60 YEARS AGO/34: WILL THESE GUYS EVER LOSE AGAIN?

As we keep rolling through May in our retrospective of "Giants-Dodgers '62," we should be struck by the high level of success that each team achieved early in the year. Here are the monthly records for each team over the first two months of 1962--

SFG 15-5, 20-10

LAD 13-8, 21-7

 --which, if you're quick to add up such notations, will tell you that at the end of May the two teams will be separated in the standings by a mere half-game.

As of May 15, the Giants are 10-3 in May, while the Dodgers are 8-4. That tells you that San Francisco will go 10-7 for the balance of the month, while Los Angeles will get extremely hot: a 13-3 mark from this point until the first of June.

In the matter of the games played on Wednesday, May 16, 1962...in San Francisco, Juan Marichal boosted his season won-loss record to 7-2 by allowing eight singles, one home run, and five walks, but only two runs, thanks to three double plays and his ability to shut down the Cardinals when their hitters batted with RISP (1-for-6 in those situations).

Orlando Cepeda boosted himself into the NL RBI lead (with 38) with a three-run homer off veteran reliever Lindy McDaniel (whose off-year would plague the Cardinals in the second half of the season, contributing to the team's underperformance in '62). Cepeda's homer was #10 on the year, tying him with Willie Mays: the current NL leader at this point is Vada Pinson, with 12; he would soon slow down his HR pace dramatically, finishing the '62 campaign with a total of 23. Final score: Giants 7, Cardinals 2.

Down in Los Angeles, the Dodgers and Astros combined for 17 hits, of which only two were for extra-bases--which may explain why LA's third-place hitter Willie Davis executed two sacrifice hits during the game. The first one, occurring in the first inning, put Maury Wills and Jim Gilliam in scoring position and permitted the Dodgers to score two run in the inning without the benefit of a base hit. The second one, which happened in the seventh with the Dodgers leading by three runs, may well have cost them a chance to get the insurance run that the sacrifice was supposed to help set up. 

The Dodgers stole five bases off Colts' catcher Hal Smith (two by Wills, two by Willie Davis, and one by Wally Moon) and had a game that was indistinguishable from the offense they became famous for in 1965-66. Teenage monster Joe Moeller allowed Colts hitters on base (11 hits), but didn't allow them to score (1-for-9 with RISP). Final score: Dodgers 5, Colts 2.

Davis' two sacrifice hits made us curious about the distribution of those events by batting order, and how that might have changed over 60 years, so we ran the numbers. We used the 2021 NL as the comparison point, as it appears likely that it will be the last season in which pitchers bat (another tragic and misguided decision undermining "result diversity" in the game by the game's ever-expanding, ever-more-feckless "brain trust"). 

For the purposes of extra detail, and to show where the managerial practices of the Dodgers (Walt Alston) and the Giants (Al Dark) fit into this scheme, we broke out the 1962 sacrifices by batting order slot all the way down to the ten NL teams, to show the full usage variation. To get the comp with the present day (with pitchers still batting, so NL 2021...) we put those totals at the bottom of the chart. 

As you can see, sacrifice hits morphed strongly from 1962 to 2021 from being something that happened with some regularity throughout the batting order (based on game context) into something that only happened when a pitcher was at the plate. (Just about 40% of SHs in 1962 occurred in the #9 slot; in 2021, that had nearly doubled, to 78%.)

The Dodgers, with the fourth best offense in the league, actually led the NL in sacrifices that year, and were way ahead of the pack in using them in slots other than #9, as the data also shows. The Giants, with the #1 offense, were actually third in the league in SHs, though they led the league in such plays happening when the #9 batter was at the plate.

What's also evident is that the #2 slot, which used to often have a "shepherding" type hitter placed there (but sometimes vulnerable to the misuse of a low-OBP singles hitter whom certain managers confused with a "second leadoff man"), shows a precipitous drop in SH over the sixty years. This is likely a more recent phenomenon tied in with a new, "improved" theory of lineup construction that essentially moves the old #3 hitter into the #2 slot, the old #4 hitter into the #3 slot, the old #5 hitter in the #4 slot, and so on. 

That explains the drop of 90 SH out of the #2 slot, but it doesn't tell us whether or not the new theory is really an improvement--since, once again, the shift in approach mirrors a decline in the diversity of hitting approaches. This subject deserves a more thorough treatment, but for now let's just look at the OPS/OPS+ performance of the lineup slots in 1962 and 2021 to see what's happened.

You can see the shift up in the top two slots, where HRs are now as common as they were in the #3-#6 slots previously. You can see in the OPS+ numbers that the 1962 hitters overtake the 2021 hitters by a smidge in the #3 slot, and then pull away in the #4-#7 slots. 

Looking at these, we get the sense that the optimal arrangement is actually somewhere in between these two, despite the pronouncements of those who've helped to push managers into a hegemonic use of the new theory. Let's hope that some folks will experiment further with this...

Note also that those who argued that the "continuing decay" of pitcher's hitting was a primary reason to banish them from taking their turn in the batting order may have to confront the fact that in the 2021 NL, the OPS in the #9 slot was a good bit higher than was the case in 1962. Sure, it was still lousy, but it's always been lousy. The point was that it created a lot of "strategy flexibility" that gave the game additional interest and texture, as opposed to the stultifying, simplistic "efficiency" that the post-neo-sabe age has imposed upon it. 

Somehow NL managers had found ways to squeeze a little more out of the bottom of the order under the original rules, which is rather inspiring. Making their job easier doesn't make the game better--and it will suffer for having made that decision.