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Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Should the Phillies Have Pulled Cliff Lee With A Big Lead?
Sky says, yes, if the manager has the cajones (and I say if the GM backs him):
The Phillies chances to win the game at that point were approximately 93%. If they won that one, they’d have to win games 6 and 7 as well, giving them an overall series probability of .93*.5*.5 = 23.25%. Now, let’s exaggerate things a bit, and assume that Lee is a perfect pitcher who will not allow a run. If Manuel lets him throw 7 strong innings, allowing no additional runs, he’ll have increased the Phillies chance to win the game from 93% to 99%, raising the probability that the Phillies win the series to 24.75%. That’s was the option Manuel chose.
His other choice was to remove Lee from the game, with the tradeoff that Lee would be able to pitch an extra couple of effective innings in Game 7 if it went that far - quite a reasonable assumption considering he had thrown only 50 pitches in Game 5. Again assuming Lee’s perfection, two innings of scoreless work in Game 7 would have raised the Phillies probability of winning Game 7 from 50% to 60%. Therefore, the overall probability of winning the series would be .93*.5*.6 = 27.9%.
...
It seems that removing Lee and saving him for Game 7 would have been the right call. Still I wouldn’t have liked to be in the hot seat all-winter long had I pulled Lee and the Phillies gone on to lose Game 5.
And this is exactly the point, that the manager is mostly, if not totally, concerned about not looking bad, rather than making the cajones moves that properly balances risk and reward.
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