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Friday, May 21, 2010
Do TV Commentators know even the most basic of correct strategies?
I am being a little pickyune, but…
In tonight’s SD/LA game, it was the 9th inning and the Dodgers had a 4-1 lead. The SD leadoff batter hit a soft line drive to RF and the rookie RF for the Dodgers started to come in to try and make a shoe-string catch, but decided against it and let it drop for hit. What his chances of catching it were, I really don’t know. If I had to guess, I would say 10% at least.
The Padres commentator said, “So-and-so (the LA RFer - I forgot his name) thought about making the shoe-string catch but thought better of it and correctly so.”
Now, I don’t know that he didn’t mean that he could not have gotten it anyway, or even that it was not worth risking injury, but I think that he meant, “With a 3 run lead, there is no reason to try and make the catch, since a base hit is no big deal anyway.”
Of course, the chance of injury not-withstanding (which admittedly may be a good enough reason not to try the catch), the correct strategy is to go for the catch regardless of the chance of catching it. That is because the difference between a single and and extra base hit is almost nothing especially since the Dodgers are going to let the batter steal second uncontested if he gets the single (which they did). With a one run lead, of course, the correct play would be to not try the shoe-string catch, but even then, there is a break even point (I don’t know what it is off the top of my head).
Anyway, ANY manager or halfway smart player (and TV commentators are presumably the smartest of the ex-players) should know whether to go for a dive or not based on the score and inning. That is managing 101. My guess is that half the managers in baseball do not know the correct answer to that. Similarly how many do you think know that the OF should be playing very shallow in that spot for the same reason? I would say less than half also…
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