On Friday, reports came out saying the Pirates had chosen former Red Sox general manager and current Blue Jays vice president Ben Cherington to be their next general manager.
Cherington was the architect of the Red Sox 2013 World Series winning team and acquired most of the players who would go on to win another in 2018. However, he was fired in August 2015, and the Red Sox finished last in three of the four seasons under his helm. Still, he was young, now 45, and well respected. He was destined to get another chance, and it will be with the Pirates.
Dejan Kovacevic wrote earlier this week that he believed Brewers assistant GM Matt Arnold was the better choice for the Pirates out of the two finalists. I agree for the same reasons he listed. That does not mean either of us thinks Cherington would be a bad hire, as we've discussed amongst ourselves. And in a way, it's not too surprising new team president Travis Williams considered a retread GM. After all, his previous employers, the Penguins, won two Stanley Cups with a retread GM. However, it's fair to be wary of going to a GM who has been removed from the position for four years. He was still involved in the game, but the game rapidly evolved since then, mostly due to a home run explosion due to a "juiced" ball.
That aside, there is a lot to like about Cherington. His player development record is exemplary. This is common knowledge by this point. Even with the high profile and very expensive miss on international free agent Rusney Castillo and only one of his first round picks panning out, Andrew Benintendi, he built one of the best farm systems in the game with Boston and then helped the Blue Jays assemble their outstanding young core. He signed Rafael Devers as an international free agent, traded for Eduardo Rodriguez when he was still in Double-A in 2014, and oversaw the development of Mookie Betts, Xander Bogarts and Jackie Bradley Jr.. They were all key contributors to the 2018 World Series winning team.
He has the player development background. The Pirates wanted that, but they were also looking for an analytics driven, 'ivy league' type to be their next general manager. Cherington has a reputation as an analytical mind. That 2013 World Series winning team went from worst to first in large part due to four free agent signings: Shane Victorino, Koji Uehara, Mike Napoli and Stephen Drew. Those four were all considered damaged goods at the time, but the Red Sox's metrics gave him the information he needed to pull the trigger on them. They combined for 16.8 WAR for for a price tag of about $40 million. At the time, 1 WAR was valued at around $7 million on the open market, meaning he paid roughly one-third the price for their production level. That is a point in his favor.
But Cherington had some bad run ins with analytics, too. And no, I'm not talking about Pablo Sandoval or Hanley Ramirez. His hands were tied on those signings, getting orders from his bosses. Boston had one of the largest analytics departments in baseball in 2015, but it was far from the most effective. They now have one of the best in the business, but only after they completely rebooted, and in some cases, scrapped, Cherington's model.
At the start of 2016, Red Sox owner John Henry said the team would de-emphasize analytics in the coming season. He felt it simply was not worth the investment. That did not happen, though, because Henry would read Big Data Baseball, Travis Sawchik's book on how the Pirates used analytics to end two decades of losing. According to Tim Britton of the Providence Journal, that convinced him to reinvest in the department, including upgrading their database, Carmine.
Carmine was built in 2000, right when the analytical wave was just starting to take shape. It was incredibly unfriendly to the user, which was expected since it was basically a glorified prototype that was built for computers in the Windows 98 era. That rudimentary program was what the Red Sox used in Cherington's tenure, even as Statcast and Baseball Savant broke onto the scene. Instead of building a new program, the team invested more heavily in medical and scouting operations. While that was not necessarily a bad decision, it also meant the Red Sox had a large analytics department where nobody was working as effectively as they could. They had the look of a good analytics team, but in reality, they were underachieving, and they put a lot of faith in that underachieving group.
The team now uses a program called Beacon, which is much more advanced and powerful. Said Zack Scott, the Red Sox's former vice president of baseball research and development, to Britton in 2017 on the advancements they made to that point: “You hoped it would happen sooner.”
They also built a new application called PEDRO, which allows them to evaluate pitchers from both a player development and scouting viewpoint in a couple of clicks. Under the old system, it would have taken hours, if not days, to do the same amount of work. They heavily invested in Edgertronic, Rapsodo, and KinaTrax cameras to track player movement. The Red Sox realized analytics were not just numbers you can read off a spread sheet. It could, and should, be applied to player development, mechanics and movement.
So Henry's first instinct was wrong: The problem was not analytics, but specifically Cherington's analytics, or at least their application.
And while programs and equipment are important, so are people. There need to be mouthpieces for these ideas. Brian Bannister is one of the game's premier pitching gurus. Cherington hired him as a scout and analyst in January 2015, but he did not have any real power within the organization until Cherington was dismissed.
In Cherington's final two seasons, the Red Sox pitching staff was average overall, finishing with an ERA+ of 100 in both seasons. In 2016, Bannister's first season as director of pitching analyst and assistant pitching coach, they improved to a team 112 ERA+ using mostly the same pitching staff. A lot of that improvement came from a change in ideology, including throwing more breaking pitches and using the fastball up in the zone more. That sounds pretty basic today, but Bannister's ideas were very progressive for 2016. More importantly, the Red Sox continued to build on those ideas in the following years.
Those people who can help revolutionize a department can come from a variety of places. Cherington's Red Sox inherited Bill James as an analyst. In 2018, while Cherington was with the Blue Jays, Toronto hired FanGraphs writer and editor Carson Cistulli. The Padres poached Dave Cameron and the Rays Jeff Sullivan from FanGraphs over the last two years as well. The Reds hired Driveline founder Kyle Boddy as their director of pitching initiatives and pitching coordinator in October. These are just a few examples of what is going on across the league to most teams. The Pirates were not one of them.
There will always be a need for scouts and traditional baseball men, but you need people like these in your organization today too. And as Cherington learned the hard way, it's the quality of the people and the tools they have at their disposal, not necessarily the number of people, that makes a good department.
While "analytics" is still a buzzword that will elicit a reaction, oftentimes negative, it has been an essential part of the game for a while and it applies to more than just stats. It is in player development now, which is Cherington's strength. It's no coincidence the Rays have one of the most advanced farm systems and the highest ranked in terms of talent. As former Pirates draft pick and current Rays farmhand Shane Baz put it, moving teams brought "a whole new perspective, a new approach to pitching.”
The Pirates had fallen behind the rest of the league analytically, and the only way they will win under their current budget restraints is if they produce high level talent from their farm system and are on the cutting edge of trends within the game. While the Pirates have not yielded much reward from their minor leagues in recent years, it can be argued they still identified and produced high level talent. If they weren't, people would not be mad about losing Gerrit Cole, Tyler Glasnow or Austin Meadows. It's not only about producing players like them, but getting the most out of them.
Cherington will need to learn from his mistakes in Boston if he is going to do that. He will have to earn his reputation as a good analytical mind again.
MORE MOUND VISIT
Nov. 12: Three undervalued starting pitchers
Nov. 5: What would a dejuiced ball mean for hitters?
Oct. 22: What would a dejuiced ball mean for pitchers?
Oct. 15: How Kuhl could break big
