from Amazon
Friday, August 17, 2007
When do you remove your starter?
I was watching the Braves game tonight. Webb is pitching another gem. He is of course one of the best pitchers in baseball, perhaps the best pitcher in the NL. His opponent was Lance Cormier, arguably one of the worst starting pitchers in baseball, according to me and other forecasters. I don’t know what baseball people think of him.
Anyway, Cormier pitched into the 8th inning, giving up only 1 run so far, walked a batter with 1 out and then got behind the next batter, 3-1, threw a “cookie,” and gave up a long home run to put the game almost out of reach for the Braves.
Now, the question is always when do you take out your bad starting pitcher? Literally, the earlier you take him out, the better, as virtually anyone in your pen is going to be better. Practically speaking, you can’t do that. My opinion is that in a tight game and in a high leverage situation, you take him out as soon as you can, perferably when he is due up to bat.
Now, he didn’t come out because he was pitching a 1-run game (he definitely gave up some hard hit outs, so I am not going to say that he was pitching a gem like Webb). In other words, Cox (who I DON’T think is a good manager, BTW) got fooled into thinking that he was a good pitcher and got burned. I think that we found in the research for The Book that pitchers who are pitching well are the same pitchers that they are before they start the game. I think.
In any case, he had passed the 100 pitch mark before he pitched to Reynolds who hit the HR, so he was probably tired. AND he hit in the 7th inning. That would have been the time to take him out. Tough shizit if a pitcher is pitching a good game and you take him out. If he complains, tell him to pitch like that all (or most of) the time and you might let him pitch more than 6 innings.
Anyway, just one more way of 1,234,878 ways that a sabermetricaly inclined person or manager can add WE to a team…