Bill James On Complex Platooning

What do you think?

Bill James On Complex Platooning

As I’ve gone slowly through this summary of the 1980 Bill James Baseball Abstract, I’ve encountered a number of interesting topics.

Here’s one for you: complex platooning.

Some of these things are easy to check. Bunting, for example, is a stat that is easy to find. The 1979 Minnesota Twins, managed by Gene Mauch, had 142 successful sacrifice bunts:

In contrast, the Baltimore Orioles, managed by Earl Weaver, had only 42 successful sacrifice bunts:

That’s pretty easy to see, and it’s not hard to figure out how to check up on something like this.

What’s harder to figure out, though, is this stuff about “complex platooning.” I’m not certain what the best approach is to double check.

For example, if we look at the 1979 season, do we really see evidence that Weaver messed around with his lineups more often than Mauch?

Here’s how the 1979 Twins generally would line up by position (note that the final column is the DH; the pitchers are in the column before):

Now look at the Orioles:

After only glancing at this, it seems to me that there isn’t much of a difference between the two. If anything, you’d have to say that Weaver was a bit more consistent than Mauch, since he usually used Lee May as his designated hitter.

Remember, though, that Weaver was also the man who employed the “phantom DH” the next year:

It’s hard to say. What do you think? Is there a way to measure “complex platooning?” Or was James just trying to find something to write?