All In The Family

Does the way a baseball club is run have an impact on performance?

“How are they able to do this?”

That question crossed my mind sometime toward the end of the regular season, conveniently right after the Chicago White Sox had managed to be swept by the Minnesota Twins. It felt as if the Twins were going to pull off 2006 again, and steal the AL Central division title by a mere game. However, this time there was no consolation prize for 2nd place.

But what it also stirred was something that, and I have to be honest here, I have no clue how to answer. Whenever people talk about Minnesota, they talk about the way they teach their players to play the game from the lowest levels of the minors all the way up to Ron Gardenhire’s staff in the Twin Cities.

Much was made this year of the Twins’ batting average with runners in scoring position, and the White Sox being a team that has to rely on the long ball. There was a nice comparison on the Hardball Times before the tiebreaker game showing this difference of how each team scores runs. This, to me, is not only a result of the players each team has, but also a piece of evidence of the organizational instruction for Minnesota.

What I’m really intersted in, though, is can these things be teased out of statistical data? Can we figure out what the Twins’ (or other) organizational strengths are from the numbers? That’s what I can’t answer.

This might be a question for someone who has a minor league database and/or studies minor league stats. The idea here is that the impact of instruction is more profound, and thus we, from a distance, could notice things that a scout could also see sitting in the stands during batting practice. However, the key part of this data would be some record of what the player was trying to do during a plate appearance(s). This same issue comes about at the major league level too.

Another idea is comparing a group of players who stay with one major league team over the course of a few years. Of course, there are numerous complications to this (coaching changes, etc.), but it may be another approach to see if Gardy’s beliefs can be statistically proven or refuted. (I was going to link to an article from Monday, but it seems the St. Paul Post-Gazette takes down articles quickly).

I’d test this, but I feel it requires a play-by-play database that, quite frankly, I have yet to set up for myself. So, from atop my little Soapbox here, if someone takes up this challenge and reports their results, I’ll be one of many interested parties reading. If not, maybe we have a future post.