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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 15, 2021 5:03:54 GMT -5
Sale in game 1 gives Eovaldi an extra day of rest, and then another extra day between games 2 and 6. That's very likely a significant rationale.
It also means that Sale gets 1 start each away and at home, while Eovaldi pitches twice on the road. That may well be better, based on their fit to the parks, and that could be a second reason.
A third reason struck me as soon as I read the "found it in the bullpen" story, and made me wonder whether game 2 might be a better choice than 3. If you're an Astro, leaning that McCullers is out is a serious "f***!" moment. Discovering that struggling Chris Sale is actually some semblence of vintage Chris! Sale!!! would be another. So why not put that potential psychological downer as early in the series as possible? Our grabbing home field advantage behind Eovaldi in game 1 would not be that surprising or distressing. Losing home field to Sale and having to face Eovaldi the next day would be a real blow. Swapping the two may actually increase your odds of a split (and hence grabbing home field), and if Sale in 1 pans out ...
This move represents real Cora confidence in Sale. He had no good reason to trust Brasier when he started to, and before that Robles. The list is probably longer.
Meanwhile, FG now has us as 53% to 47% favorites if McCullers can't pitch, and as I pointed out earlier, they are underestimating our offense.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 14, 2021 15:00:17 GMT -5
But that projection is with:
Kiké Hernandez as a 110 wRC+ hitter this year, when he was 72 on June 15 and 150 afterwards ...
Hunter Renfroe as a 114 when he was 61 on May 25 and 133 afterwards.
And both of those guys made demonstrable, novel changes in their approach, changes that were planned for them when they were signed as upside projects.
It also has Bobby Dalbec as a 107 when he was 70 on August 7 and 188 afterwards. Granted, that's a different thing altogether, and he likely only starts against Framber.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 14, 2021 14:44:35 GMT -5
There’s an interesting article on the athletic saying Eovaldi may have helped gotten Sale back on track by spotting a couple of mechanical issues with his delivery, I guess we’ll see From today's Globe (nobody else reads it but me, eh?), quoting Cora yesterday
Guardedly optimistic. I think he starts game 3, with Pivetta in game 4, and if they both have short outings, well, that's why Perez will likely be on the roster.
(Eovaldi 3 times doesn't work at all. His 4 career outings on short rest were all after a relief appearance or being shelled in 2 IP or so. And pitching 1 and 5 sets him up to do the same thing in the WS, rather than 3 and a 7 you may not get to.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 14, 2021 5:58:27 GMT -5
Framber Valdez, LHP, slightly above average 92 mph sinker, but his out pitch is his curve.
Bobby Dalbec vs. LHP curves since 8/8: 2/6, HR. Vs. LH Sinkers, 4 PA, 1/4, 2B, .468 xwOBA. Basically a 1.000 OPS versus his repertoire (in a tiny sample, but as part pf a much bigger one).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 14, 2021 3:15:11 GMT -5
Gut feeling: Astros players who are by nature confident are overconfident. Those who are by nature less confident feel pressure. It's almost always tougher being the favorite.
Psychologically there is no better position than being the underdog while knowing you're actually better.
None of this may be true, but it makes me feel better.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 13, 2021 15:38:44 GMT -5
The three setup guys for the Astros, Graveman, Stanek and Yimi Garcia, all have big platoon splits. In the current lineup, there are 2 spots where they'd have to go LRL:
Schwarbs Kiké Raffy Xander Dugie
JDM Renfroe (/Dalbec)
C Arroyo
They could swap 3 through 6, which is a better lineup, but it yields only 1 LRL sequence, Raffy, JDM, Dugie.
Shaw's going to get some meaningful PA's in this series ... and I wonder whether they'll swap in Duran for Santana in part for that reason.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 13, 2021 14:21:59 GMT -5
Sale's 5 pre-COVID starts were really good but with terrible karma on balls in play. Expected line first, actual next = wOBA.
.215 / .280 / .311 = .268 (109 PA)
.290 / .349 / .450 = .346
His 3 best xwOBA's of his 10 starts are in starts 1, 2, and 5 of that stretch.
Since his return, he's been below average, with slightly bad karma:
.258 / .322 / .418 = .327 (81 PA) .270 / .333 / .432 = .332
However, the first (xwOBA only) and last of these 5 starts are skewing the results. You'd expect him to be rusty in his first game returning. His next 3 stats, to the end of the regular season:
.235 / .303 / .345 = .292 (56 PA)
.275 / .339 / .392 = .321
That's not significantly different from his first 5, although it might reflect some seasonal fatigue. The caveat is that this makes his start in ALDS game 2 (.439 expected, .667 actual wOBA) really stand out.
The hope is that this was just a fixable mechanical issue and we can expect a solid 3rd starter performance from him. Expecting Chris! Sale!! this year seems unrealistic.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 13, 2021 2:23:00 GMT -5
Re the rotation, let's start with this:
16-13-0-97 73-0-0-67
Pivetta actually threw more pitches in a 4 day stretch than Eovaldi did in 2018, 140 to 126. However, the extra day of work and the much higher pitch count in the final game for Nate way more than offset that. OTOH, as Eovaldi took essentially a year to recover from that, it's reasonable to be on guard for Pivetta being ineffective, and you certainly want to give him as much rest as possible. I think he has to be the game 4 starter, and unavailable until then, when he would be pitching on 8 days rest.
So you have two uncertain guys among the expected starters, and only one guy stretched out to step in, in Houck. So that's an argument for starting Sale in game 2; if you need Houck for a few innings in game 2 he can hopefully fo the same thing in game 4, on 2 days rest.
The game 2 starter also pitches game 6 on an extra day of rest, and that extra day would benefit Sale more than E-Rod, it would seem.
The game 3 starter is also the game 7 starter. If Sale starts game 3 and isn't good, you can start Houck in game 7.
Now, I agree that if it weren't for all of the above, E-Eod in games 2 and 6 on the road and Sale making his next start in Fenway is somewhat of a no-brainer. So if they go with Eovaldi on regular best in game 5, this is not an easy decision. Much will depend on how Pivetta is actually feeling, info which is essentially top secret. (Why am I'm certain he was feeling less than O.K after game 4 ? That story later, along with story as to why that story is later.)
What would Nate pitching games 1, 4, and 7 look like?
Nate 1, E-Rod 2, Sale / Houck 3, Nate 4, Pivetta 5, E-Rod 6, Nate 7, with Sale fully rested to boot. There's 1 day of rest for Houck in between Sale and Pivetta, not as good as in my initial plan but better than the obvious one.
In any of these three scenarios, there is always the possibility of starting Houck in Pivetta's place and (after some amount of rest) essentially using Pivetta in Houck's role, but limiting him to 30 or 40 pitches per outing and using him just twice. And of course if Houck is not needed in Sale's start, you can sub him for Pivetta in any of these schemes.
A very interesting decision. You might want to save Eovaldi 1-4-7 for the WS, or you might want to do that now and go back to 1-5 for the WS, under the assumption that Sale and/or Pivetta will be more reliable then if you in fact win the CS. I don't think you want Nate starting 6 more times.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 12, 2021 12:53:39 GMT -5
Bringing in McLanahan was very dumb for them. Ericmvan was right that wa a bad move. If they hadn’t done that who knows. He also called not using Wisler back to back days, he looked like the last option I spent a while despairing that anyone would ask Cash, "what were you thinking?" And then I figured it out, I think.
He announced that Wacha would probably be used, which would imply a bullpen game, and Baz as well when you did the days-rest math. Fooled me and everyone else. Including himself!
The plan was to announce McHugh as starter of an apparent bullpen game, but actually use him as an opener for McClanahan as a 4-inning bulk guy, on three days rest, and then come back with Baz on 4 days rest if they got to game 5. That explains why he stuck so long with McClanahan, which was otherwise a total mystery. Since he was going to use McHugh to get two innings anyway, naming him as the starter assures that Verdugo is in the lineup instead of Dalbec. And Dalbec had been getting the bat on the ball of 97+ heat for a while now. Lots of fouls just missing, and a few hard hit balls right at people.
My game formula had Wacha and Baz getting two IP each on their side-session day. That's probably where Cash started. The next thought is, Baz on full rest could give you 5 or 6 and set up a rested bullpen in game 5, so if I use McClanahan on short rest in this game, I come out ahead. I'm losing 2 innings of McClanahan, maybe even just 1, but I'm gaining 3 or 4 of Baz and staying away from Wacha entirely. I don't think his trust in Baz in game 5 was misguided; that guy has great stuff.
Cash had to be aware that guys sometimes get hammered pitching on three days rest (either without a side session, or on 1 days rest from one) and probably talked himself into taking the risk because of what the numbers show. But you can go hand-gliding or ice-climbing in bad weather and have a 95% chance of survival, and ... you don't go, because if you're wrong, you're dead.
He outsmarted himself. One fundamental difference between him and Cora is that Cora doesn't do that.
So, McClanhan goes 0.2 IP instead of 4. First thing Cash does is use Chargois to finish that inning only, which is what the numbers said he would do. (I'm not giving myself credit for getting most of this right ... just for doing all the work to look up the pitcher histories when I badly need to follow the advice underneath my name.) He next tries Kittredge for 2 innings, which he's never done on no rest, and that works in large part because he only threw 6 pitches in his first frame.
But he still needs to pick up 2 innings, and he decides to use Patino and Fleming for one each. Former works great, and I'm glad that the kid's last memory is of that inning than the one from the night before . Since Fleming has never pitched on B2B days, I thought he'd prefer to use him for just one batter. And Fleming gets Schwarber out and then gives up two hits! He ends up using Fairbanks for 4 batters (and 5 outs) rather than just an inning.
The other thing that the math got wrong is that Feyereisen only pitched 2/3 of an inning rather than one.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 12, 2021 0:12:57 GMT -5
12 hits in this game. The team's post-season batting average so far is astronomical. And against two of the best staffs in the AL. There have been so many historically great offenses that have completely underachieved in the playoffs like the 95/99 Indians, the 03 Sox, the 18 Astros, etc. Yet this team is just killing the ball against really good pitching, baseball is kinda great. Cognitive bias: you're remembering the exceptions. I did a study of post-season success (I know I've told this story before!) just before I was hired by the Sox that found no correlation between offense and success up to a certain level of offense, but a really strong correlation for the elite offenses. You can sum up the results as "good pitching actually does beat good hitting, but truly great hitting beats all pitching."
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 17:10:17 GMT -5
Rays pitcher this series, in rough order of my guess at likely use this year ... Name PA wOBA xwOBA McHugh, Collin 8 .375 .372 Wacha, Michael 16 .563 .326 Baz, Shane 13 .538 .505 Fairbanks, Pete 5 .400 .555 Kittredge, And. 5 .400 .236 Feyereisen, JP 13 .333 .210 Fleming, Josh 3 .333 .148 Chargois, JT 11 .273 .316 Wisler, Matt 9 .222 .447 Patiño, Luis 6 .333 .424 McClanahan, Sh. 20 .250 .267 Rasmussen, Drew 11 .545 .487 Robertson, Da. 16 .250 .399
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 12:35:01 GMT -5
Some extra info on this version, including this ...
tl, dr Version
They need 4 total innings from Wacha and Baz, and they need McHugh (2 innings), Kittredge, Fairbanks, and Feyereisen (1 each) to do their thing without too much difficulty; maybe Fleming finishes an inning for somebody. Beyond that, you've got guys they have a reason to stay away from.
No Problem McHugh. They'll look to get 2 innings from him; more than that would be unprecedented this year. Kittredge. On no days rest, 1 inning only. Has a .733 OPS allowed on no rest versus .719 overall, in 24 career outings. Fairbanks. Ditto. .729 versus .709, in 16 outings. Feyereisen. He's gone 1.2 on 0 days rest, and after more pitches (18) then he threw yesterday (11), but he gave up 2 hits, 2 walks, and 2 runs. So expect an inning. .641 vs. .630, in 10 outings. Super Side
Wacha hasn't pitched on 2 days rest since 8/28/13, and Baz has never done it, but pitching on 2 days rest is like a side session that matters. (Some guys throw on one days rest and some on two; we don't have that info for them.) You could see two innings each; if they can't complete them, then the following guys get in the mix. Valid for a Limited Time Only?Chargois threw 20 pitches. The last time he pitched the day after he threw that many or more was 9/23/16, but he threw one pitch and had it hit for a 2B. He did pitch the day after throwing 19 this year with the Mariners, but that was with 2 outs, and he struck out Matt Chapman looking on 8 pitches. OTOH, he has thrown 35 and 36 pitches total on consecutive days with Rays, so there's a (probably small) possibility that they would use him for a full inning rather than just with 2 outs. He also has a bigger no-rest spit than the relievers already mentioned, .751 vs. .706 in 30 outings. Proceed with Caution?Wisler has a career .956 OPS allowed when pitching two days in a row, versus .778 overall. This year it was 1.337 (29 PA) versus .672. His only good outing was his August 1 save against us, however. He wasn't hit as hard as it seemed yesterday, as Kiké's leadoff liner to 3B was only 87.9. Only Xander smoked him (108.6, .750). Comes in, HandyFleming has never pitched in back-to-back games. But he's the only lefty in the pen, and there's a first time for everything. Likelier to finish an inning than throw a whole one, I think. Don't Be Cruel?Patino has never pitched two days in a row, either. They still hope he can be a starter, so there's no need to give him a "get on the horse that threw you" moment. And they've got as many as 9 guys in front of him, so why not give him a day off after losing last night? But if they used him anyway I wouldn't be shocked. Break Glass in Case of Emergency?McClanahan's being saved for game 5, but you can see a scenario where there's no one left to close out a lead. As I just noted, he's never pitched on 3 days rest in his life, but again, this could be like a side session for him. No Pitching
Robertson just threw 40 pitches, his most since 6/1/16. In fact, he hasn't thrown 40 pitches total in consecutive days since 8/25/17. In 2016, he got 6 days rest and then faced 5 batters, giving up a homer and three singles. He's not pitching in game 4, and maybe not in any game 5, either. Rasmussen has pitched on 0 days rest three times as a reliever, but after a max of 21 pitches. He threw 31 yesterday. And as a starter, the Rays gave him extra rest.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 12:22:04 GMT -5
The Sox are technically favorites but its really basically a pickem game. I like our chances if McHugh is starting though. The scenario I’m worried about is Baz coming out the bullpen letting it loose then getting to the backend of the Rays bullpen. I hope that some of the relievers are less effective on back to back days, I think that’s the path to victory I ran down all 13 pitchers on the roster back on page 79. It seems as if folks are waking up and not bothering to look at what they missed, but that's understandable. So I'm going to repost it!
Only Wisler really struggles on no rest.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 5:12:23 GMT -5
I don't know what the discussion is here. McClanahan in G4, Baz in G5. If Pivetta can throw 73 pitches on Thursday and pitch 4 innings YESTERDAY, McClanahan can start tomorrow and provide some innings. If the Rays win G4, the more pitchers they need to do it, the more Baz HAS to start G5. And anyway, if they trusted Baz to start G2, why would a little struggle cause them to go away from him in G5? This whole manufactured "quandry" for the Rays assumes they don't believe in the approach they are taking to managing pitching. Remember what I said many pages ago about questioning how the Rays' approach to pitching would hold up in the playoffs, and someone, rightfully so, pointed out "well, they won 100 games and were a better team using it? Don't knock it." Now is the time for them to trust the process. When Pivetta saved game 162, it was the equivalent of a side session, on 2 days rest. His long relief in game 1 was the equivalent of a start. He worked last night again on 2 days rest, and of course he went much longer than a side session and is almost certainly feeling it. (His "I'm OK" in his post-game was completely unconvincing, at least to me.) You won't see him again until game 4 -- either of the ALCS or the 2022 season.
You just can't throw guys on 3 days rest, a full start, without a side session, and trust you'll get good results if they've never done it before. It's a complete crap shoot. Check out what happened to Bartolo Colon in the 1999 ALDS (post above).
Cash clearly decided they weren't going to do that, before the series started. As for Baz, he's set up to pull a Pivetta tonight.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 4:57:11 GMT -5
Here is a full list of Rays pitchers who were not used in this game:
-McClanahan -Baz -Wacha -McHugh
Wacha and Baz each threw more than 2 innings on Friday. McClanahan threw 5 innings on Thursday.
Cash has a heck of a puzzle to solve...
No Problem
McHugh. They'll look to get 2 innings from him.
Kittredge. On no days rest, 1 inning.
Fairbanks. Ditto.
Feyereisen. He's gone 1.2 on 0 days rest, and after more pitches (18) then he threw yesterday (11), but he gave up 2 hits, 2 walks, and 2 runs. So expect an inning.
Super Side
Wacha hasn't pitched on 2 days rest since 8/28/13, and Baz has never done it, but pitching on 2 days rest is like a side session that matters. (Some guys throw on one days rest and some on two; we don't have that info for them.) You could see two innings each; if they can't complete them, then the following guys get in the mix.
Valid for a Limited Time Only?
Chargois threw 20 pitches. The last time he pitched the day after he threw that many or more was 9/23/16, but he threw one pitch and had it hit for a 2B. He did pitch the day after throwing 19 this year with the Mariners, but that was with 2 outs, and he struck out Matt Chapman looking on 8 pitches. OTOH, he has thrown 35 and 36 pitches total on consecutive days with Rays, so there's a (probably small) possibility that they would use him for a full inning rather than just with 2 outs.
Proceed with Caution?
Wisler has a career .956 OPS allowed when pitching two days in a row, versus .778 overall. This year it was 1.337 (29 PA) versus .672. His only good outing was his August 1 save against us, however. He wasn't hit as hard as it seemed yesterday, as Kiké's leadoff liner to 3B was only 87.9. Only Xander smoked him (108.6, .750).
Comes in, Handy
Fleming has never pitched in back-to-back games. But he's the only lefty in the pen, and there's a first time for everything. Likelier to finish an inning than throw a whole one, I think.
Don't Be Cruel?
Patino has never pitched two days in a row, either. They still hope he can be a starter, so there's no need to give him a "get on the horse that threw you" moment. And they've got as many as 9 guys in front of him, so why not give him a day off after losing last night?
Break Glass in Case of Emergency?
McClanahan's being saved for game 5, but you can see a scenario where there's no one left to close out a lead. As I just noted, he's never pitched on 3 days rest in his life, but again, this could be like a side session for him.
No Pitching
Robertson just threw 40 pitches, his most since 6/1/16. In fact, he hasn't thrown 40 pitches total in consecutive days since 8/25/17. In 2016, he got 6 days rest and then faced 5 batters, giving up a homer and three singles. He's not pitching in game 4, and maybe not in any game 5, either.
Rasmussen has pitched on 0 days rest three times as a reliever, but after a max of 21 pitches. He threw 31 yesterday. And as a starter, the Rays gave him extra rest.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 4:20:35 GMT -5
If I am the Rays, I give serious consideration to starting McClanahan on three days rest. I give him three to five innings based on pitch count and circumstances if the Sox have not knocked him out on their own. I follow with Patino who only pitched one inning. If the series goes five, I have the game two starter on regular rest. I would rather bet on McClanahan for openers than Wacha. As a Sox supporter, I am hoping for Wacha. You have to win both games, right? And McClanahan, your best pitcher, is available to pitch one, correct? So why would you have him pitch on 3 days rest, something he's never done professionally and probably has never done in his life, rather than on 5 days rest, which he's done often? Baz in game 5 is not obviously better than today's expected bullpen game.
The Rays are in precisely the same situation as the Sox were in 1998, when they needed to win 2 against the Indians, and had a choice between Pete Schourek and Pedro, each on 5 days rest, or Pedro on 3 days rest followed by Schourek on 7 days. Jimy Williams understood that the goal is not to get to game 5, but to get to the ALCS. And did the former. And they would have won game 4 if Williams had kept a dominant Derek Lowe in to pitch the 8th and used Tom Gordon for the 9th, rather than sending Gordan out for a 2-inning save, something he's done just twice all year, with a 4.50 ERA. I'd forgotten about that, and I'm still pissed.
And of course the next year the Indians screwed up royally by not having any kind of long man on their post-season roster. Game 3 starter Dave Burba had to leave after 4 1-hit innings, and Mike Hargrove panicked by bringing in his game 4 starter, Jaret Wight, who promptly caughed up their 1-0 lead. Bartolo Colon, who had put up an 8 5 2 2 3 11 line in his game 1 victory, then had to pitch game 4 on 3 days rest and posted 1 6 7 7 3 1. That was the legendary 23-7 blowout which set up the legendary injured-Pedro 6 no-hit innings.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 11, 2021 2:35:52 GMT -5
Also, I’d be curious to test this theory, but I think strikeout-heavy, HR-dependent offenses are highly vulnerable against low-walk pitchers when they’re trailing. Basically it’s hard to manufacture rallies without multiple walks and those pitchers can take the risk in giving up a solo HR Sounds very reasonable. Those offenses also tend to feast on bad pitching and fare relatively less well in the post-season. The two things might be related. To be fair to the umpires, they should just eliminate the umpire's discretion part of ground rule doubles that the MLB Network booth kept referring to. Maybe isn't fair in cases like this, but at least there's no controversy around it. I have no idea what they were talking about with umpire's discretion, which is for obstruction / interference only, I think.
Including Chris's tweet, four folks here noted that the 2-run homer rendered the entire "ground rule" double thing moot. But neither announcer did.
I've long felt that the rule should be changed: with two outs (when the runner is always off on contact), a ball that bounces into the stands in fair territory scores the runner. (Yes, "in fair territory" leaves Tony Clark without an RBI! The intent is to not go overboard and give extra credit for a pop fly down the line, which is already a positive break for the batting team, and where the ball bouncing into the stands seems like justice restored.)
For this play, there's a sense that the fielding team should not be rewarded for accidentally knocking the ball out of play, but the 2-out rule change would cover that. Ground rule doubles with 2 outs, where the runner almost always scores, have always been a terrible bad break. The MLB network post-game talked about how the play tonight changed the momentum, but the psychological effect of the regular version of that play would have been identical.
----
Apparently no one heard Cora say that Robles was sick and actually threw up after he left the game. That he actually got two outs was to his credit, and you can't really knock him for giving it a try, even if it proved to be ill-advised.
Loved the bit about Pivetta getting Eovadi's contract ... but he's three seasons from free agency. At this moment he's not looking like a future fourth starter; more like a #3 and maybe a #2. With 3 or 4 more years from Sale, 5 years of control of Whitlock, and six of of Houck, we should be in very good shape for a while. And -- just saying -- so far, Bloom is averaging one potential top-mid rotation starter per year, acquired for almost literally nothing.
Wouldn't it be nice if CV retained his 2019-20 power stroke for the remainder of the post-season? It's basically a homer per 6 games, so that would be one for each of the next two series, if that happens.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 10, 2021 14:00:40 GMT -5
*cough* try streaming *cough cough* LOL. Even though some of us might be "old timers" i think we know what streaming is. The larger point is that it seems a weird way to market your game. Make watching it as difficult as you can. i think the guys have pointed out, they can't even get MLB Network. I checked, this is the only remaining game they are going to cover. I tried last week downloading the app. I tried using a buddy's satellite account. it wasn't easy and i gave up trying. is that what a business should want ? I may decide to sign up for Sling or Fubo in the next hour, well see. They do one post-season game a year.
This would make sense, from a greed POV, if all cable providers carried the MLB network and it was a monthly add-on. It makes a lot less sense if there are providers who don't have it at all ... and why the hell is that?
Pretty sure that Fubo has NESN.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 10, 2021 13:42:16 GMT -5
Decision today, who bats 7th, Renfroe or Dalbec? Latter lineup has Schwarber in LF and Dugie in RF. (Cora has said he's sticking with the same 1 through 6).
Well, Rasmussen is essentially a two-pitch guy, FB and slider, and Dalbec has hit the slider hard since he got "hot" while the slider is the go-to pitch to get Renfroe out. So the facts that that Renfroe is struggling right now and that he hasn't hit Rasmussen in his 6 PA are just gravy. Rasmussen's strong numbers against the Sox in the 64 PA against him are warped by the guys not on the postseason roster -- 12 PA (19% of the total), .087 xwOBA, .104 wOBA. Against the guys on the roster, he's .319, .305, which is average pitching with good defense and a little karma. Only 6 guys have faced him 6 or more times and 5 are on the Sox.
Matchups of 8 PA are barely meaningful, but collectively this is interesting: Name PA wOBA xwOBA Schwarber, Kyle 5 .176 .246 Hernandez, Enr. 6 .377 .372 Devers, Rafael 8 .352 .353 Bogaerts, Xand. 4 .346 .507 Verdugo, Alex 6 .615 .311 Martinez, J.D. 9 .195 .265 Dalbec, Bobby 1 .000 .000 Plawecki, Kevin 2 .000 .281 Renfroe, Hunter 6 .207 .258 Vazquez, Chris. 5 .352 .326 We've got some hitters who are going well who have already handled him well ... lined up.
Yeah, well, they're going with Renfroe.
Personally I'd rather they get Dalbec a little more involved. They don't seem to trust him at all against any hard-throwing righties, but with his much-improved strike zone management I think he has the ability to work around that issue by fouling balls off (as he did in his last AB on Friday) and waiting for his pitch. It's not like Renfroe is so amazing against righties.
(NB: When questioning Cora's lineups, I have been wrong ~100% of the time.)
Let's hope that this meant that Renfroe took some serious BP yesterday and they think they've fixed a flaw. That might be enough to go with the better defensive OF.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 10, 2021 13:20:40 GMT -5
Decision today, who bats 7th, Renfroe or Dalbec? Latter lineup has Schwarber in LF and Dugie in RF. (Cora has said he's sticking with the same 1 through 6).
Well, Rasmussen is essentially a two-pitch guy, FB and slider, and Dalbec has hit the slider hard since he got "hot" while the slider is the go-to pitch to get Renfroe out. So the facts that that Renfroe is struggling right now and that he hasn't hit Rasmussen in his 6 PA are just gravy. Rasmussen's strong numbers against the Sox in the 64 PA against him are warped by the guys not on the postseason roster -- 12 PA (19% of the total), .087 xwOBA, .104 wOBA. Against the guys on the roster, he's .319, .305, which is average pitching with good defense and a little karma. Only 6 guys have faced him 6 or more times and 5 are on the Sox.
Matchups of 8 PA are barely meaningful, but collectively this is interesting: Name PA wOBA xwOBA Schwarber, Kyle 5 .176 .246 Hernandez, Enr. 6 .377 .372 Devers, Rafael 8 .352 .353 Bogaerts, Xand. 4 .346 .507 Verdugo, Alex 6 .615 .311 Martinez, J.D. 9 .195 .265 Dalbec, Bobby 1 .000 .000 Plawecki, Kevin 2 .000 .281 Renfroe, Hunter 6 .207 .258 Vazquez, Chris. 5 .352 .326 We've got some hitters who are going well who have already handled him well ... lined up.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 10, 2021 1:51:05 GMT -5
Too many Red Sox thoughts, and way too many things to (try to) get done on the off day... irresistible force meets object with, alas, the immovability of Jello.
I just discovered that Kiké's turn-around began not on June 27 but June 19. They moved him down from lead off and back twice (on June 5 and 19), each time giving him two off days after the demotion. He started hitting immediately after the second demotion. His O-Swing shrunk dramatically. I'll run the full numbers later, but Struggling to Become New Kiké was a 72 - 77 wRC+ hitter and Actual New Kiké is 150 - 156. If you exclude the 9 post-COVID days when he had a -23 wRC+ (and obviously you should), Kiké Hernandez has the second best player in MLB (to Juan Soto, by fWAR ) since June 19. It's past 300 PA, now. Houck's best pitch this year has been his splitter. And that's a segue for part 2 or 3, thoughts on the rest of the series. The other is a set of Dugie / Mookie clutch observations.
I've pretty much thought Kiké was the best player on the field during the second half. He doesn't get much credit though because his season slash lines don't say that. I'm not sure what basis you are using for deciding Houck's best pitch is his splitter but that's not the picture I get watching him. Something I pointed out earlier that you pooh-poohed is detailed by Houck himself in this article and makes it pretty obvious that slider evaluation can no longer by measured by normal average break analytics: www.audacy.com/weei/sports/red-sox/how-tanner-houcks-happy-accident-helped-the-red-sox?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitterAnd yes, Vazquez knows which variant is coming, at least in a general sense. About the only thing I got wrong was that I thought there were three variants. I thought that because Vazquez has three different ways he moves his glove before the actual break. I now have a Kiké spreadsheet with exactly 80 columns. He had 222 PA with a 72 wRC+, then 328 with a 150. And, sure, there's some luck there -- the expected numbers are 69 and 152. That's 1.5 fWAR per 150 G to 8.0. Much more thrilling detail later.
Houck's splitter has the highest Run Value per 100 pitches. Pure results. And I don't recall pooh-poohing anything that made Houck look more promising. His 2020 slider was in the 99th percentile in movement.
Statcast (Savant) can do release points and strike zone locations, but not horizontal and vertical movement.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 9, 2021 11:22:49 GMT -5
Too many Red Sox thoughts, and way too many things to (try to) get done on the off day... irresistible force meets object with, alas, the immovability of Jello.
JDM's go-ahead bomb was my favorite moment of his in a Red Sox uni. Never been happier, both for the outcome and for what it says about his approach.
I just discovered that Kiké's turn-around began not on June 27 but June 19. They moved him down from lead off and back twice (on June 5 and 19), each time giving him two off days after the demotion. He started hitting immediately after the second demotion. His O-Swing shrunk dramatically. I'll run the full numbers later, but Struggling to Become New Kiké was a 72 - 77 wRC+ hitter and Actual New Kiké is 150 - 156. If you exclude the 9 post-COVID days when he had a -23 wRC+ (and obviously you should), Kiké Hernandez has the second best player in MLB (to Juan Soto, by fWAR ) since June 19. It's past 300 PA, now.
Houck's best pitch this year has been his splitter.
It certainly appears that Fox Sports has someone who gathers info to pass on to Smoltz, as they did eventually mention Houck's virtual perfect game. Presumably, there is a pre-series briefing document, with stuff like pitchers' repertoires. (Note that Eck runs it down every time a new opposing pitcher enters the game.) But it's also obvious that Smoltz reads nothing they give him. Calling Houck's splitter a changeup, and then later noting that it had splitter-like action ... he should be embarassed.
What's with holding the camera on a hitter after he's hit an apparent bomb, rather than showing us the flight of the ball? They actually kept the camera on Dugie for his entire pose and his first two steps towards first. On what planet is seeing that more interesting than seeing where the ball is headed, how far it's carrying, and what the fielder is doing? There were a couple of other moments of directorial ineptitude, where they had no clue as to what to show us.
I am as strongly pro-vax as you could imagine, but the next person who raises this issue in the game thread? I'm going to hunt you down and make you watch A-Rod commentary, Clockwork Orange style. I have the gear in my Amazon cart.
Has any post-season team ever gotten homers from five consecutive batting order slots in a game? We had 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Luplow was 2 for 6 in his career in balls above the zone from LHP (meaning he's not a chaser), but one of the 2 was off of Sale earlier this year. I don't think it was a terrible call in a vacuum -- the apparent problem was that it was predictable. Luplpw can't hit that out unless he's sitting on it.
1 for 4 sounds like an off day to old-school types. I've always regarded 1 for 4 with a walk and a double, which is a very common batting line, as the poster child for modern metrics, as that's a .400 OBP and .500 SA. Devers had two walks and a homer and hence a .500 OBP and 1.000 SA. And one of his outs was a 108.5 mph barrel that went 407' and had an .870 xBA, and was turned into an out by a magician. It should be illegal to note that he was 1 for 4 without noting the rest. It may be the best 1 for 4 in post-season history -- you'd have to walk three times to top it, and I doubt that's happened, and it's unlikely that anyone else with two walks had as hard an out as he did.
Barnes EV's: 77.3 (but .890 xBA), 80.1, 79.1. He stuff seems back to his post-sticky best. The FB command remains frustratingly come-and-go. (What's with missing to his glove side in pitch after pitch, outing after outing?) I'd say he has a 50/50 chance of his recovering it ...
And that's a segue for part 2 or 3, thoughts on the rest of the series. The other is a set of Dugie / Mookie clutch observations.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 8, 2021 19:44:21 GMT -5
Fact you should have heard already: that's 15 K's in Houck's 9 perfect innings.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 7, 2021 23:37:06 GMT -5
That Arozarena steal of home is going to sting for awhile. If CV has the presence of mind to realize that there are 2 strikes and 2 outs, and just sets up a target in the middle of the zone, and Taylor realizes what he's doing, and throws any kind of strike, the inning is over before Arozarena reaches home. There's no rule that says you have to contest every SB. It's no different than ignoring a runner trying to steal second by trying to get the batter out.
And in fact, even if the pitch arrives after him, the run doesn't count because the 3rd out was made on the same play before the batter reached first.
I trust this will be the last time you ever see a straight steal of home attempt with 2 strikes and 2 outs. Once the defense learns how to deal with it, it becomes a bonehead play.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 7, 2021 16:41:26 GMT -5
It's unclear that the Dodgers would have even made the playoffs this year if you swapped them and the Jays. The AL played .556 ball against the NL (167-133). There are other takes on the best teams. BR uses the SRS (simple rating system). And it is simple: the run differential and strength of schedule both play a part. How it's calculated isn't quite as simple: it's done iteratively with a set of 30 equations, one for each team that naturally involves all the other teams they've played. Each estimate for each team changes all the equations for the other teams. But their is a "fixed point" toward which the iterations converge. That gives you the SRS value for each team - using computing power of course. In that baseball-world view, the Dodgers had the best rating at 1.6 with the Rays at 1.3 and three coming in at 1.2: the Giants, Astros, and Blue Jays. The Red Sox come in at .6, behind the White Sox and Braves. I'd venture that the run differential had a large part in that rating. There were many times this season when the starters turned a nice lead over to the pen only to have that result in a tight win or one of the many losses they had in the second half. And the Jays certainly built up their rating on the back of endless blowouts they had. There's another column for luck (and you can sort on those columns with a click on the header). That's the difference between the actual results and the so-called pythagorean expectation. We could all think this through and come up with our best guess about that - without looking at the numbers - and, sure enough, Seattle was way ahead of the pack winning 14 more games than expected! No other team had more than 6 (NYY), and the Boston was at 4. The Blue Jays meanwhile, were near the bottom winning 8 games less than expected. Intuitively, that all seems to make sense. The run differential has to be a huge part of it to have the Jays as twice as good as the Sox, and it's a demonstrable error to base the SOS adjustment on mostly expected wins. If you had to play 19 games against a team that was crazy good in the clutch, and lost games because of it, you have to factor that in.
I do mine (also iteratively) based on 50% actual results and 50% Base Runs W/L (or whatever I can find that comes closest). RS and RA still have a lot of noise relative to talent.
It's also easy to show that the game-by-game standard deviation of RS and RA is a big factor in W/L record, and it isn't random at all. Ideally, you'd find how the mean and SD of Base Runs RS and RA predicts W/L, and use that Win% as the actual team talent measure.
Oh, and there is also demonstrable effect of good relief pitching on "luck." Once you have an accurate "luck" figure, you can do derive a kick-ass formula for measuring the real bullpen effect.
It just occurs to me to try to do two separate adjustments, one for pure W/L and one for pure Base Runs W/L. The spreadsheet is already set up to do two separate calculations, so that wouldn't be that much trouble.
Finally, for post-season projections you of course have to use the current roster, with projected PT. And if you want to get artful about it, you look at every player, find the ones who have been better or worse statistically past a certain point, and then derive a weight for the altered performance versus the baseline. But this is actually a huge study designed to spot real, predictive changes in performance. Call it the J.D. Bautista affect. Looking at their projections for the year after their breakout is almost comical.
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