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Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Would you EVER walk in the tying run in the bottom of the 9th?
At Baseball Fever, the question on the table is whether you would EVER walk in the tying run in the bottom of the 9th. My reply:
I suppose we need to come up with the scenario where it even makes sense.
Let’s suppose that the best-case scenario is where the next batter is putrid: he’s got a .200 OBP. This would be a truly horrible batter… basically, a decent hitting pitcher.
In that case, if that batter sees the bases loaded, he’ll win the game outright 20% of the time. The other 80% of the time, the game goes to extra innings, and both teams will split that. So, that gives you a 60% chance of losing the game, if you walk in the tying run, and face the worst hitter imaginable.
If you decide to pitch to the greatest hitter ever, say a guy with a .500 batting average and you are guaranteed to get two runs on each hit, you only lose the game 50% of the time.
I’m all for hunches, but a hunch doesn’t turn a .200 hitter into a .400 hitter. It moves the needle a little. That’s what a hunch is. Otherwise, it is a fabrication.
Now, what if you don’t have a 50/50 chance of winning in extra innings. Maybe you’ve got a 65% chance of winning in extra innings because you have Mariano in relief, and a fantastic hitting lineup. So, you end up losing the 20% of the time that the crappy hitter will get on base, and the 35% of the 80% of the times the game goes in extra innings, for a total loss of 48% of the time.
So, that’s one whacked out set of conditions that you need:
- the gap in hitting between your two hitters is gigantic enormous
- the gap in extra innings expectation is gigantic enormous
***
Technically, you can walk in the tying run, but you should never reasonably expect these conditions to manifest themselves in MLB.