THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Poll: how to credit a play against a pitcher when involving his fielders

Here’s the play.

If you can’t see it: Cliff Lee has runners on 2B and 3B with 2 outs.  He gives up a solid line drive hit to short LF, that Ibanez gets to on one hop.  Runner on 3B scores easily, and Ibanez gives it his all, throws a strike to Ruiz, who gets a solid collision from the runner, but holds on to the ball for the third out.

Cliff Lee didn’t go anything good on that play.  His pitch was going to be a called ball, but the batter thought he could drive the ball anyway.  No LF could have turned that play into an out.  Ibanez made likely his best throw ever.  Ruiz was the perfect catcher in terms of blocking the plate and holding the runner.

And yet the boxscore is going to show that Lee gave up only 1 run on that play and that he got an out (1/3 of an inning) on that play.

So, the question is what does Cliff Lee DESERVE in terms of credit.