During last night’s Dodgers/Cardinals playoff game, the subject of walking Albert Pujols was discussed by one of the announcers, Bob Brenly. For those of you who are not familiar with the Great Albert Pujols, he is one of (if not the) best hitters in the game today. He is also one of the best hitters of all time, and by the time he is done with baseball he will no doubt have made his presence felt all over the record books. The Dodgers are well aware of this and chose to intentionally walk Pujols several times. They are so fearful of Pujols’s bat they are willing to give him a free base to avoid something worse happening.
Bob Brenly was in agreement with the Dodgers’ decision to walk Pujols. He also said just about every other manager would do the same thing. Brenly used to be a major league manager so he has some insight into the decision-making process that goes on. But one of the reasons Brenly gave for walking Pujols simply floored me. Brenly said most managers wouldn’t want to pitch to Pujols because they don’t want to deal with the media if it turns out Pujols winds up beating you. They’re scared to answer the media’s questions? Nice… If that’s how you manage, I hope you have your resume up to date!
The sad thing is that I don’t think Brenly is off-base with his comments. You can find this sort of behavior all over. Portfolio management is a great example. How many “closet indexers” exist today? We have written about the concept of Active Share before, and it is clear from the research that the number of truly actively managed portfolios has been dwindling over time. The reason is simple: managers are afraid to deviate too much from their benchmark. They’re afraid to take the risks they need to take in order to outperform their benchmark. A manager who is truly active will go through stretches of poor relative performance. That’s just part of the deal. But research shows those managers are really the only ones who can provide alpha over time. The “closet indexers” wind up underperforming by the amount of the fee over time. Portfolio managers fall into the same trap as baseball managers. They don’t want to deal with the short-term consequences of deviating from the crowd, even if it is the best thing to do over the long-term.
So is walking Pujols the right decision over time? If you just look at his numbers versus Matt Holliday’s (the next batter) then you would probably say, “yes.” This is what the announcers were discussing last night. But I believe that is not the right question to be asking! Pujols is a better hitter than Holliday, no question. But is Pujols better than Holliday with Pujols on first base? I’m not so sure the expected run differential is as great as people think. But that is a question for the real stat-geeks! The series is still far from being over so it will be interesting to see how this matchup plays out.
