THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

So what do you think of La Russa using Wainwright as a bunting pinch hitter with Duncan available, average runner on first, nobody out in the 9th and a tie game? Two mediocre hitters up next (Schumaker and Ryan), then Pujols.

I don’t think The Book covers this strange possibility.

That is horrendous.  A pitcher bunting, especially when the defense knows almost 100% that he is bunting, as compared to any hitter, is not even close.

The problem with managers and bunting is two-fold:

One, they think that advancing the runners for an out is a GOOD result.  It is not.  What makes the bunt attempt the correct play sometimes is the significant chance that a position player reaches on a hit or error.  Pitchers almost never do that (reach base safely).

Two, they don’t understand that the overall value of the bunt is significantly influenced by where the defense is playing (i.e., how much they anticipate the bunt).  And, related to that, they don’t understand that whenever the decision is close, no matter what the situation and who the batter and pitcher are, they MUST sometimes bunt and sometimes not, with the decision being random.

IOW, most of the time, there is no correct “yes or no” answer to the question, “Should I bunt, or should I not?” The correct answer is usually, “You should bunt x% of the time and not bunt 1-x% of the time.” Most managers (and commentators) would not understand what the heck you were talking about if you told them that.  Ironically, some of them do understand the advantage of keeping the defense “guessing” but most of them don’t understand how to use that concept.

Understatement of the day:

1 out in the top of the 9th, no one on base, the WS batter hits a ball off the wall.  The batter chugs into second and the announcer says, “So-and-so realizes that his run is not that important.”

Many times the pitchers is such a bad hitter that if we are conceding that he will make an out anyway, might as well adavance a runner or two…

but then the other day John Russell of the Pirates had 1st & 2nd, no one out, Jose Bautista batting. Bautista sacrifices the runners to 2nd & 3rd, one out...bringing up Bixler and the pitcher. Two strikeouts later the inning is over.

Last week when the Pirates were in DC playing the Nats, Maholm got rocked in the early innings, but settled down in the 3rd & 4th. Top of the fifth, Pirates have 2nd & 3rd, two outs, Maholm due up. Down two runs, very high leverage situation, a single ties the game. Maholm has thrown about 80 pitches, so he has one, maybe two innings left in the tank. Russell lets Maholm hit, he makes the 3rd out, pitches a nice 5th, then gets rocked again in the 6th, giving the Nats and easy win.

Bobby Cox’s strength has always been in managing the players. He is not tactically astute. Here’s another recent example of his stupidity. They were playing the Pirates the other day. Tom Gorzelany, who has been having control problems, was on the mound. Omar Infante leads off the first inning with a double. Escobar comes up and Bobby has him bunt. The first attempt is unsuccessful. On the second attempt he bunts it right back at the pitcher, who throws Infante out at third. Joe Simpson, who was one of the announcers, approved of this tactic because the Braves have been leaving too many runners on and needed to “get something going.”

"Shake it up a bit” or “Get something going”

equals

“I have no idea what the heck is going on, so I’m going to do something suboptimal on the hope that something changes, and an even bigger hope that it’s for the better.  But, once that changes and I’m back to where I should be, I’ll stop doing this ridiculous suboptimal thing, and go back to doing things the optimal way.  And, I can do all this because people are human, and humans need to do things suboptimally in order to realize that the optimal way is better.  That no one can believe that a human being can just keep doing things the right way and be rewarded for it.  So, while I believe in luck and bad breaks, I can’t say that, otherwise, I find myself marginalized as being useless.”

Brian/3 Exactly...run expectancy really needs to be evaluated in a situational basis.  A walk by the #8 hitter (w/o PH for the pitcher) <> a walk by the #1 hitter.  All it takes is a simple decision tree to realize this but often you see #7 hitters bunting guys into scoring position only for them to be stranded, like in your example.

Secondly, if teams used some sort of tandem starting pitchers (or short starter>long reliever>set up men), they could utilize pinch hitters more often and in higher leverage situations. 

A number 9 hitter gets roughly 4 PAs per game.  The delta between a pitchers OPS and PH OPS is roughly 300 points.  If we assume that a starter roughly bats 2.5 out of those 4 times under the normal strategy and 1 out of those 4 times in a tandem starting strategy, that will result in a weighted average increase of over 100 points of OPS in 10% of your teams PAs.  It also allows the flexibility of being able to double switch to put your better hitters in higher leverage situations.  And if a team employed that strategy they would most likely construct their roster to have better PH options than a typical NL roster has, so that delta between a PH and a pitcher would increase.  And not to mention that below average starters should probably be tandem started anyway.

This isn’t a comment on the particular decision by Cox to let Reyes hit.

But how much, if it all, should one weigh in both the run/win expectancy of pinch hitting for the pitcher in a given situation at a given point in the ball game and the assessment of how well the pitcher is performing on the mound, and the availability of better substitutes at that time? If the manager thinks the pitcher will hold the opponents for a couple more innings, and the chances are decent that his own hitters will score another run or two, it’s probably still wrong to let the pitcher hit but the calculus is more complicated than has been allowed for.

Another way of putting this is if the situation were similar in terms of runners on base and outs, should the manager make the same decision whether the batter is a pitcher or a position player? Does the expectation of runs gained by pinch hitting always trump in that situation? And wouldn’t that be just as true in the 2nd inning as in the 6th? (Should a .117 BA pitcher ever be allowed to hit with RISP? When and when not?)

#7 - of course, it’s a trade off - if I ph for the pitcher, how much will it help me score runs/win the game in this ab? but also, if I then bring in a new pitcher, does that worsen or strengthen me the for the rest of the game?

In my example, Maholm was already having a rough day, and come his turn to bat in the top of the 5th the tying runs were ins coring position. By his pitch count, Maholm had no more than two more (mediocre) innings available in his arm. Russell passed up a chance to tie the game in the 5th to get 4 more outs from his starter on the mound. IMHO, terrible trade off.

Fargo: if this was September, I would definitely pinch hit for the pitcher in the 2nd inning.  You have an almost unlimited supply of firethrowing arms in the bullpen.  Seriously, why in the world do you want your #4 and #5 starter “pacing” himself (thereby reducing his effectiveness), when you have a whole bunch of minor leaguers who are probably as good or better than the starter, if allowed to throw just 15 pitches? 

Pre Sept 1, you can’t burn through your pitching staff by taking out your starter after 2 innings, unless you have a plan to bring him back with 2 days rest.  Managers should spend 90% of the lineup decisions on pitchers, not hitters.

Thanks. Has anyone tabulated “runs lost” due to allowing pitchers to bat with RISP? Following the original post, this could be used as a systematic measure of the quality of managerial decision-making. (Along with other quantifiable questionable managerial decisions, e.g., bunting, steal attempts.)

It’s probably a lot easier just to look at NL data and calculate PA’s by lineup order and then, since pitchers are almost always in #9 slot (except if there’s been a double switch during the game) figuring out how many PA’s are saved for “better hitters” by comparing total PA’s by pitchers with total PA’s for #9. But getting such a calculation for cases with RISP would be pretty hard, I suppose.  And wouldn’t you have to look at the RS in the inning after the PH occurred, and compare it with the expected RS without the PH to net out the gain from removing the pitcher? (Not a data maven here.)

While we’re bashing managers in this thread...in another thread I suggested to Pizza Cutter how to use pfx to suggest when a pitcher is getting fatigued and losing effectiveness. A followup on that measurement is how often managers leave in their starter past the point of having “lost it”, thus giving away runs to the other team. I think some managers, expecially ones I’ve observed in summer leagues, are convinced that if they wait long enough the pitcher will snap out of it and start getting guys out again. Sometimes...but if it’s 5th or later don’t bet on it

Fargo/7.  In regards to pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd vs the 6th, win expectancy should be the driver of the decision.  The fact is that in the 2nd you much more of your scarce resource (outs) than you do in the 6th.  A team down by 3 runs in the 2nd has a much better chance of winning than a team down by 3 runs in the 6th.  Hence, the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the 2nd would be much less than the change in WE that a team would get from pinch hitting for a pitcher in the exact same situation in a later inning.  Also, pinch hitters are a scarce resource too, so burning your better ones in situations that don’t have as large of an impact on your WE would be foolish.

And as you mentioned, the affect on the pitching staff and how you would prevent runs is important...not only in the remainder of that game, but in subsequent games pitching with a shortentened staff.  Which is why I mentioned the idea of tandem starting above.

Thanks, Ryan.  I guess what I’m thinking is that WE is a very static kind of factor to consider; that is, it presents an “average” probability (of winning) that, while situationally accurate doesn’t allow for the multiple factors that are involved in decisions at any point in the game.

Just those considerations that you mentioned—remaining outs available in the game, available pitching resources and pinch hitters—could be explicitly modeled, instead of being subsumed by the “average” WE associated with the given situation.

To take this a step further, there are also “next game” considerations or “series” considerations.  Do I burn a relief pitcher today who I may need tomorrow (or who I used yesterday)?

WE takes into account the number of outs left in the game; that’s the primary differentiation between it and simple Run Expectancy. As far as availability of bench/relief options and reliever workloads, that’s way too complex/subjective to just be rolled into something like WE.

Fargo, no question that you sometimes have “next game” and “down the road” factors when making an in-game decision.  Not always, but sometimes.  Technically, when we say WE, we mean WE for the whole season, and sometimes more than that.

Thanks, guys.  I guess I was just thinking that WE or other “expectancies” are based on what are the general or overall or “large number” average probabilities.  I’m thinking that while certainly it’s an important baseline for evaluating managerial decisions, a more explicit modeling of some of the complexity might be worthwhile. 

For example, if you were to systematically study managerial decisions in various areas (let’s say you were trying to come up with a standardized metric for evaluating managerial competence), then you might test for the effects of various factors in accounting for the “mistakes” (cases where their decisions appeared to be counter to what was seemingly rational). 

Then you could perhaps understand that that there is a method (perhaps an accepted “rule of thumb") or perhaps a “psychology” to such decisions, just like that study of football decision-making in which coaches were found to take the field goal rather than go for a first down far more often than was “rational.”

In training managers to make “correct” decisions, then, you wouldn’t just drill a WE matrix into their heads, but you would also address which other factors might be worth taking into account in certain game situations.