THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Hunter was 3 for 5 with a HR against Papelbon.
Guerrero was 1 for 10 against Papelbon.

Not a good reason, but there’s the reason I suspect.

If you assume Hunter and Guerrero have identical hitting projections (they are close enough these days), it doesn’t make any sense if you look at overall run expectancy.  And it’s not like Papelbon is a ground-ball pitcher.

Maybe the Red Sox convinced themselves that they are slightly more likely to get out of the inning giving up zero runs by loading the bases.

Phil: They definitely made mention of this on the radio broadcast to which I was listening. The two guys in booth didn’t sound all that impressed with the idea, but yes, it was a really dumb move.

"And it’s not like Papelbon is a ground-ball pitcher.”

There were 2 outs, so a GB was not an issue.  The next batter has to be considerably worse in order to justify that IBB.

By the way, Papelbon threw just one non-fastball to the eight hitters he faced.

Presuming all batters are average (and I do this as a STARTING point), walking Torii:

- puts the game from a LEverage Index (LI) of 6.86 before the walk to 9.16 after the walk; that means going from a super high leverage to a super duper wooper high leverage

- changed the win expectancy from .795 for the Sox to .765, change of .030 wins

That .030 wins means that the WPA/LI was only a change of .004 wins, which is very little.  But, because of the situation, everything gets magnified, and so, it becomes a .030 change.  However, that .004 has a margin of error of say +/- .010 wins.  I’m not so stubborn as to think that there’s no margin of error here.  So, if there’s a good reason to think that Vlad is a worse hitter than Torii, then it’s the right call (or at least justifiable call) to do.

However, it has to be a GOOD reason, not a “what happened in the last 10 PA” reason.  All-in-all, I don’t really think it was that bad, especially if they had a good reason to suspect that the Papelbon/Vlad matchup was more favorable (for some GOOD reason).

It was 28 out of 32, according to RJ Anderson of Fangraphs.  Too many, I assume, unless you are Rivera or even Broxton.  Guys like Nathan and Papelpon, as good as they are, need to spot their fastballs and mix in other pitches and have some command of those other pitches.  Neither one of them can blow away hitters with their fastballs, although Papelbon has not lost much velocity, whereas Nathan has lost around 1 mph since 04-07, according to Fangraph data.  On the other hand, Paps normally throws his fastball 75-80% of the time and has great success of course. So 28/32 is not completely out of line in a small sample, is it?

"There were 2 outs, so a GB was not an issue.  The next batter has to be considerably worse in order to justify that IBB.”

Maybe I haven’t thought about this right.  If you need one out and you have bases loaded with a ground ball pitcher vs 2-3 with a ground ball pitcher, aren’t you more likely to get that out with a force at any base?  You have the disadvantage of runners going on contact even on a ground ball, but you don’t get victimized by balls hit to the left side.  I’m not sure your defensive efficiency would be lower with the bases loaded.

Do you have numbers on this?

RJ was counting the four IBB pitches in his sample which must have threw his numbers off. Looking at MLB.com’s Gameday again; here’s how they scored it:

Rivera: 1 fastball.
Izturis: 2 fastballs in the eighth. 4 fastballs in the ninth
Matthews: 5 fastballs.
Aybar: 3 fastballs.
Figgins: 7 fastballs.
Abreu: 4 fastballs, 1 two-seam fastball (slider).
Hunter: IBB
Guerrero: 1 fastball.

Phil, OK, that makes sense.  Sounds like too many fastballs, even for a 75-80% fastball pitcher.

Hawerchuck, sure, you get a few extra force outs with the bases loaded, but not enough to make much of a difference.  No need to look at any numbers.  The percentage of time that you can’t get an out at first, but you can get an out at another base is like 1 or 2% at the most I would think. 

As I wrote in the comments on Fangraphs, that was really a horrendous walk.  The BA projection for Hunter is around .270.  The OBA projection for Vald is like .360.  And that doesn’t even consider the extra man on base that might score since it is only the top of the inning. Surely Francona doesn’t think that the batter/pitcher matchup makes up for at least 60 points of OBA?  I guess he does.  I would be furious if I were Epstein or Henry.  Just furious.  Of all teams to issue a horrible IBB, you would not expect it to be Boston.

My error was in thinking that Valddy’s OBA is equivalent to Hunter’s BA.  That is not correct.  That would mean that the walk to Hunter is like an out.  It isn’t of course.  The walk to Hunter, while not as bad as a walk to Vladdy is still bad (as opposed to an out).

So maybe the IBB wasn’t all the bad, although I can’t think of any reason why Vladdy would be worse than Hunter.

I keep reading about “because Vladdy is a free-swinger” as if that should make you want to pitch to him rather than Hunter.  Well, his BA and his OBA, which is presumably as good as or better than Hunter’s, includes the fact that he is a free-swinger so that should have no bearing on the decision.

In fact, if a batter is a free swinger, wouldn’t you be more apt to want to face him with a base open and try and get him to chase?  That would mean that you would be less apt to want to face him with no bases open, since you can’t really take full advantage of his free-swinging style.

Again, I know that Andy didn’t find any advantage to pitching around a batter, but I still think that pitching around a batter rather than IBB’ing him is usually the best strategy.

Plus, something that is rarely talked about:  If you are thinking about IBB’ing a batter, and the decision is close, isn’t it always correct to not walk him, but if you get behind in the count, THEN you can IBB him?  If your WE is .5 by pitching to a batter and .501 by walking him (a slight advantage) shouldn’t it be greater than .501 by waiting until you are behind in the count to walk him?  Isn’t that always the case?

Poz does a great job of deconstructing the situation on seven levels:

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/10/11/seven-levels-of-the-torii-walk/

Does anyone know what was Francona’s stated reason for the IBB?

That was a great article by The Poz.

Poz made a statement here:

Third: Even if Papelbon throws strikes, it’s a different thing pitching with the bases loaded than with an empty base. A pitcher has fewer options. Bases loaded, you are less likely to waste pitches. You may be more likely to challenge a hitter with a first pitch fastball. Which leads us right to Level 3 …

Level 3: The man on deck is one of the greatest first-ball-fastball hitters in the history of baseball.

The idea is that when the bases are loaded, the pitcher is going to change his entire approach around, simply because he can’t start nibbling the corners.

And, according to Poz, since Guerrero is such a fantastic first-pitch fastball hitter, and we’ve got a situation for a first-pitch fastball ready-made, that Vlad should rise to the top here.

Let’s see… in his career, Vlad’s performance with the bases loaded in 137 PA:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=guerrvl01&year=Career&t=b#bases
.306 BA with a .512 SLG.  That’s pretty close to his career average.

His walk rate is half his normal rate, which I presume is the case for the league as well.

So, I don’t think Poz is accurate in his statement, that guys like Vlad have a disproportionate advantage here.  I mean, he could.  But, he hasn’t shown any evidence.

The reason, the only reason, to like this move is if Francona had reasonable (not even overwhelming, but simply reasonable) information to say that the matchup was more favorable with Vlad than Torii.

By the way, in the situation in question (top of 9th, 2 outs, runners on 2b/3b, pitching team up by 1), The Book, p. 306, shows “1.18”, which means that if the guy at bat has a wOBA that is (at least) 1.18 times that of the guy on deck, then you walk that guy to face the ondeck guy.

So, if Francona believed that Torii is a .350 wOBA hitter facing Papelbon and that Vlad was a .300 wOBA hitter, then, yup, walk is justifiable.

Remember, in my short-hand view, I had the gap as only .004 wins, which is .040 runs, which is .050 wOBA points.  And that’s using standard Win Expectancy models.  (For all those of you who think they are useless, well, they are useless to YOU.  They are useful to me.)

This is exactly what Andy is showing in The Book.

That’s all that Francona has to show: a .050 wOBA difference for this particular matchup.

In a similar situation in the Rockies/Phils game last night, we saw the opposite choice. Top of the fourth, tie game, men on second and third with two outs, Carlos Ruiz (.255/.355/.425 this season) at bat with the pitcher on deck. Tracy elected to pitch to Ruiz instead of walking him to get to the pitcher’s spot.

This seemed odd to me, but I just might not be thinking it through clearly. The radio announcers reasoned that you would pitch to Ruiz because the Phillies would simply bring in a pinch hitter to replace the pitcher (Happ already had a pretty high pitch count after three innings of work), and indeed they did, but the pinch hitting options available were still significantly worse than Ruiz. Did the Rockies get this wrong, or am I thinking about this wrong?

I don’t think the PH options are worse than Ruiz.  Especially Matt Stairs.  His 2009 numbers might be worse than Ruiz, but that doesn’t mean much.

If Vlad hits 306/512 with bases loaded, that’s not especially good.  His career numbers are 321/568, and this is a situation where the typical batter hits better.  For 2009, AL hitters hit 295/459 as opposed to 267/428 overall.  Not that 130 or so AB means anything, and it’s still crazy to want to pitch to Vlad with the bases loaded.

#13/ in this article (click my name), Francona is quoted: “It’s tough to walk the bases loaded,” he said afterward. “But Pap throws strikes and he had had a lot of success against Guerrero. I think Hunter was probably 3-for-7 with a homer against him.

“I guess, to put it in a nutshell, we thought it would give us a better chance to win. It didn’t work.”

Here’s my question:

Vlad is now 2 for 11 against Papelbon.

Torii is still 3 for 5 (excluding IBB).

Given the same situation in the future, what does Francona do?

See?  That’s a pure b.s. argument to make.  B.  S.

To ask about a different managerial decision…

Bottom of the 7th, Rockies down 5-4, lead-off hitter (in the inning and in the lineup) Carlos Gonzales doubles.  Your number 2 hitter (Dexter Fowler (.266/.363/.406) comes to the plate.  Neither team has done a very good job of preventing the other team from scoring.  So why the hell would you sacrifice?  (OK, Fowler pushed it past Scott Eyre, who fell over, and you wound up with runners on first and third, but that’s not what you expected...surely you expected runner on third and one out...why are you playing for one run???????) (I note that Tracy (and Hurdle) had him sacrifice at least 14 times duirng the season, but I sure don’t understand it.)

Exactly where were the fielders positioned?  If fielders are positioned where they are supposed to be positioned, then the decision to bunt or not should be in equilibium.  If they are playing too far back for this kind of hitter, he should bunt more than often.  If they are too far in, he should swing away more than often.

MGL @ 11 - I think you have the right idea.  Throw a pitch or two to Hunter and then decide whether to IBB him or not.  We (even the Red Sox braintrust) tend to think of PAs as the smallest divisible element of a game, when it’s really individual pitches.

Valddy’s wOBA overall projection is in the .370 range. Hunter in the .350 range.  So Francona has to believe that somehow this matchup is greater than a 70 point wOBA swing.  Even if batter/pitcher matchups meant something (which they don’t), surely no sane manager can think that the results for 5 AB for one batter and 10 for the other can tell you something that would make one batter 70 points in wOBA less than the other batter against a particular pitcher??

I realize that Francona doesn’t know what wOBA is or that the threshold is 50 points in wOBA, but surely he knows from 30 years of playing and coaching baseball that a walk or HBP scores a run with the base loaded and that it is harder to pitch to someone with bases loaded, therefore common sense tells you that Vladdy would have to be A LOT worse than Hunter overall (against Paps) for that play to be correct.

I will go back to my original statement.  That was one horrible IBB. I think we’ve been giving too much credit to Epstein, Bill James, and company, at least in terms of how much influence they have on their manager.  I mean wouldn’t one of the first things (OK, maybe not first) you would have told your manager at some point in time be, “Hey Terry, you know that we do a lot of research on baseball in this organization.  We have found that these batter/pitcher matchup results mean pretty much nothing.  We’re not trying to tell you how to manage, but try not to put too much stock in them. In fact, we would prefer that you put no stock in them at all.  Now, if you have some other reason to think that a certain batter/pitcher matchup is favorable or not, that’s another story.  But please, pretty please, don’t use their past results in the decision-making process.”

#20, Donald, as I’ve talked about many times, and I write for 50 pages in The Book, in most potential bunt situations, you have to sometimes bunt and sometimes not in order to keep the defense from knowing what you are going to do.  Now, a rule of thumb is that if the batter is not a good bunter or is slow, it is almost never correct to bunt at all.  But if he is fast and a good bunter, which Fowler presumably is, then you probably need to bunt at least some percentage of time (not all the time) in any potential bunt situation.  So without knowing how often Tracy bunts in that situation, you have no grounds for criticizing him. 

That being said, as I have also written, because the offense generally gets to see the defensive position before they have to make the final decision to bunt or not, if the defense is playing too far in expecting the bunt too often, then you can hit away all the time, and if they are playing too far back, you can bunt all the time, at least until they get the message.  But, if they are playing relatively optimally, according to game theory, then you have to bunt some percentage of the time.  Again, if you only see a manager’s decision one or even a few times, you have no idea whether his bunt strategy is optimal (correct) or not.

One mistake that managers make is tipping the bunt (or no bunt) to early.  They think that it doesn’t matter if you let the defense know that you are going to bunt (it DOES matter - a lot), and they also think that the batter needs to square early in order to get down a good bunt.  I don’t know about that last thing - it depends on how early you are talking about.  But in general, you want to NOT let the defense know whether you are bunting or not for as long as you can hold out and still make a quality bunt.  What LaRussa does is excellent.  He has all his batters square early in a potential bunt situation, then they take the bat back and then they either square again or hit away.

Very good article by Poz which sort of says it all.

Was it necessary for him (Poz) to make this throwaway comment?

“And I respect him for making the move he believed in at that moment.”

Has there ever been a manager in the history of baseball to make a move he didn’t believe in, at least that we know of?  IOW, have we ever heard a manager say, after the game, “Yeah, I made such-and-such move, but I really didn’t think it was the correct thing to do.”

Does Poz really “respect” Francona for making that move, which he just tore to pieces (and rightfully so) because he “believed in it?”

This is also a useful link:

http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902score.html

From 1999-2002, the chance of being scoreless with runner at 2b, 3b, 2 outs is 72.4%, meaning that 27.6% of the time, you will get (at least) a run scored, and a tie game.

With the bases loaded, it is 67.5%, or 32.5% at least one run will score.

Basically, filling in the base at first means that a walk kills you.  When 1b is open, the chance of scoring = your batting average.  When you have the BL, the chance of scoring = your OBP.

And since your OBP is roughly 50 points higher than your batting average, THAT is why the breakeven point is roughly 50 points of wOBA (.325-.276 = .049).

Don’t you love it when you have THREE different ways to prove a point and all give you the same answer?

Tango, isn’t you chance of scoring with 2 and 3 only your BA plus:

(Your OBA minus your BA) times (the chance of scoring with bases loaded?)

IOW, you made the same mistake as I originally did.  The chances of scoring with 2nd and 3rd and two outs is more than your BA (I’m not talking about errors and wild pitches of course).

Francona must have assumed that any hit brings winning run home and that there is no difference between 7th run and possible additional runs. If you make that assumption (not correct, but reasonable assumption for on-the-fly calculation), you only have to show 0.01 wOBA point difference, or, more precisely, that Hunter is more likely to get a hit.
Papelbon was around 30 pitches and “pitching around” option would mean bringing his pitch count around 35 or more if he has to walk Hunter. This season he had 39 pitches in April and once more 35. He had 30 or more pitches 6 times this season and 2 times in 2008. I don’t think it could have been reasonably expected that he can pitch around Hunter and still be effective against Guerrero. I think that Francona decided to yank him out after next batter, whatever the outcome. So, the question was - to face Hunter or Guerrero?
During the season, Guerrero was 295/334/460, and Hunter was 299/366/508. Both were injured for quite a while, Guerrero missed 62 games, and Hunter 43. While normally you’d take projection based on player’s last 3 seasons, for players who still may carry an injury, recent stats should be more important. If Francona thought that injured Guerrero was an easier out than possibly healthy Hunter, IBB actually makes sense.

I followed the 9th through gameday and I immediately thought that IBB was big mistake. I am surprised that I can make some sort of logical train of thought which can justify the decision.

MGL, yes, you are correct.  I wasn’t making a mistake, since I did not START with the BA and OBP to try to figure out the results, but I started with the empirical data, which should the chance of scoring is 27.5%.

That 27.5% would be this:

hits + walks*chance_of_scoring_on_BL

As you are saying.

So, if you have 610 PA, 160 H, and 60 BB, that’s a .262 BA, and .328 OBP.  Your chance of scoring would be 160 plus 60*.325 divided by 610 = .294.

Empirically, the data is showing 27.5%, which means that the BA must go down with runners on 2b, 3b and 2 outs, or the walk rate is lower.

Nonetheless, as a shorthand, if you think about it in terms of OBP minus BA, it’s ok.

Another way to get to same place is that if you pitch to Torii and the result is BB/HBP, you end up in the same place as the IBB—it’s a wash.  So the comparison is really what Torii will do when not drawing a walk vs. all of Vlad’s performance, i.e. Torii’s BA vs. Vlad’s OBP.  An IBB means you think Vlad’s OBP (with BL) is lower than Torri’s BA—hard to imagine.  It’s not quite right, because a hit drives in 2 runs, but the BL walk leaves you with bases still loaded, so it’s a good shorthand comparison.

"i.e. Torii’s BA vs. Vlad’s OBP.”

No!  Same mistake!  It is Valddy’s OBP versus Torii’s BA PLUS his (OBP-BA) times walk rate.

If it were just Torri’s BA then that would mean that an out and a walk were the same thing.  Clearly getting an out on Torri is a lot better than him walking!

Davor, you are forgetting about the walk scoring the run and you are not considering that with the bases loaded a player’s hitting stats go way up (presumably because the pitcher does not want to talk the batter most of the time).

When I was watching this game I knew Vlad was going to smack the first ball he saw. My friends and I were in awe that they would walk anyone to get to a future (potential) HOFer.

However, there was one argument that I heard that made SOME sense to me.

Papelbon was throwing an extremely high percentage of fastballs as MGL mentions above. According to Fangraphs Vlad, in 2009, was worse against fastballs than almost any other pitch per 100. In fact, in 2009 he was worse against fastballs than at any other point in his career. Maybe this signifies the deterioration of skills, or maybe its an outlier.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=778&position=OF#pitchtype

Vlad was -5.4 runs and -0.74 runs per 100 fastballs faced.

Hunter on the other hand was worth 16.5 runs against fastballs, and 1.49 per 100.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=731&position=OF#pitchtype

So, if you know your stud closer is going to throw a fastball in the 2009 playoffs, who would you rather face with the game on the line? Is this a case of hindsight being 20/20?

"If it were just Torri’s BA then that would mean that an out and a walk were the same thing.  Clearly getting an out on Torri is a lot better than him walking! “

That’s not correct, because BA is Hits divided by PA minus BB.  A walk is a “let”, if the idea that an IBB is close to breakeven.

That is, if the decision to IBB is close or not, then the win value of the walk is zero (given the context).  And so, all you are left with is batting average.

To the extent that it’s not zero, then it bumps up the win value as I’ve shown.

***

Just for fun, here’s 50 years worth of win data:
http://tangotiger.net/wins.html

In the two situations were are talking about:
batting team have won 21.6% of the time in the Torii situation and 23.6% of the time in the Vlad situation.

Of course, it’s not the same pool of teams in each situation, but, it’s “trivia”.

Davor, you are forgetting about the walk scoring the run and you are not considering that with the bases loaded a player’s hitting stats go way up (presumably because the pitcher does not want to talk the batter most of the time).

As I said, I thought IBB was really bad idea. But I started with the premise “IBB was good idea” and tried to find some logical way it would work. The best explanation I can come up with: Papelbon can only go one more batter, there are no good RHP relievers, Papelbon still has his control (which he had) and walk/HP is not much of a concern, Any run after 7-6 is irrelevant. If you believe that injuries which were the reason that Guerrero had such a bad season still exist, it is defensible to IBB 870 OPS player to get to 795 OPS one.
Problems with that theory are: runs after 7-6 do matter, there is a BB/HBP danger, Guerrero actually has reverse split this season, so against RHP were both similar, Gerrero seems to be healthier than during the season.
Based on Gerrero’s splits this season (only 100 PA against LHP, but still better than 10), could Francona had brought in Okajima after IBB to Hunter?

MGL:  If you walk Torii (while pitching to him), it’s the same as giving him the IBB.  So it’s the non-BB PAs for Torii we care about (BA).

“you are not considering that with the bases loaded a player’s hitting stats go way up”

I thought that as well, but the effect appears to be smaller than I assumed.  Over past couple of years, with bases loaded hitters are about -.012 in OBP, but .020 in SLG.  Pitchers suppress OBP at the cost of a higher SLG, but overall it’s not a huge plus for hitters.  One reason, I assume, is 1Bman never has to hold runner.

My post 25 should have sealed the deal, but here’s the data for 50 years of Retro years:

http://tangotiger.net/retrosheet/reports/re.htm

Chance of scoreless inning with 2b,3b 2 outs is .723 (meaning 27.7% chance of scoring) and with BL 2 outs is .676 (32.4% chance of scoring).

So, the 4-years of data echoes the 50-years of data.

By the way, the chart above should be printed and carried with you wherever you go.  It’s the core of all in-game strategy.

I DVR’d it and plan on watching that last inning many times over the winter.  Did so last night.  I remember my immediate reaction seeing the IBB to Hunter, I thought Reggie Willits had run for him, and that Howie Kendrick would likely be pinch hitting.  This would be a defensible move, as Willits can’t hit, and Howie presumably would suffer the standard PH penalty from sitting all day.  Then I remembered Willits had run for Rivera, not Vlad.

SOSH did a poll.  The “median” was somewhere between:
“Maybe a lapse in judgment, but defensible”
and
“It was worth a shot”

Once again, the Crowd is right!

http://www.sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=50512&st=20

I am afraid I don’t think there is necessarily any “wisdom of the crowds” phenomenon, when you are asking a technical, sabermetric question to a crowd of non-sabermetricians.  Now, SOSH readers tend to be saber-savvy, but not nearly enough to answer a question like that correctly.

I have said this before, but you gotta be careful about this “wisdom of the crowds” thing.  If you ask a really technical question about astrophysics (or anything for that matter) to a crowd which has no background in astrophysics, are you going to get the right answer because of “the wisdom of the crowds” phenomenon?  No.

Now, you can sometimes, if there are enough astrophysicists in the crowd.  But, if there is a lot of bias with the non-experts in the crowd, you won’t get a good answer from the crowd as a whole even if there are experts (who know the right answer) in that crowd.

For example, poll 1000 average baseball fans including 10 sabermetricians on who is likely the better player, Chase Utley, or Ryan Howard, including the concept of positional value.  It is not even close of course.  Almost all of the sabermetricians will say Utley and almost all of the non-sabermetricians will say Howard. You won’t get any “wisdom” from the crowd. The average or median answer will be heavily in favor of Howard.

I may not have picked a good example, but just because you have a “crowd” by no means guarantees that you will get wisdom.

I still think it was an egregious mistake, if for no other reason than how does a team with a staff of sabermetricians working for them allow a manager to pay attention to batter/pitcher platoon splits, other than as “tie-breakers”?  If that is not one of the things that you tell your manager, what else are you not telling him that we, as sabermetricians, have learned from 30 years of studying the game?  Is that so hard to tell your manager?  “We don’t want you to use matchups, especially small sample one, in your decision making process.  Here is the evidence why we don’t want that.”

Do we just let our manager do whatever he wants?  What’s the point of having a team of sabermetricians working for your team?

Wisdom of the Crowd, as I use it, is not Wisdom of a random mob. I’m not going to ask a group of people from Iowa what the greek word for astronaut is.

This is just an example, but what if your advance scouts emphasize strongly that Hunter crushes high fastballs and Vlad can’t catch up to them, and you know Papelbon works up in the zone? Then maybe the last thing you want is to let Papelbon face Hunter with the season on the line. What you don’t know, or can’t tell from where you are, is that Papelbon’s problem is that he isn’t getting his fastball up high enough, and that he’s about to throw Vlad a low fastball instead of the high one he was trying to throw and that Francona was expecting him to throw. Then you might just as well ask, what’s the point of having a team of advance scouts working for your team?

Judy that may be true, and that is certainly one of the reasons why managers like certain matchups or not, but I am skeptical.  Very skeptical.  If Hunter loves high fastballs, Paps probably won’t throw those to him.  It’s not like a pitcher MUST throw the same type of pitch to the same location to every batter.  Pitchers can and do alter their own typical patterns to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of the batters.

In any case, until I see some evidence (which I never have) that certain batters are better or worse against certain types of pitchers, I remain highly skeptical of your thesis, which on its face, is a reasonable one, and one that most baseball insiders (managers, coaches, players, etc.) ascribe to…

After reading some comments on the Baseball Analysts in response to a post by Sky (and thinking about it some more), I am starting to think that perhaps it was not such a bad move and perhaps even correct.

Obviously Paps walk rate (which is low) enters the equation.  For example, if you had a pitcher who never walked anyone, then after the IBB, a batter’s BA and not his OBA would be the only thing that mattered.

Also, as several people on that site pointed out, Vladdy’s success against fastballs this year has taken a nosedive and many people have speculated that his bat has slowed from age and injury.  And of course Paps was throwing (and does in general) mostly fastballs.

Again, I still think (despite Andy’s research that suggests that pitching around batters doesn’t do anything overall) that pitching carefully to Hunter (who will chase pitches) was the best option, it may be that the walk was defensible or even correct.