“It just uhh … didn’t go our way.” That was how Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson responded to a reporter asking if he regretted not bringing in Andrés Muñoz during the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. That’s certainly an unsatisfying explanation for a decision that will live long in the memories of Mariners fans, as high-leverage managerial decisions that go wrong in the postseason tend to. But what was Wilson supposed to say, exactly? More importantly, what should he have done differently, and why?
The point of pitching management is to make the opponent’s best hitters look their worst when it matters most. Everyone knows this. I was not yet in kindergarten when this came out. But I do have some small disagreements with that Baseball Prospectus Basics piece. As it states, before the invention of the closer, managers used "firemen" to try to get out of jams their other pitchers got into. Basics refers to this as a better thing; coming into a clean inning and getting three outs with a cushion just is not that hard for a relief ace to do. But this misses something: Saving your best reliever until you have some kind of mess on the field is actually quite passive, and using a closer is comparatively aggressive, when you think about it—rather than waiting for a pitcher to get into a mess, you get ahead of things, predicting that the late innings will be high-stakes, and you put in your best reliever before the mess even shows up. This is correct! It is much better to be a little early than a little late.
The problem only arises when you give a reasonable concept like this to Tony La Russa, one of the most rigid and feeble minds the sport has ever seen. He somehow missed the merits of being early, and merely liked the closer because it allowed him to think less. He was the man that decided a closer was just for the final three outs. Technically, this was visionary. Give a guy less work and make him go all out, and he will be more effective. The trouble is that you have already shrunk his responsibilities such that his job no longer necessitates that increased effectiveness. This is what Basics gets right. What we want, I think, is to give all of our relievers simple, short, easy jobs, and to stick our relief ace with either the most complex of the short and easy jobs, or the most protracted and daunting of the simple jobs.
Well, this job was not going to be simple. In the seventh inning of what ended up being the final game of the Mariners’ season, the M's were facing down the best bats Toronto has, for what could have been the final time in the game. Making matters worse, Bryan Woo had already allowed a few runners onto base. As luck would have it, Wilson had Andrés Muñoz, and is not Dave Roberts. He did not have to go back for more Treinen. Muñoz is precisely as good as advertised, had not pitched in a full three days, and does not believe that gay people are evil (I hope) or that Walla Walla, Washington is a suitable place to live (obviously). All Wilson had to do was choose him. By not making the obvious choice, Wilson fell into the same trap that has plagued bullpen management for decades.
There are a lot of classic blunders in the genre of “how to use your best reliever in a do-or-die playoff game,” but there are two relatively recent cases that are particularly representative. On one end, you have Kevin Cash’s iconic hook of Blake Snell in the sixth inning of Game 6 of the 2020 World Series. On the other, there’s Buck Showalter’s absolutely legendary white-knuckle restraint from deploying Zack Britton in the 2016 AL Wild Card Game, even as the game progressed well into extra innings. This spectrum, from Cash to Buck, is the most aggressive and least aggressive a manager can be with their best reliever … that we have seen so far. Wilson’s decision to keep Muñoz in his pocket falls somewhere in the middle, which Wilson may believe meritorious.
Now, imagine that Kevin Cash wasn’t pulling Blake Snell for Nick Anderson, but instead 2016 peak powers Zack Britton. The Zack Britton, who finished fourth in Cy Young voting despite throwing only 67 innings, is coming in so that Blake Snell won’t face the Dodgers’ best hitters for a third time with a runner already on base. Now imagine that the exact same thing that happened in real life also happens in this alternate reality. Snell throws a small fit because he is exhausting, leaves, and watches Britton, the man who just had one of the most perfect pitching seasons of all time, surrender the lead within a few batters. The Rays lose the game. Do we blame Kevin Cash? Of course we don’t. Cash knows that Blake Snell starts tend to turn lousy rather suddenly, and an inning of 2016 Zack Britton is about as sure a thing as there has ever been.
Let’s also imagine what it might be like if Buck Showalter never brings in his closer—2020 Nick Anderson, who only has like 15 (admittedly pretty excellent) innings under his belt that year. Ubaldo Jimenez still surrenders the walkoff home run to Edwin Encarnacion. Do we blame Buck Showalter? Definitely! The furor, however, wouldn’t be as focused on the guy he didn’t bring in, but the guy he did: Jimenez was very obviously cooked at that point.
Though it isn’t quite fair to compare Nick Anderson to Zack Britton, it is instructive. Anderson was likely Cash’s best reliever, but he was also very much some no-name second-year guy coming in to relieve former Cy Young winner Blake Snell. The fact that Anderson had more fWAR than Snell in the shortened season doesn’t matter, because who the fuck is Nick Anderson? Baseball is an incredibly unpredictable sport, and relievers are by some distance the most unpredictable talents on the field.
In case I have failed to illustrate this, I think the trouble on Cash’s side of the spectrum was not necessarily that he was too aggressive, but that Nick Anderson was not yet trusted as an elite arm. Anderson was definitely good enough to use in that spot; he just happened to blow the game without having enough of a reputation to protect his manager. Likewise, Buck’s issue was that Britton was getting legit Cy Young buzz that year. In extra innings, though, someone will eventually give up runs, and often it will be someone who is good. That is the nature of the sport.
The takeaway here is that Wilson and Muñoz created this situation for each other—Wilson by giving his best reliever such an overly defined role, and Muñoz by excelling in that role to such an extent that it became inexcusable to confine him to it. This is the paradox of the closer role: It confers a prestige that makes his cage absurd. What kind of bogus logic is it that we make closers out to have some special mentality that uniquely qualifies them to handle high-pressure late innings, yet would at the same time have them turn into mush when brought into early high-pressure situations?
A really long time ago, I recall someone who wrote into the Effectively Wild podcast asking how best to structure one bullpen game for all the marbles. One of the hosts, probably Sam Miller, answered the question quite simply, and in my opinion exactly right: You throw your best guy first, your next best after that, and so on. The reasoning is this: With every clean inning you get pitched, your hitters are more likely to create or increase a lead. By the seventh inning, you might only have rotten pitchers left, but you are much more likely to have a substantial cushion by using your good guys early. Otherwise, one runs the risk of not getting your best pitcher in, like Showalter.
But while Showalter was being cowardly in those 2016 playoffs, Cleveland was deploying Andrew Miller in a hyper-aggressive, middle- and even mid-inning stopper role. Miller was nails and everyone trusted him, but perhaps just as importantly, he had already won a Reliever of the Year award. He didn’t really need the ego boost of the closer role. Just as importantly, Terry Francona had defined Miller’s usage gimmick pretty well, to Miller himself and also to fans. In Game 7 of the World Series of that year, with Corey Kluber faltering, Miller was brought in in the fifth, and he gave up a couple runs, but nobody doubted his usage in that spot. They got their best guy in when it mattered most; pitchers just fail sometimes.
I’m realistic. I know how this sport goes! If the ace blows the game, I will forgive him instantly. If this team loses because it can’t score any fucking runs, I will be okay. I have made peace with the inconsistent nature of baseball offense and the predictability of the Mariners’ shortcomings in that facet of the game. The reason I spend so much time agonizing over managerial decisions is that it’s the part of baseball that moves at a slow enough pace that you can always get it right. Wilson’s decision was bad enough to send both me and Joe Davis spiraling. But this is all nerdy process-based analysis. What was the outcome, anyway?
If this occurs again, someone (perhaps a small child) may find me in a ditch.
