Bobby Cox and the 1985 ALCS

Writing a highly entertaining recap of the 1985 ALCS for the 1986 Baseball Abstract — he was Royals fan at the time — Bill James created a narrative, recently seen in the comments on the managers thread, that Bobby Cox screwed up the series. (This helped contribute to the idea that perhaps the greatest manager of all time was a postseason failure.) Rany Jazayerli repeats some of the argument here. In a nutshell, the argument runs like this. The Blue Jays platooned at 3B and DH. Rance Mulliniks and Al Oliver, the left handed parts of the platoons, were line-drive hitters who matched up well with the sidearming Royals closer, the late Dan Quisenberry. Oliver delivered key hits off Quiz to win Games 2 and 4. In Games 6 and 7, Hoswer replaced his starter early with a left hander, Cox put Iorg and Johnson into the game, and so the story goes allowed Quisenberry to finally save the games without having to face Oliver and Mullinks. According to James, Howser outmanaged Cox and took the series from him, coming back from 3-1 down.

The thing about this argument is that it doesn’t make any sense at all. I think Cox was probably right to put in his substitues both times, and it was almost certainly irrelevant to the outcome of the series.

Let’s start with the decisive Game 7:

1)Howser took Saberhagen out after 3 innings, and Cox pinch hit for the left handed hitters after that. But Liebrandt threw 5 1/3 of the remaining 6 innings even after Cox put Iorg and Johnson into the game. Quisenberry came into the game with a four run lead in the ninth, and the 3B and DH spots didn’t come up against him. So Cox’s critics are argued that he should have given up the platoon edge in 4 AB in exchange for…ultimately nothing. Cox’s move seems reasonable and didn’t give the Royals the platoon edge in the 9th.

2)Even if you assume for some reason that this move was suboptimal, to see it as a significant factor in a game the Blue Jays lost by 4 runs is deeply silly.

In Game 6, admittedly, Quisenberry did face Iorg rather than Mullinks for the final out of the Royals’ 5-3 win. I assume this is where James got the idea — as a Royls fan, he presumably was relieved that Quiz could come into the game, and Howser certainly did have the better matchup with the game on the line. But there’s a similar problem with the argument here: namely that Bud Black pitched 3 1/3 innings after replacing the starter Mark Gubicza, who was pulled after giving up 3 runs in 5 1/3. (This should also make clear that Howser wasn’t engaged in a clever table-game gambit here; he pulled Gubicza because he wasn’t pitching particularly well.) So Cox gained the platoon advantage in 4 AB, and Cliff Johnson went 2-2 with an RBI. So the Blue Jays probably come out ahead on the deal, and even if you assume they didn’t it obviously didn’t cost the Blue Jays their 2 run margin of defeat.

In conclusion, James’s criticism was wrong — he was reacting emotionally to Oliver’s two game-winning hits. Cox’s in-game lineup decisions had nothing to do with the Blue Jays losing. They blew the series lead because Danny Jackson pitched brilliantly in Game 5, and then Alexander and Steib — Toronto’s top 2 starters — got hammered in Games 6 and 7, respectively.

I’ve never seen any real evidence that Cox was a poor post-season tactician, and certainly the 1985 ALCS is not evidence of that at all.