THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, October 08, 2009

STL/LAD game blunders

Almost none!  With all the activity in that game, there were virtually no blunders by either manager or the players.  There was one pretty large one which we see managers do (inexplicably to me) all the time and when they do it it is very costly.  I’ll give you guys a few seconds to guess what I am talking about…

Top of the 6th, Carpenter, who had already thrown almost 100 pitches (and not very well), was due up with a runner on 2nd and 2 outs versus a tough (platoon-wise) righty pitcher in Weaver.  The Cardinals were down 3-2. That is a clear-cut, no-brainer, pinch hit situation.  Not even close.  Carpenter was going to pitch one more inning at the most.

The announcers (who are actually pretty good, as announcers go) kept saying that LaRussa was hoping that Carpenter would get to bat in that inning so that if they had to take him out in the bottom of the 6th, they wouldn’t have to do a double switch.  That made no sense of course.  If you were preparing to possibly take him out in the 6th (which was likely unless he breezed through the inning), then obviously you don’t let him bat.  Letting a pitcher bat with 2 outs and runners on base usually costs .2 run or more.  One inning of Carpenter pitching as opposed to a reliever does not save nearly .2 runs of course.  Even if it did, you still pinch hit because you are down in the game and you need offense, not defense.  IOW, one run added on offense is worth more than one run saved on defense when you are down in a game.

Anyway, managers make that mistake (and it is usually a very costly one as in-game strategy mistakes go) all the time - even in the post-season.  Why should LaRussa be any different?

Let’s see…

I didn’t watch the beginning of the first inning (I guess no one did unless there was another feed other than TBS) but I assume that IBB’ing Pujols was a mistake.  Maybe not.  And Joe Torre playing Belliard rather than Hudson was Torre playing his usual “hot hand” strategy.  That was clearly a mistake I assume, although I have not looked at the numbers.  I think that Hudson is a better defender and a much better hitter versus a RHP.  Sure enough Belliard was about the only Dodger who looked foolish against Carpenter.

In the 9th inning with Ludwick on second base and that bloop hit to center field that got by Kemp, the announcer remarked that Kemp was playing deep.  Of course since the batter’s run is meaningless Kemp should be playing very shallow as a double or triple is virtually the same thing as a single, so your defense should be minimizing baserunners with no regard for whether they are singles or extra base hits.

Other than that and the 30 runners LOB, it was a pretty routine game.  If you watch a lot of games, you would also have noticed that DeMuth has one of the smallest strike zones in baseball if not THE smallest.  That was one reason for all the base runners.  For no particular reason, there were a ton of pitches just off the zone in that game, that most umpires other than DeMuth would have called strikes.  Gotta give him credit though.  Other than a few breaking pitches and one or two fastballs, if the pitch was not in the zone, at least according to the Pitch Trax, he did not call it a strike.  He was very consistent and pitchers were not complaining because of that consistency (and probably because they already knew his zone is tight).