Your 2019 Giants: The End of a Dynastic Era, Thanks Bruce Bochy

As we all know, Bruce Bochy retired from the Giants, ostensibly retired from managing, but he's keeping his options open, apparently, by talking about maybe managing again.  He's mentioned working for the Giants in some capacity.  [FYI: wrote this at end of season, but had to wait until I did enough draft research to finish up, sorry]

ogc big picture thoughts

Just wanted to note the end of an era, a great era of Giants baseball.  At this point, either you think he's the one of the best ever, a Hall of Famer, or you stare at his sub-.500 career record and think that describes him to a T.

Bruce Bochy:  Future Hall of Famer

I think it's pretty clear that he's one of the best ever.  The list of managers with 3 World Series championships or more is not that long, even shorter if you look at modern divisional baseball:  Sparky Anderson, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa,  and Bruce Bochy.  So that's four managers in the last 51 years, representing 13 of the past 50 championships.  Seems like an easy calculus.

Another way to look at it:  in the history of the NL, only two teams have ever won 3 World Championships within 5 years:  the Cards in the 1940's and the Giants in the 2010's.  The Giants are the Team of the 2010 Decade, without a doubt.  I don't see how he doesn't make it into the Hall of Fame.

Bochy Saber Analysis

Chris Jaffe analyzed managers in history by a variety of metrics, and came to the conclusion that Bochy was one of the Top 30 managers (he was 30th), based on his stats up to his LAST season with the Padres.  So just based on those 12 seasons as manager of the Padres, he already ranked 30th in history and it was calculated that he added basically 30 runs on average per season, or roughly 3 wins.

And that's based just on his Padres career.  If he averaged 30 runs in his 13 seasons as Giants skipper, he would be tied for 7th place with Earl Weaver.  If he only averaged 20 runs as Giants manager, he would be 13th in history still.  If he only averaged 10 runs though, he still would be 21st, just ahead of Joe Torre. By Jaffe's analysis Bochy was easily one of the best ever in history, and that didn't include his Giants tenure.

Bochy One-Run Brilliance

As I've documented in prior posts, Bochy had a great record in one-run games.  His career record is 651-565, or 86 games above .500, or adding a little over 3 wins per managerial season with his ability to beat .500, which is the saber rule on this, that teams, over time, will revert to the mean of zero.  Which makes sense in an overall view, since for every manager one win above, there is a manager one loss below, but assuming GM's have been good decision makers overall, there are a lot of poor managers who end up with more one-run losses, leaving good managers with a good one-run record.

Some have pointed out the huge gap in 2019, and it was: 22 games above .500!  His prior high was 11 but he has had 9 seasons with 8 or more games above .500 out of his prior 24 seasons, which is a lot if you look at who the leaders were each season.  Still, even 22 is an outlier for his long and illustrious career.

I've also documented that it seemed like Bochy's time of dominance was over, as he had 6 prior poor seasons in one-run losses.  If you look at this period as a whole, over his last 7 seasons, he's 5 games over .500 for the period.  Which means that over his first 18 seasons, he was 81 games above .500, which is an average of 4.5 games over .500 per season. So while his 22 games is an outlier for his career, so was the 7 year period, relative to his early career, so it is not impossible that his 2019 was a regression to his new mean, covering his last 8 managerial seasons.

Great Bullpens Helped Bochy Outperform in One-Run Games

One theory that I've seen that makes more sense to me, is that Bochy has been great with one-run games when he has had a great bullpen.  From 2008 to 2012, with Wilson, Romo, Affeldt, Casilla, and Lopez, he was 34 games above .500 over those 5 seasons, averaging almost 7 games above .500 in one-run games.  Obviously, the bullpen was a great strength of his 2019 team, at least until the trading deadline and two cogs were traded away, in Dyson and Melancon, and a developing cog in Pomeranz, plus Black, then injuries took out Gott, Moronta, and Watson.  And, of course, he had Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman for his whole Padres tenure, 12 years, 51 games above .500, average 4.25 games above .500 with the Padres.

Looking at his bullpens ranking and performance supports this general view.  When his bullpen was 100 ERA+ (NL ERA divided by team bullpen ERA), they accounted for 74 games above .500 in one-run games (16 out of 25 in total) vs. 12 games above .500 for bullpens below average.  It is similar if you go by rank, which is where the team fits in among the NL teams.  When his bullpen was in the middle rank or above, they accounted for 70 games above .500 in one-run games (again, 16 out of 25 in total, but obviously not the same 16) vs. 16 games above .500 for bullpens below average.

Again, there was a clear dichotomy of his results over the recent past, showing a decline in ability to manage close games.  Starting in 2014, his record in one-run games dipped a lot, although he still had superior bullpens.  Prior to 2013, he was 69 games above .500 when he had a good bullpen, but from 2014 on, he was 5 games above .500, and that was only because his great 2019 season covered for the large negatives of the prior seasons:  from 2009 to 2019, he had superior bullpens except for the 2017 season.

But, it should be noted that in his two seasons he had the best bullpen ERA in the NL, which were 1996 and 2019, he had his best one-run game record in 2019 and a still great 9 games above .500 in 1996.  And when he had a Top 2 bullpen, which was in 7 seasons, he was 62 games above .500 in those seasons, accounting for most of his over performance.  So there does seem to be something to him having a great bullpen.

One-Run Record Significance

And he has had great one-run seasons with both winning seasons as well as losing.  He had 5 winning seasons with the Padres, and 3 of them would have been losing seasons without his above .500 in one-run performance, and 82 wins in another. He was also above .500 in four other losing seasons with the Padres.  With the Giants, out of his four great seasons, two were with winning teams, two were with losing, and the 2011 team would have been a losing team without this boost.  So whether he's got a winning team or a losing team, that don't affect his ability to over perform.

Lastly, he was statistically significantly in one-run games.  He had a .535 winning percentage in one-run games (sample size of 1,216 games), and a .480 winning percentage in all other games. The Null Hypothesis is that his one-run record is within normal range for his other games.  Testing for significance with proportions, I get a z-score of 3.84.  For a one-sided 5% test, the z-score needs to be greater than or equal to 1.645, which it is, by a safe margin, so the null hypothesis can be rejected, in favor of the alternative hypothesis, that his record in one-run games is significantly different from all other games he managed, at the 5% significance level. 

Common Complaints About Bochy

The most common argument against Bochy for the Hall of Fame is that his career losing record reflects how good he is.  As a Giants fan, I feel sorry for people who believes this.  It's like what this professor states, "The Flaw of Averages", where he shows the flaw by noting that a person with one hand in 0 degree water and another in 212 degree water, have an average 106 degree water between the two hands, warm but livable.  However, obviously, neither hand is in a good situation.

His overall record reflects not just his managerial prowess, but also the teams he were handed by his GM and ownership.  After taking an average team and getting the Padres competitive enough to make the World Series in 1998, the ownership scuttled the team, selling off good players to save money, putting them into a rebuild cycle that lasted to 2004, where he got them winning from 2004 to 2006, until being pushed out by Sandy Alderson.  Most of his years with the Padres were rebuilding years, or years propped up by his prowess in winning one-run games (almost all of his seasons with SD would have under .500 without his brilliance in this regard).

He also started out with the Giants on rebuilding teams, 2007 and 2008, before the team got competitive again in 2009 and this era lasted to 2016.  Of course, his final three seasons were not competitive enough due to injuries (in particular, Bumgarner's two injuries) and lack of player development.

Giants Player Development Success 2010-2017 Yet To Be Decided

Which, as I've been noting for over a dozen years now, is not abnormal for a team that has been competitive for a long time.  If you add up the odds of the Giants finding a good player with their draft picks from 2010 to 2017, you get a total expected value of almost 1.5 good players, which means that on average you find a good player or two with all those picks.

And the Giants might yet still be around average for that period, i.e. Evans leadership was not the problem there.  Given that Ramos appears to be on the path to being a good player, his success would mean that the Giants were within reasonable expected value with their player development over the 2010-2017 period with their first round picks.  Especially if you throw in Panik as half a good player.  In addition, other players from those drafts still might pan out as a good player:  Beede (much lower chance, but he's sill young and showed occasional potential), Webb, and Corry.  There is also Shaw, Suarez, and Garcia, as much longer shots right now.  Plus, there is also Reynolds and Crick (plus Arroyo and Duvall) as ones who were traded away and might become good.

All in all, yes, the Giants have not done well with development during their winning period, but there are still enough interesting prospects to also say that the Giants might yet still meet the logical expectations that the draft odds have given them.  That's why I've noted for over a dozen years that deciding how good or bad the baseball operations lead (President, VP, or GM) is not definitive in the short run, as you have the whole period of competitiveness (in this case, the 8 years), then you have the normal 3-6 years to develop into major leaguers, then the 6-9 years for that player to produce like a good player.

Ramos looks to be that good player (and Webb and Corry is right behind), and looks to make the majors in 2021 as a regular, then it could take 6-9 years (or 2030) before one can definitively say that he's good or not.  So we started in 2010, and if Ramos does produce, it could be 2030 before we realize that the Giants were actually no better or worse than other teams in player development.  Or longer if it's Corry.  Thus, simply noting that not enough players have been developed to sustain a playoff competitive period is not enough evidence to blame player development, it could take 20 years or more to definitively (i.e. see a prospect produce 18+ WAR) assess whether they were successful in that regard or not. 

Illogical Thinking About Bochy Over the Past Few Seasons

The illogical thing I've noticed about these people complaints is that they complain that Evans was lousy and did not start rebuilding the Giants for two and a half seasons, as well as blame Bochy for not winning with those teams.  They can't have it both ways.  Either Evans was bad at building up the team, and thus Bochy was dealt a bad hand, or Evans built a good team that Bochy mishandled.  Given all the complaints, it appears to be the former (which I mostly agree with, mainly in view of the number of usable MLB players he has already traded away, we could have used Duvall, Castillo, and Reynolds during this period). 

I would also note the illogic of their two "and a half" seasons complaint, because only an idiot GM would have rebuilt the Giants after their dominant first half of 2016.  The time to debate whether the Giants should have rebuilt or not would have been after the 2017 season or the 2018 season, after Zaidi took over.

Other complaints I've seen are also non-starters.   Complaints about his usage of veterans is just plain wrong, he had no problems using Cain, Lincecum, Sandoval, Posey, and Bumgarner, the players who were actually good.  The complaints were about lesser players like Bowker, Lewis, Schierholtz, and others.  I tracked the usage of Schierholtz and found that he was given many chances, and would be put back in the lineup when he got off the DL, but eventually would turn totally cold and force Bochy to remove him.  Lewis' high OBP was touted strongly by MCC when he was released and traded to the Reds, but ignore the fact that his hot two week start masked his two month decline into Neifi territory by the time they released him.

That one I found interesting the contrast with another player.  Lewis was a player that MCC supported strongly yet was horribly useless for two months, but Grant still, to this day, complain about Jose Guillen, who was a good hitter for 6 weeks before turning totally cold for roughly one week.  They posit that had Guillen not been disciplined and suspended, that Cody Ross would not have been the hero and thus we would not have won the 2010 Championship.  Were these people even following what brilliants moves Bochy made that season and post-season? 

What I like About Bochy

I did not care for his hire much at the time, but I wasn't against him either, at least not vehemently, as some were.  While I was aware of the commentary about his preference for veterans (he wasn't, sitting down Roberts to keep Lewis in the lineup; giving Schierholtz a ton of chances to claim a starting spot), I liked the fact that he spoke and acted like a saberist at times,  eschewing sacrifice bunts and steals, in general.

I know exactly when I started to fall in love with him, and when it was true love.  I started to fall in love with him when he sat down Rowand to start Torres.  That was the bold move that all the haters conveniently forget when they talk about his love for veteran players.  Then it was full on love for life when he sat down Zito for the playoffs, and continued to keep him off with each round.

Those are key reasons I have no doubt that Guillen would not have been starting in the playoffs.  He was stone cold for a week (.048/.130/.048/.178) to end the season, after hitting a solid .308/.353/.439/.793 in the 6 weeks, 34 games before that.  Zito, likewise, had a solid season (for him), had 3 great starts before two clunkers at the end.  So if Zito can get passed over for that, I don't see why Guillen, at minimum, would not have been starting, and perhaps not even on the roster.

Bochy knew the gravity of the situation, he understood it was do or die.  He talked about learning that from his prior World Series with the Padres.  That's why he sat down Rowand for Torres at the end of the season, he knew it was go time, do or die, to make up the difference in the standings.  That's why he sat down Sandoval, his starter all year, in order to have Renteria in the lineup in the World Series.  That's why he later skipped Bumgarner in the 2012 playoffs, as well as put Lincecum in the bullpen.  And was prepared to pull Hudson early with Affeldt as a bridge to Bumgarner in 2014.  He knew when it was important to win the game/series, and when it was more important to survive the season.

Thank You Bruce Bochy

I appreciate all that Bochy provided to the Giants in his tenure.  He did the best he could with the personnel he was handed, and gave us a glorious dynasty as flags fly forever, as a friend of mine loves to say all the time.  Bochy clearly had something extra that other managers didn't have, even before he joined the Giants, as one major analysis had him Top 30 All-Time.  And more times than not, when the game was close, he pulled the right moves to win those one-run games.  He was a great manager to the end, giving us fans hope in a season expected to be all about good-byes.

I wish him all the best, and won't begrudge him if he returns to managing, if that is what his heart desires.  But given his family (and personal) history of heart issues, I hope that he just retire with the love of his life, enjoy the golden sunset with his growing brood of grandchildren, and just take vacations to places that he had always wanted to take a walk at (he wrote a book about the walks he took while traveling as a manager), instead of risking his health (he had heart related issues in the two or three seasons before 2019) managing again.  But you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Thank you Bruce for everything.