How Joe Espada Might Manage Differently

I identify 4 areas: pulling starting pitchers sooner; valuing the 2 spot in the order more; rotating starters through the DH spot; and being in alignment with the front office.

Good news. Pitchers and catchers have reported. Baseball is back.

Well, at least Spring Training is back.

The biggest difference for the 2024 Astros will likely not be on the field, but in the dugout. The Astros will have a new manager in 2024 in Joe Espada, who takes over from the retired Dusty Baker.

How might Espada be different from Baker? I have identified four areas where Espada’s managerial choices might be different in ways we can observe from the outside.

Managing Men

You’ll note I said “different in ways we can observe.” That’s because the most important job of a major league manager, especially in the contemporary era, is to deal with the egos, personality conflicts, and playing time disputes of the 26 man roster. The goal is to get all of them to pull in the same direction.

In short, the job of a major league manager is about managing men, much more than it is about lineup decisions and bullpen moves.

The biggest difference between Baker and Espada will be how they handle the men in their clubhouse. That's not to say that Espada will be better or worse at handling his players. It is to say that it will be different. Espada has a different personality than Baker because all humans have different personalities. His interactions with his players will therefore be different from Baker's interactions.

Will these be more or less effective than Baker's interactions last season? It's nearly impossible for us to tell from the outside. We will get some occasional bits of news that might give us some clue about some aspect of the puzzle of the interactions of Espada and his players. But with such small bits of information available, it will be hard to judge it from the outside.

It is definitely impossible to anticipate how this will go before the season.

Baker the Traditionalist 

Since it is difficult to judge how Espada manages the personalities in his clubhouse, it is more productive to focus on the part of the manager's job we can observe more easily—their baseball decision making.

On this, we can start from a clear premise: Dusty Baker is a traditionalist. Many have been too strong in making this claim about Baker over his career. He certainly changed and adapted as thinking about how to play baseball and manage a team changed.

But Baker debuted as a player in the 1960s and as a manager in the 1990s. Often his thinking about baseball decisions started from what he learned in that time period, which is before the analytic revolution began. To get Baker to change, one had to get him to move off positions he had established. One could do this, but it took effort.

Joe Espada entered professional baseball as a player in the mid-1990s and as a major league coach in 2010. It is likely his baseline for baseball decision making is quite different than Baker’s and much more modern. It will take less effort to persuade Espada to manage in a more modern style.

Based on this premise, I think there are four areas where we might see Espada manage differently than Baker did.

Joe Espada was all smiles on the first day of Spring Training.

1. Shorter Outings from Starters

Two weeks ago, I published this chart which shows the decline in the average number of innings covered by starting pitchers. It shows not only a long-term decline in starter innings over the last six decades, but also a sharp decline in starter innings over the last decade.

The Astros finished 4th, 2nd, 1st, and 2nd in innings pitched by starting pitchers across Baker’s four seasons at the Astros helm. Some of that was due to the Astros having good starting pitcher (see 2021 and 2022), but Astros starters were middling in both 2020 and 2023, but Baker maintained a slow hook.

If Espada is a more average manager this season, the Astros will get shorter outings from their starters and more innings from relievers.

A big reason for the rapid decline in starter innings is increased attention to the third time through the order penalty. Pitchers fare collectively worse against batters the third time that they face them in a game.

The third time through the order penalty came to the fore after the 2006 publication of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango, Mitchell Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin. This is the type of idea that a traditionalist like Baker has to be persuaded to embrace and younger manager like Espada might have already adapted into his thinking.

2. Putting the Best Hitters at the Top of the Lineup

Where do you hit your best hitter in the lineup? Everyone knows that he is the “cleanup hitter.” Your first three guys get on base and then your #4 hitter drives them in with an extra base hit.

Dusty Baker tended to favor this traditional view of lineup construction. His power guys tended to go in the middle of the order. Baker once explained that he kept Kyle Tucker in the 6 spot in the order because “Tucker is my three-run homer man…Every time he comes up there, there is usually someone on base.”

And similarly, his speedy guys hit at the top of the order. Jose Altuve was moved to leadoff hitter in 361 of the 370 games he started since 2021. More controversially, Jeremy Pena has hit more in the 2 spot in his career than any other spot in the order, despite a career .307 on base percentage.

What might Espada do differently? He might value the #2 spot in the order similarly to most other MLB managers. Thanks to the shift in analytic thinking—and the fact that batters at the top of the order get more plate appearances—managers have begun hitting their best hitters earlier in the lineup, regardless of how fast or slow they are.

Mike Petriello of MLB.com has tracked this trend and published this chart back in September. It shows the league OPS+ for each of the first four lineup spots across time. And as you can see, the average for the 3 and 4 spots in the order have declined over time while the average for the 1 and 2 spots have increased. Petriello found that 2023 was the first season where the 2 spot “reigned supreme.”

If Espada follows this trend, he may Tucker 2nd instead of in the middle of the order. Heck, he may bat Yordan Alvarez—the Astros’ best hitter in the 2 spot. I could imagine lineups with Tucker batting leadoff, Altuve batting cleanup. Maybe Alex Bregman and his excellent plate discipline would be ideal in the leadoff spot—he’d get on base and let other hitters see a lot of pitches.

I don’t think there is an ideal way to set the Astros order. The point is that Espada has lots of options on how to set his lineup—especially if he’s committed to putting his four best hitters in the top four spots in the order. More options than Baker chose to employ.

3. Rotating the DH

Here is one thing that we know that Espada will do differently than Baker—rotate his regulars through the DH spot. Last week, Espada said he would play Yordan Alvarez “more in left field, because I think it’s important for us to open up the DH spot a little bit more for some guys to get some more rest.”

That stands in contrast to how Dusty Baker handled the DH. Dusty put his fielding regulars into the DH spot only 16 times last season—including only once each for Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve.

Espada seems to be committing to giving Bregman and Altuve more days at the DH. This arrangement is also a way to get some plate appearances for utility man Mauricio Dubon, who would play in the field, with Alvarez in left, Chas McCormick in center, and Jake Meyers likely on the bench.

Dusty also gave eleven DH starts last season to David Hensley and Rylan Bannon. It sounds like if Espada wants to give one of his guys at the end of the bench (e.g. Grae Kessenger) a start, it will be in the field and that will be an opportunity for Altuve or Bregman (or possibly Jeremy Pena if he hits well) to get a day off from fielding.

4. Alignment with the Front Office

The clearest way that Dusty Baker was a traditionalist was in his relationship with the front office. Baker often seemed focused entirely on the 26-man roster during his first three years as manager. He’d often talk about minor league callups as though he was going to start to learn about their talents, evincing little knowledge of their minor league statistics or what the team’s extensive player development system thought about the player’s strengths and weaknesses.

In 2023, Baker seemed empowered to act against the front office’s desires, and it led to multiple examples of members of the front office, both on the record and anonymously, making a case in the media for specific playing time decisions. These were external signs that closed door efforts to persuade Baker were not successful.

Baker’s myopic focus on the major league roster and his detachment from the thinking of the front office would not have stood out in his first season as a manager (1993). But it was certainly unusual in his last season (2023). Over the 30 years in between, front offices not only expanded greatly but insisted that managers be “in alignment” with the front office’s vision for the team, which was often based on analytics. Managers have been more likely to come from front offices than from on-field staff in recent years.

Part of Baker’s independence from the front office was the result of his coming of managerial age in a previous era. Another part was that he was not hired by his GMs. Jim Crane hired Baker in 2020 before he hired James Click as his GM. And similarly, Crane got Baker to agree to a contract extension in November 2022, well before he hired Brown in January 2023.

Espada should closer in alignment with the front office than Baker due to his age. He has only worked in baseball during the period of front office ascendance.

Espada was also hired by Brown himself, as Crane seems to have taken a step back from hiring the replacement for the manager he hired himself.

Will These Changes Help the Astros? Unclear

I have identified four areas where Joe Espada might manage differently from Dusty Baker. Will these changes—if implemented—lead to more wins? That’s hard to say one way or the other.

In general, I am in favor of these potential changes that I have outlined here. I am, broadly speaking, an advocate for modern baseball and the changes that analytic thinking has brought to the game over the most recent generation. I believe the game is more optimized than ever.

But even with that bias stated, I am also aware there are plusses and minuses to each of strategies. There is no guarantee they will work.

And just as importantly, getting them to work relies on Joe Espada’s ability to do his most important job, which is, as stated, to manage the men in his clubhouse. If Justin Verlander holds on to his anger over getting pulled early, if Kyle Tucker does not prefer to hit higher in the lineup, or if Alex Bregman hates the days in which he just DHs, these new strategies might not work. But part of Espada’s job is to get his players to see things from a perspective broader than their own.

In the end, that is what matters most to the job of a major league manager. He must get the men in his clubhouse to prioritize what’s best for the team so that they team can optimize its performance. Dusty Baker had many flaws as a manager, but his strength was getting his players to buy in to focusing on the team and reducing distractions.

The manager of the Astros may have change, but that job description has not.