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Reversal of Fortune

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 10:39 AM

Win probability by event, from the bottom of the eighth inning, NYN@STL, 4/25/2022.



Bottom of Eighth Inning, Cardinals at Bat



　Score is tied, 0-0.



　　　Trevor May pitching for Mets.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 41.4%



　　　Yadier Molina singles to left.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 33.8%



　　　Harrison Bader singles to left. Yadier Molina advances to second.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 24.4%



　　　Brendan Donovan pinch-runs for Yadier Molina.



　　　Tommy Edman grounds out, pitcher to secondbaseman to firstbaseman covering first. Brendan

　　　Donovan advances to third. Harrison Bader advances to second. One out.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.4%



　　　Paul Goldschmidt walks.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.6%



　　　Tyler O'Neill singles to left. Brendan Donovan scores. Harrison Bader scores. Paul Goldschmidt advances to second.



　Cardinals Lead, 2-0.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 4.3%



　　　Nolan Arrenado strikes out swinging. Two out.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 5.2%



　　　Corey Dickerson flies out to right. Three out.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 6.1%



=#002D72]Top of Ninth Inning, Mets at Bat



　Cardinals Lead, 2-0.



　　　Giovanny Gallegos pitching for Cardinals.



　　　Pete Alonso flies out to center. One out.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 2.8%



　　　Eduardo Escobar singles to center.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 7.3%



　　　Robinson Canó flies out to left. Two out.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 3.0%



　　　Eduardo Escobar advances to second on defensive indifference.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 3.3%



　　　Mark Canha singles to third. (Others might well have scored this an error.) Eduardo Escobar scores on throwing error by Nolan Arrenado.



　Cardinals Lead, 2-1.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 7.1%



　　　Travis Jankowski pinch-runs for Mark Canha.



　　　Jeff McNeil doubles to right. Travis Jankowski advances to third.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 19.2%



　　　Dominic Smith singles to first. Travis Jankowski scores. Jeff McNeil scores.



　=#002D72]Mets Lead, 3-2.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 84.3%



　　　Brandon Nimmo homers to right field. Dominic Smith scores. Brandon Nimmo scores.



　=#002D72]Mets Lead, 5-2.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 97.0%



　　　Starling Marte strikes out looking.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 96.9%



Bottom of Ninth Inning, Cardinals at Bat



　=#002D72]Mets Lead, 5-2.



　　　Edwin Díaz pitching.



　　　Dylan Carlson pops out to third.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 98.7%



　　　Edmundo Sosa strikes out swinging.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 99.7%



　　　Andrew Knizner walks.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 98.8%



　　　Andrew Knizner advances to second on defensive indifference.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 98.7%



　　　Harrison Bader strikes out swinging.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 100.0%



　=#002D72]Mets Win, 5-2.



https://metsrostercentral.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/screen-shot-2022-04-26-at-11.28.03-am.png>

roger_that
Apr 26 2022 10:42 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Most exciting baseball since Game Six.

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 10:46 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

With an infield hit in his lone plate appearance, Dom Smith may well earn your PotG vote despite the terrific start by Scherzer.



He gets mine!

Benjamin Grimm
Apr 26 2022 10:46 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Edgy MD wrote:



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.4%



　　　Paul Goldschmidt walks.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.6%




Interesting that Goldschmidt walking slightly increased the chances of the Mets winning. Were "they" expecting that Goldschmidt was likely to do something more damaging than drawing a walk?

metsmarathon
Apr 26 2022 10:52 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

shoot, i may have to wind up little old m.e.t.b.o.t. after that game!



i believe the drop in win expectancy is because now with a runner on first, you have more ways to get out of the inning with no further damage, including and especially via a GIDP, which are slightly more likely to occur than the ways in which more runs can score. historically. i guess.

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 10:55 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Yeah, a lot of things Goldschmidt could have done there would have been more damaging than drawing a walk, including a modestly deep groundout or a modestly deep flyout. That's why the intentional walk was on the table, and it's certainly what I would have done.



Buck opted not to go in that direction, as per his post-game comments, because he respects Tyler O'Neill's batting skillz and he thinks O'Neill is a particularly difficult guy to double up, neither of which would be particularly intuited by the win expectancy measurement.



I still would have intentionally walked him, but O'Neill's base hit supports Buck's position to a meaningful extent.

metsmarathon
Apr 26 2022 10:59 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

btw, m.e.t.b.o.t. woulda shaeffered as follows:



smith 5.10

scherzer 3.21

mcneil 0.71

canha 0.56

diaz 0.24

escobar 0.15

nimmo 0.02

Frayed Knot
Apr 26 2022 11:10 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Benjamin Grimm wrote:

Edgy MD wrote:



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.4%



　　　Paul Goldschmidt walks.



　　Mets Win Expectancy: 22.6%




Interesting that Goldschmidt walking slightly increased the chances of the Mets winning. Were "they" expecting that Goldschmidt was likely to do something more damaging than drawing a walk?


No, it's the force play factor.

Like we were discussing the other day, these probabilities are generic so the situation is factored in but not specifically Goldschmidt and his Goldschmidtedness. It's just Joe Batter up there as far as the odds are concerned.

batmagadanleadoff
Apr 26 2022 12:10 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=metsmarathon post_id=90415 time=1650992362 user_id=83]
btw, m.e.t.b.o.t. woulda shaeffered as follows:



smith 5.10

scherzer 3.21

mcneil 0.71

canha 0.56

diaz 0.24

escobar 0.15

nimmo 0.02





I've always hated that WPA stat - for so many reasons. One of them is that, here, for example, Dom"s getting lotsa credit for the hits and baserunning of both Canha and McNeil.

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 12:20 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

It does, but RBI does the same, and ERA credits the pitcher for quality defense that has little to do with him. Dom is also getting credit for Gallego being slow to get off the mound, and he's losing credit because Goldschmidt makes a terrific stop, neither of which have much to do with him.



It's a team sport and statistically extracting the performance of one guy from the team's outcome is always going to be a challenge. But we're moving in the right direction.

batmagadanleadoff
Apr 26 2022 12:28 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

I'm not a big RBI fan either. At least with the RBI producing at-bat, though, someone else is getting credit for a run scored. And now there's FIP.

ashie62
Apr 26 2022 12:40 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

That's why the play the games, right?

batmagadanleadoff
Apr 26 2022 12:47 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=ashie62 post_id=90432 time=1650998419 user_id=90]
That's why the play the games, right?



I give up. Why do they play the games?

Chad ochoseis
Apr 26 2022 02:22 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Frayed Knot wrote:





No, it's the force play factor.

Like we were discussing the other day, these probabilities are generic so the situation is factored in but not specifically Goldschmidt and his Goldschmidtedness. It's just Joe Batter up there as far as the odds are concerned.


That's why the baseball gods invented the intentional walk. Buck should have just held up 4 fingers there. Even more so because it was one of the best hitters in the game at bat.

Frayed Knot
Apr 26 2022 02:27 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

I would have IW'd him too. And for Ronnie to be any more adamant about the free pass he would have had to actually be Adam Ant.



The result of Buck's method was ultimately the same, just with more stress on his pitcher ... not to mention on us.

roger_that
Apr 26 2022 04:08 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Frayed Knot wrote:

I would have IW'd him too. And for Ronnie to be any more adamant about the free pass he would have had to actually be Adam Ant.



The result of Buck's method was ultimately the same, just with more stress on his pitcher ... not to mention on us.


Wonder if the odds bear you out on the IBB.



Let's say the greatest hitter in the game is up there. Willie "Babe" Trout is a .350 hitter with50 HR power when you're trying to get him out, i.e., throwing some pitches into the part of the strike zone that he favors least.



What happens to those .350/50 numbers if you're determined to pitch him where he doesn't like the ball, only you're trying to put it six inches off the plate?



Probably, 70% of the time you end up walking him anyway, because Willie "Babe" Trout knows the strike zone. Which is the same result as an IBB. But the other 30% of the time, you've reduced those gaudy numbers to mere human levels, .275/20 or something like that.

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 04:17 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

That's mostly all there, but I would disagree that the end result is the same as an intentional walk. For one, the pitcher is spending his bullets — and perhaps some of his best bullets — on a batter he's 70% (in your model) likely to walk anyhow. For two, pitching around a guy can lead to wild pitches and passed balls, and with the go-ahead run on third, that's some powerful poison you're messing with. Those aren't really factored into the data, but I'm sure feed into the thinking of most managers facing the decision.



While I'm on Team Intentional Walk here, the downside is that a pitcher loses a lot of his margin for error. A walk or hit-by pitch plates the runner on third.



I go for the walk based on:



1. it setting up the double play,



2. it setting up the force at home (or third, to a lesser extent),



3. having one less high quality hitter to face.



I respect Buck's reasoning, and in fairness, May ended up coming pretty close to getting Arrenado.

roger_that
Apr 26 2022 04:41 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Apr 26 2022 04:42 PM

Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast episode on the dumb stuff sports teams do systematically and reflexively that studies have proven are counter-productive. The IBB may be one of those. There are those who simply counsel "Never* IBB anyone ever cuz more times than not it bites you on your ass." That is, the number of runs that result after IBBs is much greater than the number of runs if you pitch to guys in IBB situations.



Gladwell doesn't use it as an example, but his NFL and NBA examples of dumb persistent counterproductive policy decisions are wonderful: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/the-big-man-cant-shoot/







*not literally. With Babe Ruth at the plate, and Dean Chance on deck with no pinchhitters available for Chance, and men on second and third, okay, go fer it!

Johnny Lunchbucket
Apr 26 2022 04:41 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

I'm glad Godschmidt's great stop came up. That could very easily been double for Dom and no drama. You got to think that Gallegos musta figured base hit off the bat contributing to the slow response

roger_that
Apr 26 2022 04:43 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote:
Gallegos musta figured base hit off the bat contributing to the slow response

No excuse, really. What, was he doing something more important than running his ass off to 1B at that moment?

Frayed Knot
Apr 26 2022 05:05 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune


Probably, 70% of the time you end up walking him anyway, because Willie "Babe" Trout knows the strike zone. Which is the same result as an IBB. But the other 30% of the time, you've reduced those gaudy numbers to mere human levels, .275/20 or something like that.


Providing said pitcher can put his pitches where he wants, which if he could he probably wouldn't be in that predicament in the first place.

I'm on team-IW for the same reason Edgy mentions: sets up the all-around force and it's Goldschmidt.

Of course there's a downside to it, there always is.



In a NYM board from another era, some of us here frequently heard cries of 'Walk him every time up!!' whenever some Met-killer-du-jour stepped up to the plate.

Explaining the pure 'dumpth' of that reasoning was exasperating (this board was essentially created to avoid dopes like that) but I'm also not going to go to the other

extreme and perch myself on planet 'Never IW' either. I won't advocate the 'Four Fingers of Fate' too often but I would have there.

Johnny Lunchbucket
Apr 26 2022 06:32 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune


Johnny Lunchbucket wrote:
Gallegos musta figured base hit off the bat contributing to the slow response

No excuse, really. What, was he doing something more important than running his ass off to 1B at that moment?


Of course not. I'm just trying to ascribe some motive for his laziness. I would be surprised if he'd have lollygagged against a more tradional first-baseman-off-tge-bag kinda play

Edgy MD
Apr 26 2022 06:35 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

And hey, Malcolm Gladwell is no dummy, but a world of data crunched together still suggests the intentional walk gave the Mets a marginally better chance of winning, without considering the batters.



I could talk about the plusses and minuses of the walk in that situation all night. And I was up late last night thinking about. It was part of the reason I launched this thread, and I'm delighted that Grimm noticed that Arrenado's walk was listed as a disadvantage to his team.



But staying up all night talking about it is one thing. The manager only has a few moments to make the call.

roger_that
Apr 27 2022 04:45 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Edgy MD wrote:

I'm delighted that Grimm noticed that Arrenado's walk was listed as a disadvantage to his team.



But staying up all night talking about it is one thing. The manager only has a few moments to make the call.


Definitely interesting to have Arenado's walk so noted.



But the "manager only has a few moments to make the call" is both true and, in Gladwell's larger sense, completely false. In his sense, managers have had over a century to come up with the answer and they (may have) come up with the wrong one. I'm just speculating here, because he never addressed this particular issue of IBB, but if you take the half hour to listen to that episode, it's amazing the things that very smart people in sports do all the time that are completely contrary to their own aims, and IBB may be among them. Wilt Chamberlain, for example, may have won several more championships, and certainly many more games, if he had been willing to do one small thing to improve his game, and NFL teams may be managing their draft picks all wrong. But they persist in doing so, not because they're dumb, but because that's how they've always done it.



Anyway, I don't mean to hijack this thread so maybe it's best to raise it elsewhere, and discuss the larger issue on its own merits, or lack thereof.

roger_that
Apr 27 2022 04:53 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote:


Johnny Lunchbucket wrote:
Gallegos musta figured base hit off the bat contributing to the slow response

No excuse, really. What, was he doing something more important than running his ass off to 1B at that moment?


Of course not. I'm just trying to ascribe some motive for his laziness. I would be surprised if he'd have lollygagged against a more tradional first-baseman-off-tge-bag kinda play


Okay, noted. But this is strangely the same issue that Edgy MD just raised with me, that of a lack of time to make the wisest choice. It's often unnoted how vital split-second thinking is to sports in general. We never think of this as an athletic quality, but so many games depend on instantaneous thinking rather than strength, or speed, or physical agility, and it's certainly much harder to notice, as a fan. We say "Wow what a great throw to third base from the right-field corner" but we don't say, "In addition to the strength and accuracy of his throwing arm, how the hell did he figure out which base to throw to in the quarter-second between catching the ball and fishing it out of his mitt?"

Frayed Knot
Apr 27 2022 05:21 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

But the "manager only has a few moments to make the call" is both true and, in Gladwell's larger sense, completely false. In his sense, managers have had over a century to come up with the answer and they (may have) come up with the wrong one.


Except that each situation is different so neither the 'Always IBB in that case' or 'Never IBB' is the correct call. One may be the better option today but the

other tomorrow based on a whole host of factors. The Bill James-led statistical revolution correctly pointed out the poor results from the near-automatic

use of the man-on-1st/no-out Sac Bunt that was in vogue for most of the 20th century but that's not the same as advocating it be scrapped forever.



As related by Gary last night, Buck cited the speed on O'Neil hitting behind Goldschmidt (reducing GiDP odds) and moving one batter closer to Arenado

as his primary reasons for Not walking Goldschmidt intentionally. And, as we all know, they pitched to him carefully and walked him anyway.

roger_that
Apr 27 2022 07:05 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Frayed Knot wrote:

But the "manager only has a few moments to make the call" is both true and, in Gladwell's larger sense, completely false. In his sense, managers have had over a century to come up with the answer and they (may have) come up with the wrong one.


Except that each situation is different so neither the 'Always IBB in that case' or 'Never IBB' is the correct call. One may be the better option today but the

other tomorrow based on a whole host of factors. The Bill James-led statistical revolution correctly pointed out the poor results from the near-automatic

use of the man-on-1st/no-out Sac Bunt that was in vogue for most of the 20th century but that's not the same as advocating it be scrapped forever.



As related by Gary last night, Buck cited the speed on O'Neil hitting behind Goldschmidt (reducing GiDP odds) and moving one batter closer to Arenado

as his primary reasons for Not walking Goldschmidt intentionally. And, as we all know, they pitched to him carefully and walked him anyway.

I'm not saying anything so absolute as "Never" or "Always."



What I am saying is that, maybe, the IBB is called for ten times, or a hundred times, more than it should be.



What I'm saying is that in 100 "IBB?" situations, if you go for the IBB all 100, 200 runs will score in that inning from that point forward, and if you go for it 0 times, 75 runs will score from that point forward, so you need to be FAR more selective than managers have been.



But managers are reluctant to look at the overall numbers, because 1) tradition and 2) if you buck the odds, the blame attaches to you. "Why didn't you walk him? With men on second and third, he hit a 3-run HR and won the game" makes you look stupid, whereas if you'd put him on first and they ended up scoring 10 runs in that inning, it's still defensible.



What I suspect is that managers issue IBBs for many different reasons:



to gain a platoon advantage

to avoid a powerful hitter

to force the other manager to pinchhit for the guy batting after the IBB

to set up the DP



and that all four, or at least three, need to apply, to reach the breakeven point, but managers go for the IBB if only one or two apply. Also other factors: late in the game, with a very small lead, or none at all, or at home/on the road. There might be ten factors, and nine of them are needed for the IBB to make sense.



Food for thought anyway. This might be an example of an exploitable strategic inequity.

Edgy MD
Apr 27 2022 07:13 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Fun Fact: The Mets have issued but two intentional walks* so far this young season. More interesting is that puts them in the top half of the league. Twelve of 16 National League teams have issued zero or one intentional walks.



* Both occurred in the same game. The Mets ended up getting out of both situations with no runs scoring. In both situations, there were two out.

metsmarathon
Apr 27 2022 07:15 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=90428 time=1650996622 user_id=68]
=metsmarathon post_id=90415 time=1650992362 user_id=83]
btw, m.e.t.b.o.t. woulda shaeffered as follows:



smith 5.10

scherzer 3.21

mcneil 0.71

canha 0.56

diaz 0.24

escobar 0.15

nimmo 0.02





I've always hated that WPA stat - for so many reasons. One of them is that, here, for example, Dom"s getting lotsa credit for the hits and baserunning of both Canha and McNeil.


m.e.t.b.o.t. was always focused entirely on outcomes. well, at least as focused as a little tin, cardboard, and duct tape creation could possibly focus on anything, what with his makeshift assembly of used vcr parts cobbled together from the refuse bin behind an abandoned radio shack. the little fella would tell you, if he could talk, mind you, that the baserunning of canha and mcneil couldn't've happened if not for dom's efforts, nor could the defensive miscues, at least per his operating algorithms.



he's not perfect, as he's somewhat poorly designed and certainly poorly constructed, but he always brought a unique perspective to the game, that may or may not have merit.



for the record, m.e.t.b.o.t. always was sure to credit the most recent butterfly to flap its wings for the results of any hurricane. he likes to take chaos theory to its extreme illogical conclusion. he's a strange little robot.

Edgy MD
Apr 27 2022 07:21 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=metsmarathon post_id=90415 time=1650992362 user_id=83]but he always brought a unique perspective to the game, that may or may not have merit.



I'm not comfortable speaking of m.e.t.b.o.t. in the past tense. Keep winding that key.

kcmets
Apr 27 2022 07:51 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=metsmarathon post_id=90555 time=1651065319 user_id=83]m.e.t.b.o.t. was always focused entirely on outcomes. well, at least as focused as a little tin, cardboard, and duct tape creation could possibly focus on anything, what with his makeshift assembly of used vcr parts cobbled together from the refuse bin behind an abandoned radio shack. the little fella would tell you, if he could talk, mind you, that the baserunning of canha and mcneil couldn't've happened if not for dom's efforts, nor could the defensive miscues, at least per his operating algorithms.



he's not perfect, as he's somewhat poorly designed and certainly poorly constructed, but he always brought a unique perspective to the game, that may or may not have merit.



for the record, m.e.t.b.o.t. always was sure to credit the most recent butterfly to flap its wings for the results of any hurricane. he likes to take chaos theory to its extreme illogical conclusion. he's a strange little robot.



Best post of 2022 so far.

Johnny Lunchbucket
Apr 27 2022 08:44 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Coach little league and you'll learn pretty quick how important preparation and anticipation is in baseball

nymr83
Apr 27 2022 09:07 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

=metsmarathon post_id=90555 time=1651065319 user_id=83]
=batmagadanleadoff post_id=90428 time=1650996622 user_id=68]
=metsmarathon post_id=90415 time=1650992362 user_id=83]
btw, m.e.t.b.o.t. woulda shaeffered as follows:



smith 5.10

scherzer 3.21

mcneil 0.71

canha 0.56

diaz 0.24

escobar 0.15

nimmo 0.02





I've always hated that WPA stat - for so many reasons. One of them is that, here, for example, Dom"s getting lotsa credit for the hits and baserunning of both Canha and McNeil.


m.e.t.b.o.t. was always focused entirely on outcomes. well, at least as focused as a little tin, cardboard, and duct tape creation could possibly focus on anything, what with his makeshift assembly of used vcr parts cobbled together from the refuse bin behind an abandoned radio shack. the little fella would tell you, if he could talk, mind you, that the baserunning of canha and mcneil couldn't've happened if not for dom's efforts, nor could the defensive miscues, at least per his operating algorithms.



he's not perfect, as he's somewhat poorly designed and certainly poorly constructed, but he always brought a unique perspective to the game, that may or may not have merit.



for the record, m.e.t.b.o.t. always was sure to credit the most recent butterfly to flap its wings for the results of any hurricane. he likes to take chaos theory to its extreme illogical conclusion. he's a strange little robot.




Nimmo 0.02? umm what? he turned a 1 run lead into a 3 run lead in the top of the last inning. that is pretty valuable.

metsmarathon
Apr 27 2022 09:48 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

well, sure. that home run added 12.8% chance of the mets winning the game, which is pretty darned good. the poor cards had but a scant 3.1% chance at that point, down from 15.9% after dom's single.



the porblem is, that wasn't the only thing nimmo did as a batter that game.



in the first inning, leading off the game, nimmo made the first out, dropping the mets' chance of winning by 2.1%

in the third inning, nimmo again made an out, with one out already in the inning, with the score tied. this dropped the mets' chance of winning by 1.6%

and in the 5th inning, nimmo made an out, again with the scored tied, with two outs and a runner on second. this dropped the mets' chance of winning by 4.5%

and finally, leading off the eighth inning with the score still tied, nimmo got out a fourth time, dropping the mets' chance of winning the game another 4.3%



so despite adding 12.8% chance of winning in his last at bat, prior to that point he had already reduced the emts' chance of winning the game by a full 12.3%



his net WPA was a scant 0.002 or 0.2% (losing a tenth of a percentage point to pesky rounding errors).



m.e.t.b.o.t. looks at a whole game in total, not a single play in isolation. he's remarkably comprehensive. context matters. he's also a connotation nerd, which usually surprises people.



he's admittedly not good at factoring in defensive contributions. he always credits a batter with a fielder having made an error, as for the error to have occurred, the batter must usually have done something to precipitate the action. but he always wanted to take the blame for defensive miscues away from the pitchers, who, he would always argue, did their job by getting the batter to hit the ball to one of his fielders. so he'd try to dig into the numbers and pull out the WPA delta attributable to errors.



where he really struggled was identifying where the pitcher failed to get the batter to hit the ball to his fielders, but one of the fielders did something incredible to get to the ball and make a play.



he'd benefit mightily by plugging into the treasure trove of statcast data available, but as near as i can tell, it's not yet available to in any kind of format that's remotely machine readable by slapdash coagulations of mismatched plastic gears housed in a repurposed child's toy. but we can still hope.

roger_that
Apr 27 2022 10:13 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote:

Coach little league and you'll learn pretty quick how important preparation and anticipation is in baseball


I have. I found it's important to prioritize, as eight-year-olds can only learn one thing at a time to look out for, and they all learn at different paces.

Frayed Knot
Apr 28 2022 05:26 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune


I'm not saying anything so absolute as "Never" or "Always."

What I am saying is that, maybe, the IBB is called for ten times, or a hundred times, more than it should be.


And I'm certainly willing to entertain the idea that MLB managers over-use the IBB, although I don't recall if anyone has tried to put forth evidence that it is nor do I have any particular opinion on

it myself. Certainly the idea that the Sac Bunt was over-used in previous eras is pretty much accepted fact by now and that current strategy is of the opinion that defensive shifts were under-used

in the past. Point is that trends in thinking can and do shift in sports even if pure momentum means it sometimes takes longer than it should.



I'm just a casual football fan but have long thought that that league is in need of a Bill James-ian kind of examination. In recent years there do seem to be some very slowly moving shifts in their

otherwise conservative mindset such as where punting on 4th-and-inches doesn't always seem to be the first and only option. Two-point attempts, except in those cases where your the situation

dictates that your team is forced into them, still appears to be the equivalent of touching the third rail for coaches but maybe that too will start to move, even if only at the speed of plate tectonics.

roger_that
Apr 28 2022 07:34 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Frayed Knot wrote:

their

otherwise conservative mindset such as where punting on 4th-and-inches doesn't always seem to be the first and only option. Two-point attempts, except in those cases where your the situation

dictates that your team is forced into them, still appears to be the equivalent of touching the third rail for coaches but maybe that too will start to move, even if only at the speed of plate tectonics.


Dunno if you've heard that Gladwell podcast I linked to above, but going for it on 4th down is one of his examples. Essentially, to boil a complex speculation down to a few words, it's a matter of macho, of being one of the "knowledgable" ones, in doing things like they've always been done--and in some cases, it's demonstrably counter-productive. That's what sabermetrics has given us: ways to exploit market inequities. If you can find something that makes no sense, but is widely followed, then you can advance your fortunes by NOT following them, at the considerable risk of being made fun of, mocked, derided, especially if it doesn't have an immediate positive result.



The example in MONEYBALL is famous, of course: sabermetrics show that OBP is the single most important offensive stat there is, yet teams cut, send down to the minors, bench, platoon all sorts of OPB wizards, who can be picked up for very cheap sometime, especially if you're willing to swap a low-OBP, high-BA "star" in exchange for them. Baseball players being what they are, sometimes this will backfire: the high-OBP star costs you a few games, say, with his lousy glove, or lack of power, and you look like an idiot for making a bad deal. Which is why GMs are unwilling to buck the system. But it's inherent to the idea of systems that something in them is inefficient, and can be exploited to your advantage.

Edgy MD
Apr 28 2022 07:59 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

A fear of going for fourth-down conversions seems like the opposite of macho, but yeah, I can see how making an annoyingly conservative choice can take on an air of intellectual machismo. And coming from a physical world of football might suggest that the intellectual realm is where coaches might feel most insecure.



I tend to think coaches are like the rest of us, and they do shit in their job that they might even suspect is stupid just for the sake of job security. It's not crazy to think that the coach who fails doing what everybody else is doing lasts longer than the coach who fails doing everything completely different.



Davy Johnson in his early years with the Mets was a revelation. He made the whole industry look stupid. Davey Johnson at each successive stop seemed more like everybody else. Davey Johnson managing Team America made me want to scream. The way he ran his team was an offense to me and everything I believed was true from having watched Davey Johnson decades earlier.



Glad he lost that 'stache though.

nymr83
Apr 28 2022 08:14 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Not sure I agree on the football thing. What could be MORE "macho" than 4th and 1 lining up and saying "we are bigger and stronger than you and running this shit down your throat"

roger_that
Apr 28 2022 08:20 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

And a phenomenon as infrequent as the IBB, whose success rate is hard to quantify, might persist for decades. After all, if it costs you games, if it's colossally counter-productive, how many games a year could it possibly cost you? One? Maybe two? And that's after weighing in the number of runs it gains for you.



Another factor in its favor is the inequality of runs. A defender of the IBB can argue that sometimes big innings don't matter, as in situations where the goal is to prevent ANY runs from scoring, since even one run reduces your chance sharply of winning that game. Say, a tie game, bottom of the ninth, men on second and third, one out, and the other team's big guy is up. That's an obvious IBB call, in that it sets up the DP, eliminates the big guy's bat, but MOST OF ALL, the big guy now on first doesn't matter. One run loses the game so that's all you need to prevent. But if the next batter hits a grand slam, on the books it would seem that the IBB cost you four runs--but you don't care if it's four runs or one run.



So not all runs are equal, which makes it even harder to quantify. But still the IBB may be a net loser.

roger_that
Apr 28 2022 08:27 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune


Not sure I agree on the football thing. What could be MORE "macho" than 4th and 1 lining up and saying "we are bigger and stronger than you and running this shit down your throat"


"Macho" might not be the most precise term. I meant it in the sense of "being one of the boys" or "not looking like a weirdo."



The term "sissy" comes up in Gladwell's explanation of why Wilt Chamberlain refused to shoot his free-throws underhand. He started out shooting free throws very poorly--40% or something like that. Then he switched to underhand, and he became pretty good at it. The season or two he shot underhand, he improved to over 60%. In his famous 100-point game against the Knicks, Gladwell, points out, he actually set the NBA record for most free throws in a game, 28. And he attempted only 32--pretty good shooting, no?



But he soon gave it up, and went back to shooting in the 40% range. Gladwell estimates that this decision cost him up to ten points in some games. And what was Wilt's explanation? "I didn't like looking like a sissy."

Frayed Knot
Apr 28 2022 10:06 AM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Yeah, I've long thought that coaches shy away from going for it on 4th down and from two point PATs because they were afraid of the backlash and second guessing that would come from failing.

I believe it's a truism that powerful coaches, who were often part of the competition committee where rules were decided, were the ones who kept the 2-point conversion out of the NFL for so

long even as it was a standard in college ball (and the AFL?? ... I forget). If it wasn't allowed then they couldn't be blamed for not using it.

NFL coaches don't have that kind of out-sized power anymore so, like baseball though to a lesser degree, some of these philosophies are being driven from the front office so I detect at least

a whiff of change even as the head coach remains a game-day autocrat.





There's a HS coach (in Arkansas I think?) who runs his team with the philosophy that they Never punt, they Always on-sides kick, Always go for two, and several other 'trick' plays such as

those ... and they almost always win. Now this is HS and their winning could be from any one of a zillion factors so I don't want to equate this to the pros, but to me it just seems like a

much more interesting game to follow and a much more FUN way to play. Plus it's not like it's hurting his school's record.





Will try to catch up on that Gladwell pod at some point.

Edgy MD
Apr 28 2022 12:10 PM
Re: Reversal of Fortune

Ten years ago, Drew Magary took a letter from a guy who wanted to know who Drew thought would be the winner in an All-Pro NFL matchup of Black players against White players. Magary acknowledged what a minefield the issue was to dive into, and then dove into it anyhow. A reader then attempted to put rosters together, and another reader played the game out on Madden 2012 (as best as he could within the confines of the game, anyhow). Recap here!



What made me remember it, apart from the two teams suiting up as the Raiders and Cowboys (I, myself, would choose the Packers or Patriots as the avatar of American Whiteness) but that the all-White team had no cornerbacks, and was forced to play some sadsack safeties out of position, and the all-Black team had no kickers, so they forced Chad Ochocinco into duty as the placekicker and decided to just go for every fourth down rather than force a guy to humiliate himself punting.