McCraw also professed being patient. I am actually quite surprised by what this data seems to say.

Contact Rate
The metric seems to relate well with P/PA. They should be inversely related to each other. As plate patience decreases, contact rate should increase. This is due to coaching encouraging the utilization of balls located on the boundary of the strike zone. Likewise, batted balls are more likely to become productive hits as plate patience increases. I have a feeling Rowe's results that are above average might be due to the team being more talented offensively during his strand. During Crowley's tenure, it is a bit all over the place. McCraw's time is characterized by below average contact rate. This all makes sense with what the data seems to be suggesting, but the data here is hard to parse.

Conclusion
These are in no way conclusive results, but strangely . . . it seems the Crowley might have an effect on team batting behavior. It appears, maybe superficially, that his teams are less patient than Rowe's or McCraw's and that his hitters go after pitches that may not best utilize their at bats. It seems that the head coach does not seem to affect these metrics as Weaver/Rowe did not have the same result as Weaver/Crowley. Although, Rowe's teams were superior and this may be affecting the data. I'm not sure how to normalize talent level.

Next Time
I am going to still keep at Crowley's first tenure with the Orioles. I will analyze his affect on hitters at different career points and see if there are any tendencies.

Eating Crow: A Tendency for Aggression?

Terry Crowley is a name many Oriole fans despise. They complain about how he supposedly affects Oriole hitters. He preaches being aggressive at the plate. Others, myself included, think that hitting coaches do quite little at the Major League level beyond offering useless advice and acting as a guidance counselor . . . as in someone who is good to talk to, but doesn't really change things. In this piece I will try to determine if Crowley has a history of affecting his team's offensive production. This project will consist of four parts: Crowley as a player and Crowley's three stints as a MLB hitting coach.

Our working null hypothesis is that there is no difference between Crowley's performance and his team's performance against league performance as measured by pitch counts, a measurement of aggressiveness.

Part I: The Player

Terry Crowley was drafted by the Orioles in the 11th round of the 1966 amateur draft. He progressed quickly through the Orioles farm system: 154 games at HiA Miami, 55 at AA Elmira, and 2007 at AAA Rochester. He really didn't show much statistically until his second go around at Rochester in 69 where he displayed plus power. Once he reached the majors, he showed that he just was pretty average as a hitter. He never developed into anything more than a pinch hitter.

Methods
First we need to convert his statistical line to pitches per plate appearance. I do not have that data and I doubt they kept track of pitch counts by batter back then, so we'll have to estimate this. The basic formula is as follows:
[3.3*(plate appearances) + 1.5*(SO) + 2.2*(BB) ] / (plate appearances)
We will then compare his P/PA against the league average. This should be a decent indication of his aggressiveness as a player. It should be noted that we are dealing with a small sample size. The years with more than 100 AB are 70, 72-74, 78, and 80-82. Other metrics will also be compared: contact rate. Contact rate will relate to success of aggressiveness.

Results
Based on the chart, Crowley was not a hacker. He was about league average. If you ignore the seasons where he had less than 100 PA, He excedes the league average his second year and toward the tail end of his career. During , his prime . . . league average. This somewhat backs up Bill James' often cited, but never conclusively evidenced theory of age and walk rates. Basically, it goes that as players realize their bat speed is gone, they compensate by taking more pitches and waiting for the right pitches to hit. The result is that a player will start walking at a higher rate until the opposition realizes that he can no longer hit. Then he will bottom out completely. That describes Crowley's tail end Oriole career and horrendous stint with the Les Expos.

Interestingly, Crowley's contact rate is predominantly better than league average. It typically decreases as the more patient he is, but not every year. His only years with over 100 PA, his contact rate was much better than average. Here is where the issue of his theory of aggressiveness may lie. His patience is somewhat fluctuating, but his contact rate is always exceptional during the seasons when he was given significant at bats. Even in his final year, he displays a very good contact rate, but he was unable to do anything with it.

Conclusion
So, let's revisit our null. Is there any difference between Crowley's and the league's P/PA? Crowley comes in with a 3.72 +/- 0.11 P/PA. The league comes in at 3.69 +/- 0.02 P/PA. Crowley's numbers are NOT different from the league over the course of his career and there seems to be no general pattern except that he seems more patient during the beginning and end of his career. When contact rate comes into play . . . things get a little hazier. The seasons in which he was rewarded with significant at bats were those that also we years where he was successfully aggressive. It seems as if, as a player, his approach was never based on plate patience, but looking for a pitch he could make contact with. Contact rates over the career also do not differ from league contact rates, but it appears that Crowley had focused on simply making contact.

Contrary to the current perception of Crowley, he was not an overly aggressive hitter, even though he had a notoriously violent swing. He was selective, but not overly aggressive. He was not a hacker. As we know from ex-players like Joe Morgan and Billy Beane, a lot of old ballplayers think quite differently about the game now than what they did back then. Joe Morgan is notorious for his stubbornly held views about run production and Billy Beane reached epiphany, realizing why he was such a horrible talent. It may be that Crowley has bought into the perception of himself being the free swinging buck who was very much aggressive at the plate. Why he would teach this to others? I have no clue as he was a pretty average ballplayer with a 104 lifetime OPS+.

Next Time
The next segment will analyze Crowley's affect during his first stint with the Orioles. This will include several sub-studies. The first one will be discerning whether the team as a whole was more or less aggressive than MLB as a whole. After that we will compare his affect on inexperienced players and experienced players as well as free agents. It will be interesting to see if he has designed his team to be selective, but target contact.

Once in a . . .

The Orioles have played even ball going 3-3 in the past week to bring their season record to 11 and 8. The odds have not changed much since we last posted them. It will be interesting to see what the next three weeks hold for the team as they face extended road series. This week's odds.

PECOTA
67.1 wins (+0.7 since we began keeping track)
0.43% AL East Champions (-0.42%)
0.81% Wild Card (-0.44%)
1.24% Playoffs (-0.86%)

ELO
76.9 wins (-0.3)
5.11% AL East Champions (-2.15%)
5.45% Wild Card (-0.31%)
10.56% Playoffs (-2.46%)

The Orioles' Conversion to a Five Man Rotation

Dave Studeman over at the Hardball Times sometimes writes a potpourri column with various new things he has learned. Last week, he tackled the point at which the 4 man rotation yield to the 5 man rotation. Looking at league-wide data, he found that 1976 brought on a sea change in terms of pitching use.

What caused the change? Well, I can tell you what else happened in 1975 and 1976: Peter Seitz struck down the reserve clause, the owners lost their appeal and then locked players out of spring training for 17 days while negotiating a new player contract, Catfish Hunter signed a $3.3 million contract and a couple of dozen players became free agents at the end of 1976. Baseball evolved from a pastoral game to a business nearly overnight; the Dodgers raised their ticket prices for the first time since 1958.

So, this made me think . . . what about the Orioles? Earl Weaver is known to be a man who stuck to his guns. To the point that in the late 60s and early 70s, the Oriole players chose to ignore Earl on many occasions and play small ball (also mentioned in the same column . . . ref to Vincent's new book). See, Earl loved the long ball and understood the game pretty well. Anyway, the Orioles were a winning organization with a lot of continuity. This is not the kind of time an organization changes much about how they will do things. They didn't change their operation prior to 1976 or after. They signed no free agents in 1975 and, after the 1976 season, they let their good new free agents go: HOF Reggie Jackson and should be HOF Bobby Grich. Before 1977, they indulged in the market enough to sign Billy Smith, a not too good utility guy with random pop. Two other guys who totaled 1 IP. This winning organization never bought free agents and decided it was too risky of a venture. In the graph below, you can see that pitching use kind of changes slightly after the reserve clause is struck down, but not really. The main change comes with Joe Altobelli.


Joe Altobelli was Weaver's surprise successor with the Orioles. This was actually supposed to happened. Altobelli was groomed in the system for 12 years under the unspoken assumption he would supplant Weaver. Weaver never left, so Altobelli left for San Francisco to manage them for three years. Upon being released, he joined up with the New York Yankees as their AAA coaching and then assuming assistant coach duties with the parent club. He oversaw the transition to a 5 man rotation there as his first season was evenly split between 3 and 4 days rest. In '78, he had a 2:1 4d to 3d rest pattern. His final season, rest was overwhelmingly 4d. The '81 and '82 Yanks exclusively used the 5 man rotation. So, when Weaver left, so did the 4 man rotation.

What will be interesting now is to see how pitching changes over the next decade or so. I can see one potential change that would benefit teams. Reintroduce the fifth stater as a swing man. Within the past decade, starts with 5 days of rest varied from 30 to 45% of the starts. This situation seems like the ideal time to skip your 5th starter. The way the schedule is written these days . . . it seems like it would be a good idea to implement that. Pitchers rarely exceed 33 or 34 starts, so I do not think this is happening at the moment. Anyway, this would enable you to get more innings out of your best pitchers without being forced to start them on three days rest or make them pitch foolishly high pitch counts. It would also make your bullpen deeper for a few games around the date when the fifth starter would normally pitch.