from Amazon
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Stealing Home
By Tangotiger, 02:37 PM
I love Carl Crawford. Stealing home just makes me like him that much more. How smart was the play?
An average team, up by 3, in the bottom of the 4th, with two outs, and man on third, will win .848 times. If we makes it, it goes up to .892. If he’s out, it goes down to .827. So, that’s a gain of .044 wins against a loss of .021 wins. The breakeven point was only 32%. If Crawford thought he had at least 32% chance of making it, he should go for it. Looking at the play, with the big lead, and the pitcher going through a windup, and Crawford being one of the fastest players in the league, it’s easy to see that he probably had at least a 50-50 shot at it, and that’s probably being very generous to the pitcher, Johnson.