Free The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed by J.C. Bradbury

each manager in Questec parks on his pitchers’ strikeout-to-walk ratio. The greater the negative number, the greater the manager’s decline in the ratio (meaning fewer strikeouts and/or fewer walks) in Questec parks, which indicates that this manager’s pitcher performed better outside Questec parks. It is outside these parks that managers will have influence on balls and strikes.
    Most managers experience no statistical difference between Questec and non-Questec parks (rounded to three decimal places). Only two managers have a statistically significant impact on the strikeout-to-walk ratio, which means we can say with a high degree of confidence that these impacts are very unlikely to occur via random chance. And right at the top of the list is Tony La Russa (who managed the St. Louis Cardinals during this time frame), whose quote about Bobby Cox (of the Atlanta Braves) working the umpires started this chapter. It turns out that maybe Cox should have been the one doing the complaining.
    La Russa’s ability to sway umpires is not surprising considering that he is a lawyer, the most popular pedigree for professional lobbyists. I wouldn’t be surprised if La Russa is quite adept at manipulating umpires on the field and off through MLB’s umpire evaluation system. Certainly Tony La Russa has no moral high ground to accuse any other manager for influencing the game through umpires, since in Questec parks his pitchers’ strikeout-to-walk ratio falls by nearly one. And if Bobby Cox is low-class for his manipulation of umpires, La Russa must be the scum of the universe.

    And then look at Bob Brenly, formerly the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks and now a television commentator. Why is he so “bad”? First, it’s not clear that he is bad at working the umpires. Although his impact is large, it’s not statistically significant, which means we can’t say that his improvement in Questec parks is outside the realm of random chance. I wonder if his arguing skills are so weak that he ends up hurting his pitchers. Or maybe other managers take advantage of him when Questec is not around and he can’t counter with anything. But a more flattering possibility is that he protected his hitters to the extent that it hurt his pitchers. That wasn’t such a bad strategy given the good pitching he had during these years in Arizona— Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling didn’t need much help from the umpire. This indicates that maybe we need to look at manager influence on hitters as well as pitchers. Maybe a manager can argue to increase or shrink the strike zone, but it applies equally on both sides of the ball.
    In order to examine this possibility, we can use the data to focus on the hitting side. I used the exact same sample and control variables, except I looked at the strikeout-to-walk ratio for the manager’s players when they bat. Table 7 lists the impacts. This time a positive number is consistent with good lobbying for the manager’s hitters. Batters want fewer strikeouts and more walks, and when the strikeout-to-walk ratio rises in Questec parks it indicates that hitters are losing that benefit. There doesn’t seem to be any inverse relationship between arguing for pitchers and hitters, and only Ned Yost’s impact was statistically significant.
    However, the fact that a few managers might have a slight influence over umpires is not the real story here. Overall, it appears that most managers don’t seem to have any real impact in arguing balls and strikes, which is consistent with rent-seeking outcomes. Everyone wastes energy arguing, but nothing is gained. I think the tables are instructive not in showing differences between managers, but that very few are different. Only three managers showed any statistically significant impacts (names in italic) in Questec parks.
    The lesson for rent seeking in baseball is the same for rent seeking in society. Lobbying for special favors is something to be discouraged because, in