Debunking the myth of strategy in the National League

My friend Tom Callinan tweeted last night one of the most common mistaken notions in baseball: that baseball strategy is more difficult and interesting in the National League than in the American League.

I’ll debunk this myth shortly, but first a few overall comments: I love that baseball has genuine differences between the leagues. The AFC and NFC are identical in how they play, and we’re four decades past the AFL-NFL merger now, so you have few true fans of just one conference. The eastern and western conferences in hockey and basketball play the same, so loyalties rarely extend past your favorite team. But because baseball has never gotten together on the designated-hitter rule, it truly changes strategy, so the game has subtle but significant differences between the leagues. So you have people who favor one league over the other because they like bunting or pinch-hitting more or because they fail to understand the strategy needed to succeed in the American League.

I don’t begrudge Tom or anyone who loves the National League their loyalty to the other league. (Tom’s a longtime Twins fan whose loyalty to the Reds is growing.) Fans of any team or league are welcome to their choices. The styles of play are different and that preference is a personal choice. But I do try to set them straight from time to time on this notion that making pitchers hit makes the game’s strategy more difficult. I also will not take on the linguistic matter that all of baseball’s “strategic” decisions are really tactical decisions. Baseball has long mangled and had fun with the English language (and we love what Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Dizzy Dean and Rickey Henderson did with it), so for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll say that the decisions a manager makes in a game are strategic.

First, much of the strategy of baseball has nothing at all to do with whether the pitcher hits. These decisions are identical from league to league:

• Pitch selection.
• Positioning of outfielders.
• Bringing the infield in with a runner on third and less than two outs.
• Shifting the infield against a pull hitter.
• Hit and run.
• Pitching out.
• Platooning from game to game.
• Instructing batters to take pitches and go deeper in the count.

Base stealing also has little relation to the DH rule, though the fact that runs tend to be scarcer in the National League probably raises a manager’s willingness to risk an out to move a runner into scoring position. This was more true in the era of lots of artificial turf, because the NL had more fake grass and more cheap singles that skipped through the infield to score a runner from second (which had nothing to do with the DH). Squeeze plays also might be more common in the NL because pitchers may be more skilled at bunting than hitting, or have a greater spread between their bunting skill and their ability to score the runner with a hit or another type of out. I don’t know the statistics on that, but the squeeze play is pretty rare in both leagues, especially the suicide squeeze.

The strategic decisions that are most affected by the DH rule are these:

• Pinch hitting.
• Bunting (and by extension, the decision of whether to throw to first or another base, but that’s generally a player’s decision, not a strategic decision of the manager).
• Intentional walks.
• Pitching changes.

If your definition of strategy is simply the frequency of those things happening, then sure, the National League has more pinch hits and bunts. But if every NL manager does pretty much the same thing in most of those decisions, it’s not really strategy, it’s managing by the book. And that is the case. Let’s break these decisions down and see what the real differences between the leagues are:

Pinch hitting

Here’s the decision the National League manager faces several times a game: Would I rather replace this batter who makes his living by pitching with another hitter who makes his living by hitting? And, let’s be honest, all but a tiny handful of position players, however good their defense, are primarily professional hitters; the great defensive hitter who hits as poorly as most pitchers doesn’t last long, but a good hitter who plays lousy defense can play for a decade or more in either league. And pitchers who hit well enough to change this decision are rare. You could count them on one hand in any year, perhaps on one finger.

So in the National League every manager usually makes the same decisions. Early in the game, unless the pitcher is getting rocked, he hits. Late in the game, the manager pinch-hits unless the pitcher is leading, pitching well and not tiring. The mid-game decisions are a bit more varied. But generally speaking, a pitcher who’s doing well will hit in the fourth and fifth innings and be more likely to be removed in the sixth and seventh innings. If runners are in scoring position, every manager is more likely to pinch-hit. If you’re one run down or tied and want to bunt, the pitcher might be more likely to hit. If the pitcher is doing well and has a low pitch count, he’s more likely to hit. If you’re behind, you’re more likely to pinch hit. The factors are all obvious. Every manager and all of the fans understand all of the factors, and most of them would make the same decision in nearly all cases. But it’s easy for fans to manage along with the manager, so fans flatter themselves that it’s a difficult decision that they’re considering. And in every case, you have a professional pitcher ready to replace the pitcher. There are a few tough decisions, but all National League managers make their decisions the same way and there’s not that much difference. A late-game pinch hit can win the game and the manager will be declared brilliant, but the truth is that almost all the time, the manager in the other dugout would have done exactly the same thing.

But in the American League, the decision is always whether to replace a professional hitter with another professional hitter. That’s always a tougher decision. The hitter in the lineup might be a better contact hitter and more likely to get on base, but the hitter on the bench has more power. Which do you want in that situation? And what will that do to your defense? Do you pinch-hit a right-handed batter for a lefty because the pitcher is left-handed? And if the other manager counters with a pitching change, will you be better off than you are now, or will you waste that pinch-hitter and use another? Do you platoon any positions within the game, switching automatically to get the righty-lefty matchup? If you do that too early, can you do it again later in the game if the other team changes pitchers again? You have American League managers who pinch-hit a lot, as much as an NL manager, and you have AL managers who pinch-hit sparingly. That can only happen because pinch-hitting in the American League involves more stragegy.

Bunting

Again, the National League bunts more than the American League, so if quantity equals strategy, I guess that’s more strategy. But again, every manager does it the same way. If a pitcher who’s pitching well comes up early in the game with no outs and a man on first (or especially with men on first and second bases), the pitcher bunts. Every time. There is no strategy to it and every manager does it the same. And the No. 7 hitter never bunts because if he moves the runner(s) up, the other team will walk the No. 8 hitter to face the pitcher. Every time. No strategy, just following the book. Only those few pitchers who can actually hit change the equation. Every manager knows that every pitcher is going to get out about 80 percent of the time, if not more. So they seek to use the out productively with men on base and less than two outs.

But in the American League, every hitter is more likely to get on base than almost any pitcher. The question of whether to give up an out (you only get 27 and each is precious) to advance runners is more difficult when the batter is more likely to get a hit. Again, you have AL managers who bunt a lot and some who rarely bunt. Because the decision itself is tougher.

Intentional walks

How crazy is it that National League managers frequently walk the weakest professional hitter on the opposing team, the No. 8 hitter? But when the No. 7 hitter is on second or third base, it’s often an easy decision to walk the No. 8 hitter to set up the double play with one out or to face the pitcher with two outs (except later in the game, when the other manager might pinch-hit.

Pitching changes

This is the biggest difference between the strategies in the two leagues. In the National League, a huge factor in pitching changes has nothing to do with how the pitcher is doing and who is the best pitcher for a particular batter or situation. The batting order often dictates whether a pitcher who’s doing pretty well but trailing comes out after six innings or seven. If it’s his turn to hit (and not a bunting situation), the manager pinch hits for him and he won’t come out for the seventh inning. But an American League manager has to know when his pitcher is tiring. He has to know who’s the best pitcher to face this batter or to pitch this inning. He never has the cover of I-had-to-pull-him-for-a-pinch-hitter.

Bill James did a study of this years ago (and I’m sure others have studied since) and showed the variation is much broader in how frequently managers pinch-hit, bunt and let pitchers throw complete games in the American League. That variance between the managers who do something the least often and those who do it the most shows the greater strategy of the American League.

The double-switch is a wrinkle of National League strategy that allows a little interest. But again, most managers use it the same. If you want the pitcher to pitch more than that inning, and he’s due up in the next inning, you double switch. Easy call.

A major reason this strategy myth is so widely believed is that television networks, by plan or coincidence (or perhaps reflecting their executives’ biases) hire mostly former National League players as color commentators: Tim McCarver, Joe Morgan, Orel Hershiser, Rick Sutcliffe. And when they comment on National League strategy, they repeat the myth. They do comment on strategy in the American League but I have never heard a commentator note how much easier those calls are in the National League.

I remember in the 1976 and 1977 American League playoffs, the Kansas City Royals had better teams than the Yankees. But Billy Martin managed rings around Whitey Herzog in both playoff series. In 1985, the Blue Jays had a 3-1 lead on the Royals, but Dick Howser outmanaged Bobby Cox (who moved to the easier National League and thrived, except when he faced American League managers in the World Series).

If strategy were more difficult in the National League, AL managers would have a tougher time in interleague play. But the American League has had a better record in nine of the 13 years of interleague play, a collective advantage of more than 100 games. And in the World Series since 1976, when we started alternating between the leagues’ rules, American League teams have won 19 World Series and lost 14. If American League managers were at a strategic disadvantage under National League rules, you simply wouldn’t see such a disparity. The NL managers’ disadvantage under AL rules might not account for all of that disparity, but I’m sure it contributes.

If you like lots of bunting and pinch-hitting, enjoy the NL game. If you groove on that occasional big hit by a pitcher, then the National League has your game. If you like watching intentional walks to No. 8 hitters, enjoy. But let’s slay this myth about the strategy disparity.

In the American League, managers have to know when their pitcher is done before everyone knows the pitcher is done. And they have to choose between professional hitters if they want to pinch hit. Those are difficult decisions that baseball fans should appreciate.