THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Easy game, baseball.

Manager: No-doubles defense, guys.  Let’s go let’s go let’s go.
RF: Okee.  Where do we stand again?
LF: Up against the wall.
RF: Er.  What?  Like, right by it?
CF: Nah.  You’ll get the hang of it.  You got wheels like me, you can play a ways back from the wall.  But you can’t let a ball get hit over your head.  Ever.
RF: I don’t move fast though.
CF: Maybe you should hug the wall then.
RF: This good?
LF: Hmm.  I think a ball may still be hit over your head.
RF: Now?
LF: You’re in the stands.
CF: Perfect!

Seems like the proper way to go about this problem is to consider breakeven points; at what point does the lesser likelihood of surrendering a double outweigh the increased likelihood of surrendering a single.

I agree with Poz that it looks like Cruz simply misjudged how far he was from the wall. He jumped like he thought the wall was right behind him. Of course it wasn’t right behind him and and he ended up looking kinda dumb. However, it was easily catchable, he should have caught it, and any other time he probably would have. I’m not saying that the pressure got to him, it was just one of those things.

That ball only got over Cruz’s head because he coasted on it. Whether it “took off on him” or whatever, you can tell by his body language that at one point he either thought he was about to catch it or he thought he was about to crash into the wall.

I don’t see how starting 5 or 10 feet farther back would change either of those things. He’s still gotta run back some (which means he still has concerns about the wall), and he’d probably be even more certain he was going to catch the ball if he started farther back.

The problem was not that he didn’t catch it, but he looked awkward in not catching it.  The way his body got twisted makes you believe that he misjudged something, or that he wasn’t prepared.

As for where he should have been standing to begin with, all three of them looked deep, and I’ll bet you can reasonably argue with probability rates, any spot within 30 feet of where any of them were standing.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

FWIW, Barry Larkin of ESPN said that Cruz has a reputation for playing tentatively when he gets near the wall.  Can’t remember how he phrased it but the implication was that Cruz is scared of running into walls, as opposed to other OF who either know how to time their steps well or are bold enough to run full speed into it to catch a ball.

On the one hand I blame Cruz, on the other, I don’t blame his positioning.

In terms of balls flying over his head - Freese’s fliner was basically the ideal trajectory (ie worst case scenario) to get over Cruz’s head, and he still almost had it. If he didn’t hesitate tracking it down, he’d have made the catch. So he couldn’t be that far out of position. In fact, he was probably in near-perfect position.

Bottom line, if you hit that ball to him 100 times in practice (assuming he doesn’t know it’s coming) he makes that catch about 90% of the time. There was absolutely some loss of concentration on Cruz’s part, as evidenced by his mistracking the ball on the Y-axis (not deep enough) but also on the X-axis too… scientifically speaking - it was a choke job.

I don’t suppose players get too many practice or in-game opportunities where they try to catch a ball with such a flat trajectory near the wall.  99% of the time, if the OFer has to worry about the wall, it’s a fairly high fly ball.

"In terms of balls flying over his head - Freese’s fliner was basically the ideal trajectory (ie worst case scenario) to get over Cruz’s head, and he still almost had it.” I echo Lee’s point about the trajectory (best case for STL; worst case for TEX). Another point—not yet made—involves the angle Cruz had to traverse to make that play. If 0deg is straight to home plate and 180deg is straight back, it seems that Cruz had to go ~135deg or so to his left, and I contend that that might be an awkward angle, leading to the awkward appearance of Cruz’ attempted catch. I’ve no data to support that contention, but then, neither do the “sabermetricians” blithely mouthing the “99% of the time he makes that catch” throwaway type of line absent any equivalent human factors data.

Something that seems to have been overlooked about the wisdom of a “no doubles” defense in this situation is that the runner on second was of no consequence with a two run lead; they’d happily concede a single to keep a ball from getting over anyone’s head and scoring the tying run from first.

Would they happily concede a single rather than an out?  That is why you still must balance the out rate with the doubles rate in order to maximize your win expectancy. The further back you play, the more that catchable balls drop in for a hit.  So, no, it has not been overlooked…