funny thing is, you can really only determine that in hindsight but it seems a bit more probable for a 61 year old guy looking for his big payday on his last contract. That point is met with a collective lack of understanding by some on this board.

Are you stoned or pissed off, or both, when you create these postings?

I think Cubs opened at 50-1 and dropped to 30 something to one after taking bets.

I wonder what is in Ricky's contract regarding his obligations, if any, to receive the money in the contract. I assume they have to pay him the full amount remaining...but can they require him to coach third, or manage a minor league team, or sweep the floors?

Baseball Therapy

Why Joe Maddon Matters

by Russell A. Carleton

When Joe Maddon opted out of his contract with the Rays two weeks ago, there were immediately rumors that he would be joining up with all of the other 29 teams. (Yesterday, we found out that one of those rumors was true. He’s taking his talents and his back pocket card which drips with analytics to the North Side.) The rumors were understandable. After all, Joe Maddon is a certified genius. He’s gotta be better than that bum in our dugout. (Yes, Joe Maddon is a really smart guy, but so are the other 29 managers. All of them. Yes… even him.)

But then another conversation started that always pops up around this time of year, mostly because there are a lot of managers being fired (and hired) and there’s not much else going on. What is a good manager worth? What does a manager even do that produces value? We know that he makes the strategic decisions for his team, including making the lineup, putting the rotation together, and calling for the sac bunt. But we also know that most managers seem to manage out of the same “book” and while there are improvements over that “book” that could be made, the perfect Sabermetric manager probably clears a win or two more than a standard-issue manager. As Sabermetricians, we’ve spent a lot of time criticizing those strategic decisions, and while mathematically, we’re right, we’ve kinda missed the forest for the trees.

There’s an interesting paper that came out a few years ago in the field of clinical psychology (my home field) which looked at how well therapists did treating people who had panic disorder. The therapists were all conducting their therapy out of the same book. Literally. Panic disorder is one of those disorders that gives itself nicely to treating with a manual. There’s plenty of research saying that these types of treatments work great. Often, the manual specifies what happens in session 1, then session 2, and so on, specifies techniques, and gives standardized “homework” assignments for the client. There was a clinic that was evaluating one of these manuals, and so they recruited several therapists to follow this model in a specialty clinic that worked with people who have panic disorder. The researchers did careful measurement of panic symptoms over time and found that while most people got better, some therapists got better results than others. There was also no correlation between how well the therapists followed the manual and the treatment outcomes for their clients. If a good process is all you need, then it shouldn’t matter who’s administering it, but the researchers surmised (based on other research as well) that results were about much more than process. The relationship between the therapist and the client turns out to be rather important. Might the same thing be true for managers?

I’m fond of the thought that managers have three major jobs. They are in-game tacticians, PR spokesmen, and the guy in charge of wrangling 25 young millionaires who are on a six-month mission where they have to perform nightly. I’m sure the amount of amateur psychology that a manager has to do is staggering. Sabermetricians have focused mostly on the tactical aspect of management, because it’s easily visible and quantifiable. But let’s see if we can find evidence on some of the other work that a manager does. I don’t know that there’s a way to really get at how well a manager handles the media, but as far as his duties in managing the people who wear the uniforms, we might be able to learn a thing or two.

Warning! Gory Mathematical Details Ahead!

Let’s start with a reasonable assumption. Players don’t like losing and, even if in just some small way, it makes them sad. Not massively depressed, mind you. They’re big boys and they know that no one goes 162-0, but they also didn’t get to where they are by lacking in competiveness. We know that there’s even some evidence that being part of a team that loses a lot of games can stunt a player’s development, so losing must have some sort of effect.

I took all events from 2009-2013 (the 2014 Retrosheet file isn’t yet available) and coded everything, this time on a pitch-by-pitch level. I coded all pitches for whether the batter swung, and if he swung, for whether he made contact. I also looked to see, if he took, whether it was a called ball or strike. Once I had done that, I took the annual percentage for each of these for both the pitcher and batter (min 500 pitches faced/thrown). I converted these percentages into odds ratios, and created an odds ratio that expressed the chances of an individual pitch, given this batter and this pitcher, would involve the batter swinging. I have previously used this method in my work at the PA level.

Next I created a simple binary variable on whether the team at bat was losing during that at-bat. I wanted to see, once we’d controlled for the general tendencies of both the pitcher and hitter, whether players actually behaved differently when they were losing as opposed to winning (or being tied). I entered the control variable and the binary losing/not losing variable into a binary logistic regression. The results were interesting. When a hitter’s team is losing, he is less likely to swing, but when he does, he is more likely to make contact (and it’s more likely to go into fair territory). However, when he takes, it’s more likely to be a called strike. The effect sizes are a couple of percentage points, but that sort of change in approach can have big effects for some hitters.

We could make the argument that when a batting team is losing, it makes sense for them to swing less. Why take chances on iffy pitches when your team really needs baserunners. It pays to be more selective then. Plus, swinging less drives up the pitcher’s pitch count, and maybe it would be helpful to get him out of the game. Maybe we’re seeing a perfectly reasonable response to that situation.

But using the same approach, I looked at whether a batter’s behavior varied as a function of whether his team won or lost their last game. In this case, it makes absolutely no sense to change approaches based on what happened yesterday, and yet if a batter’s team lost yesterday, he is more likely to swing and less likely to make contact. Why the worse outcomes? One possibility is that even a slightly depressed mood—one that wouldn’t qualify as clinical depression, but is still mildly sad—can affect a person’s reaction time. I’ve previously argued that one of the most important things that a team can have is a way to deal with losses. Some sort of ritual, whether formal or silly, that says “That was yesterday” and allows players to move on. One might define that as one of the jobs of a manager. (The aforementioned Joe Maddon famously allows only 30 minutes after either a win or a loss for his players to revel or sulk. Tomorrow is a new game, guys.) You don’t want yesterday affecting today.

Well, now that we know that hitters swing and miss a bit more after a loss, we can ask whether that effect varies based on the identity of the man who put that hitter on the lineup card to begin with. To check this, I added new variables. I took the managers from that time period (2009-2013) and weeded out the interims and the bench coaches who managed a couple days while the regular manager was ill or on other business. I entered the manager into the equation (for the initiated, a categorical fixed effect), and the interaction between the binary “won/lost yesterday” variable and the manager. If the manager has some sort of impact on how well a team rebounds from its losses, then we would see that the manager by won/loss interaction would be significant. For swing rates, the overall multi-variate Wald on this variable was not significant, but for contact rate, it was. That means that for contact rate, once we’ve controlled for the batter and pitcher tendencies, we still see that hitters are less likely to make contact on the day after a loss, but that with the right manager, this effect can be blunted or even reversed.

The next thing to do is to look at which managers appear to be the best (and worst) at stunting this problem. We can tell this by looking at the regression coefficients on that interaction term. Because of the way that these analyses work, the coefficients themselves are actually read as “better or worse than Ned Yost.” Why Ned? His name was last alphabetically and the program needed a reference category. So, to list the coefficients would actually be a little misleading. But we can look at the coefficients relative to one another.

The best managers at preventing players from getting losing their contact mojo after a loss:

1) Bobby Valentine

2) Bobby Cox

3) Terry Francona

4) Tony LaRussa

5) Bud Black

Not a bad group of managers. Bobby V, for all his… quirks… apparently inspired his hitters to bounce back after losses in his one year at the helm in Boston. Cox and LaRussa are Hall of Famers.

The worst managers

1) Cecil Cooper

2) Bo Porter

3) Terry Collins

4) Mike Redmond

5) John Russell

Collins and Redmond still have jobs. Then again, if this list were to extend to 6 spots, no. 6 would be Joe Torre. Like Cox and LaRussa, he also recently capped off a Hall of Fame career.

(For those wondering, Maddon came in middle of the pack.)

The range between the top of the chart and the bottom is something on the order of five percentage points. The way to understand that goes something like this. Assuming an identical batter facing an identical pitcher, we expect the outcome of a swing (contact vs. no contact) to be different based on whether a batter’s team won or lost in their last game by some non-zero amount. Let’s say a contact rate of 85 percent after a win and 84.5% after a loss, for a spread of half a percent (numbers made up on the spot.) We’d expect the “loss penalty” to be bigger for Cooper than for Bobby V (or maybe we might even expect Bobby V’s guys to increase their contact after a loss.)

Fighting the Grind
I’m happy to be the first to say that this is an experimental stab in the dark on this topic. I don’t know whether these effects are stable. I don’t know that even if they are that we could credit everything to the manager. He might have just been sitting in his office and the veterans on the team were the ones really powering the effect. I’m also hesitant to speak too prescriptively about whether making more or less contact is a good or a bad thing. Not making contact on a swing is obviously a strike, but that can be correlated with other good things, such as power. Maybe after a loss, Cecil Cooper’s crew realized that they needed to get back to what they were good at and swing for the fences a little more.

But let’s assume for a moment that the extra swing-and-miss is even somewhat bad. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the discussions of catcher framing, it’s that anything that has a slight impact on the ball/strike outcomes of pitches can add up, because a) balls and strikes are worth real runs and b) there are a lot of pitches over the course of a season. If there really are differences between managers in something as simple as being able to keep the players from getting too down after a loss, that would be valuable, especially because managers don’t consume a roster spot and can manage 162 games per year. And yeah, more valuable than the guy who wouldn’t bleed away a little bit of value by bunting once in a while.

I have a theory that we’ve missed the most powerful force in the baseball universe: the grind. Baseball, like any job, can get boring if you do it day after day. Most days, you only get one chance for that validation that you crave, because you only play one game per day. Lose that game and you have to sit with that for 24 hours, plus do a lot of travel and live in close quarters with a bunch of guys whom you may or may not like. After a while it can get depressing, and if the wins aren’t coming, you need something else to lift your spirits. When we speak of managers, we often talk about how he must manage personalities and make sure everyone is working together, or at least tolerating one another. Here, I’d argue, we get some glimpse of an idea of how valuable that could be.

We know that he makes the strategic decisions for his team, including making the lineup, putting the rotation together, and calling for the sac bunt.

Daisy Cutter

Joe Maddon, And The Cubs, Have Arrived

by Sahadev Sharma

Any hopes for a surprise run from the 2014 Cubs didn’t last long. By May, most were already counting down to the inevitable moment that Jeff Samardzija would be moved. However, after the annual trade deadline dump, an event that in previous years had led to a sinking feeling, the atmosphere around the team surprisingly got more optimistic.

Chicago brought up multiple highly regarded prospects over the final few months of the season (Arismendy Alcantara, Javier Baez, Jorge Soler, Kyle Hendricks), and, regardless of how they performed, people who had been hearing so much about these players over the previous few summers finally got to see them in the flesh. Add in that Anthony Rizzo, Starlin Castro, Jake Arrieta, and a few arms in the bullpen all proved to be major contributors at the big-league level and it’s understandable that doubters were suddenly starting to buy into the turnaround that’s actually been going rather swimmingly (if a little slower than some might have wanted) since Theo Epstein and company came aboard.

Suddenly, the Cubs were a hot sleeper pick for 2015. However, with Monday’s press conference introducing Joe Maddon as the team’s new manager, you can throw the sleeper label out the window. If their stocked farm system and much-hailed front office already hadn’t done so, this most recent addition firmly plants the Cubs on the national radar as a team to be feared almost immediately.

But how much value does Maddon actually add to the Cubs?

“Sometimes I think in today’s day and age we try to quantify too many things instead of just appreciating the essence of them,” Epstein told reporters on Monday. “What does it mean to have a dynamic manager? I think it means that you have the potential to have an edge in everything related to the events on the field. Whether it’s preparation, decision making in game, knowing that you can get the most out of your players, trying to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. All those things, it’s really nice to have complete trust and faith that the person in charge of running that on-field operation is going to put you in the best possible position. That’s hard to quantify.”

That doesn’t mean people won’t, and haven’t already, tried to do so. I emailed Chris Jaffe, the author of Evaluating Baseball’s Managers, and this is one of the many things he told me on the subject:



I think Joe Maddon is one of the best managers out there, but aside from rare circumstances, I don't really think it's worth more than three to five wins in a year. On the one hand, that's not too much. On the other hand, there aren't that many players worth that much either. Also, left unspoken in all the talk about how much Maddon is worth—how much was (Rick) Renteria worth? If he really was a good manager—and the Cubs have gone out of their way to say he is a good manager and helped the team and doesn't deserve this—then that actually diminishes the impact of the Maddon signing. If Maddon is worth four wins a year and Renteria worth two, then the Cubs only improved by two wins.



Okay, so perhaps Maddon is only marginally more valuable to the Cubs than Renteria as far as wins and losses, and that’s even with a caveat that those win numbers are only a loose guesstimate. However, what Maddon definitely adds, as Epstein alluded to above, is a sort of comfort and trust from the front office. But it’s not just about feeling safe with the decisions he makes during a game.

More from Jaffe:



To be fair, under extreme circumstances a manager can be worth more. After all, there are two aspects to the game - 1) manage the game, and 2) manage the men. The latter is actually the more important of the two.



That’s something that some tend to focus on less, mainly because it’s almost impossible to measure and almost no one outside the team can see. But it’s often the strength of managers who appear to be poor at in-game strategy, but repeatedly find or keep managing gigs in the majors. Maddon has a track record of being able to establish a good rapport with his players, particularly young players.

And I’d add a third category to this: how a manger handles the media. It can be an overlooked aspect of it all, but the manager’s ability to deflect attention from his players during low points or strategically using the media to prod a player who might respond poitively to that type of motivation is an art form. It’s something that Ozzie Guillen did well at his peak on the South Side, though at times he would go overboard. Maddon appears to be much more level-headed than Guillen, and proved in Tampa Bay to be masterful at such tactics. Of course, Chicago is a different animal, but he certainly won many over with his entertaining and quote-worthy introductory press conference.

Another known factor with Maddon that makes this hire look better is his ability to be open-minded enough to take suggestions from not only his coaching staff, but others in the front office, including those in research and development. Maddon repeatedly mentioned that he wouldn’t have taken this job if he didn’t feel that he was philosophically aligned with the front office, something he knew was true with the Cubs from his first interview with Epstein and GM Jed Hoyer, way back when they were searching for a new Red Sox manager prior to the 2004 season. Those feelings were only reaffirmed during their chat last week in an RV park next to Maddon’s 43-foot Winnebago. Maddon added that he used the information provided by the front office in Tampa Bay a lot, stating that the card in his back pocket during games was “just dripping with analytics,” and he didn’t expect that it would take him long to develop a rapport with the new personnel he’ll be working alongside in Chicago.

“You have to be able to utilize all that’s at your disposal,” Maddon said. “I’m a Blink kind of a guy, I believe in intuitive thinking. But I also believe that your intuitive thinking is the product of all this other stuff that you’ve accumulated over a period of time, including the analytics that you just picked up two days ago. Or maybe it was the session I had at Gene Autry Park with Mark McLemore in 1985. You have to draw on all those different experiences in order to come to a conclusion in that moment.”

Talk about winning a press conference. And it didn’t end there for Maddon, who likely swayed anyone who is sick of the battle between ‘numbers guys’ and ‘old-school folks,’ with a rather simple but very accurate statement about how—now get this—you actually need both sides of the equation to succeed in today’s game.

“To me, it’s not just necessarily about a number, but the numbers are really good and they really point you in the right direction,” Maddon pointed out. “But then again, there are human beings involved too. Sometimes when a player is not playing up to his abilities, that number means nothing, it means zero. When a player is pretty much around where he’s supposed to be and that number is corresponding to what he’s doing right now, I’m really into that number. And that’s up to me to have to make that determination in that blink moment.”

(Perhaps a little buried in all of the Maddon love over the past few days was that there appeared to be some sort of Dr. Frankenstein experiment going on in Tampa right before he departed.

“I think you need to balance it between the human being and the number,” Maddon said. “That’s something that we were really getting into in Tampa Bay right before I left, it was that interesting leap, trying to combine a number with a person somehow, and on a daily basis, trying to almost give that number life. I know that’s crazy stuff, but I think it’s doable.”

That’s not an area that I’m ready to dive into, but I have a feeling it’s the type of stuff my fellow BP colleagues would lose their minds over. Although, I have an awful scenario playing out in my head that if numbers actually came to life, they’d exact their revenge on Russell Carleton for all that GORY MATH he performs on them. Run while you can, Mr. Carleton.)

Maddon went on to hit all the right notes and win over any doubters during his nearly 40-minute press conference across the street from Wrigley Field at the well known watering hole, The Cubby Bear. Prior to wrapping things up by offering to buy everyone there a beer and a shot (“That’s the Hazelton Way!”), he talked about loving the city of Chicago and all the passionate fans. He repeatedly referred to Wrigley Field as magical and a cathedral, pointing out that oftentimes the sky is so blue and the surroundings so serene that it almost appears to be out of a digitally enhanced Hollywood production.

He used phrases like ‘mind’s eye,’ referenced Gladwell, and talked about building relationships with his players. He displayed an appreciation for the history of the game (he mentioned chatting with “Mr. Banks;” later, after hours of media interviews, he turned to Epstein and insisted they catch up with former White Sox great Minnie Minoso, whom Madden had heard was down the street at another bar), and referenced some of his previously effective catch phrases (“Don’t ever permit the pressure to exceed the pleasure” and “9=8”).

And of course, like many before him, he talked about reaching the ultimate goal with the Cubs.

“I can’t go to spring training and say any other thing, I’m just incapable of doing that. Why would you even report?” Maddon asked. “So we’re going to set our mark high, absolutely, and I’m going to talk playoffs and I’m gonna talk World Series, this year. I promise you, I am. And I’m going to believe it. And I’m going to see how this is all going to play out and it’s within our future, there’s no question about that. But, I don’t know exactly when that’s going to happen, but in my mind’s eye, we’re going to make the playoffs next year and that’s how I’m going to approach the season.”

These things have been promised before. The Cubs have had Dusty Baker sitting in the same chair, with his Manager of the Year award in tow and fresh off a World Series appearance. They’ve had Lou Piniella, one of the most respected managers to ever wield a lineup card. Baker had a nicely stocked farm system to work with—though it’s debatable if he was the right man to be in charge of such a young team. Piniella was working with the highest payroll in the history of the organization. Neither reached the ultimate goal, but to suggest that their tenures, which accounted for three playoff appearances, were failures would be unfair.

It’s also unfair to assume that just because others before him didn’t reach the ultimate goal Maddon is doomed to repeat history. It’s as silly as suggesting that since Corey Patterson failed to cash in his top-prospect hype, Kris Bryant will do the same. Maddon might not win a World Series with the Cubs and Bryant might not become a superstar, but it won’t be because those before them failed to achieve those goals.

Like Baker, Maddon has the stocked farm system. Like Piniella, it appears he’ll have the strong financials to work with as well. He’ll also have one of the most respected groups of front office minds helping him along the way.

“I’m way too optimistic to worry about things like that, I’m kind of pragmatic, in a good way, I think,” Maddon responded when asked if he was concerned that others before him couldn’t bring that ever-elusive championship to Wrigleyville. “I don’t focus on stuff like that, I refuse to. Why would you not want to accept this challenge? In this city, in that ballpark, under these circumstances with that talent. It’s an extraordinary moment, not just in Cubs history, but in today’s game, this confluence of all these items coming together at the same time is pretty impressive.”

And that’s why the Cubs are an exciting team. It’s not that they suddenly became a team to be reckoned with overnight. Epstein, Hoyer, and Jason McLeod have been working since day one to get every aspect of the organization up to their standards. Adding Maddon is just another rung up the ladder. Maddon brings the Cubs an obvious face of the organization, one that’s actually in uniform, until someone like Rizzo or Bryant is ready to take on that mantle.

“It underscores it,” Epstein said when asked how Maddon’s arrival relates to his comments from a few weeks ago that the Cubs could compete for the division next season. “You can’t force these things. We’ve made a lot of progress and if you kind of take a step back, we’re really happy with the scouting department now, the player development and our minor league system and some of the systems we have in the office and everything. And now we feel like we have our long-term manager, so it’s another great piece to feel really good about. All those things contribute to being a healthy, thriving organization. Now the next step is to compete with that organization.”

It’s important to remember that this one move doesn’t drastically improve the team; Maddon doesn’t suddenly catapult the Cubs from a team that narrowly avoided its fourth consecutive 90-loss season into a playoff spot. But that’s not to say that fans shouldn’t be excited about Maddon’s addition. Among other things, bringing Maddon into the fold is the first and most obvious sign to the fans, media, the league, and, most importantly, the players that, as Epstein said, the Cubs are finally “transitioning away from a three-year period where we were essentially only accumulating young talent, and now we’re competing.”

Maddon brings some legitimacy to the manager’s role on the North Side. Not that Renteria was necessarily bad at his job, but the best case scenario for Renteria was that someday he might reach Maddon’s level both in the clubhouse and the dugout, and that certainly wouldn’t have been expected immediately.

As Epstein pointed out, there were numerous things that have happened over the past three years that have aided in taking the Cubs from the butt of jokes to the precipice of contention. Most important among them is the influx of young talent, drafting players like Bryant, trading for the likes of Rizzo and Arrieta, taking a bullpen that was filled with question marks and stocking it with young, cheap fireballers who have a chance to instill fear into opponents immediately.

Yes, the next step is to take all of that and go out and win, but there is still more to do. Epstein and Hoyer have been careful in pointing out that it’s not just this winter that matters, but the next 15 months that will be key. That’s not an excuse for not spending money over the coming months; it’s just a reality that this process is ever-evolving and there are multiple paths to success. Adding Jon Lester would be great, but it’s hardly inevitable. And missing out on him—or Max Scherzer or James Shields—doesn’t mean the sky is falling on the North Side. There will be high-level talent that unexpectedly becomes available via trade this winter and into next summer. And of course next offseason has a potential list of free agents, especially pitchers, that would interest any general manager with excess cash.

“I’m not saying we’re all the way there, we may not peak in 2015, but we’re competing,” Epstein said. “And when you’re gonna compete, you have to set your sights high and we’ve already said our goal is the division this year. And Joe echoes that, and a World Series he added on top of it, which I like. Having Joe here doesn’t necessarily change our plans this winter. We’re out to add talent. It might make it a little bit easier. I know Joe’s got a great reputation in the game and players want to play for him. But we’re growing as an organization. We’re not going to speed it up because Joe is here and we’re not going to slow it down.”

The addition of Maddon isn’t the beginning of the process and it certainly isn’t the end. The Cubs might have finally garnered more attention, but those who have been watching closely have seen what this group was building. Last September, Epstein suggested that while many in Chicago are too insulated to see it, the chatter around baseball was that “the Cubs are coming fast and the Cubs are coming strong.” Maybe Epstein felt that he was opening some eyes with that statement, but locally, that was met mostly with laughter and even some derision. It might have taken another year, but nobody seems to be laughing at the Cubs anymore. It appears that a sleeping giant is on the verge of waking up.

Conclusion: SABRmetrics say that managers don't matter much, but Theo Epstein likes SABRmetrics, so let's ignore SABRmetrics to act like he made a great move.

Are you stoned or pissed off, or both, when you create these postings?

Let's face it, Maddon fits the Cubs image. He's the BMW vs the Mustang. We can argue all day whether one is worth more than the other for the task required, but it's more about image. Quade, Sveum, and Renteria were never a fit for an organization that needs to have a Baker, Piniella, or Maddon as the face of the franchise.

http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2014/11/20/7254845/joe-maddon-cubs-coaching-staff

This is worrying me. Bosio needs to be back. This shouldn't even be a question.

One of the reasons to like Bosio was his work with T. Wood. What happened this year?

One of the reasons to like Bosio was his work with T. Wood. What happened this year?

Nothing happened this year. Advanced statistics show he was the exact same pitcher as 2013 and 2012.

It's more fun to be a victim

There will never be an effective vaccine. I'll never get one anyway.

Im not sure what stats you're referring to

His walk rate, hit rate, whip, FIP, WAR, SO/W, WAA, ERA+, Line drive percentage, DP%, and Win probability were all significantly worse in 2014 than either of the previous two years

He is neither his 2013 self or his 2014 self.

SABRmetrics: the understanding that players are not themselves.

Ok, well thinking he's not that great or he overachieved in 2013 is one thing. The majority of advanced stats are not close much less identical


I think Bosio is gone after one year if he makes it that long. I like him. I hope they keep him too. Im just holding back judgment. Ive long held the opinion that pitching coaches get too much praise and not enough criticism. If a pitcher sucks..."man that guy sucks". If a pitcher improves, its because ___ has been working with him. There are exceptions and real good ones but the way they are judged is incredibly odd. Any small amount of success seems attached to them forever.

I'm not referring to "advanced metrics" so much as actual pitching numbers. Those numbers show is was around the zone mostly about the same...that he was working his pitches the same way and that no individual pitches showed any drop off.

Guys were simply getting on base against him with no real explanation. Yes, his line drive rate was higher, but why?

A lot of the advanced metrics you posted are just different numbers to show the same thing. Of course his WAR is going to be higher. We know his WHIP and ERA+ were higher. But there aren't clear whys. Same as there were no clear whys behind 2013. And if you combine his 2013 and 2014 numbers, they average out to be a standard Travis Wood season. And that makes sense.

His cutter was good in 2013 and it sucked in 2014. Mystery solved.

His cutter was good in 2013 and it sucked in 2014. Mystery solved.

Anything that simple is metrics blasphemy!