from Amazon
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Dubious baseball ideas
Tim Marchman says:
Tall Catchers
Pulling Your Best Hitter for a Pinch-Runner
Pitchers Batting Ninth
Calling in the Closer With a Three-Run Lead
Managers in Uniforms
The title of the piece says “worst”, but “dubious” perfectly captures this list.
For the pitcher-batting-ninth, I’d flip that to “reactions to pitcher batting 8th”. The dubious aspect is not that the pitcher bats 9th. It’s justifiable. It’s not that pitcher bats 8th. That’s justifiable too. It’s the reaction of people who think it’s a bad idea for the pitcher to bat 8th. It’s that reaction that is bad.
Is the evidence on tall catchers very good? My guess is that the history of baseball selects catchers for fitting a certain picture (just like most positions) and that this basically creates a bias in the sample we have. Very few guys as 6’4” or taller ever get the opportunity to play catcher because tall catchers, like short LHP, short 1B and tall MI, are regarded as somehow impossible or at least unlikely.