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I don't think he needs a manager or coach to scream at him about what he should have done, I'm sure he realized it before he even got off the field.
Now let's play "which second baseman had a worse game in the field". Given that a long game ended on Izturis's play, there's no reason why it should be as close as it is.
"Please don't hit to Steve Sax, either."
I was shocked to see him go for the out at second. He had no shot at the double play, and the chance for error (circus throw, wet field) was significant. Most importantly, the out at second doesn't buy you much.
But I thought the biggest problem with the move was that Melky would have stolen second anyway. No way Mathis throws down to try to get him, either.
There was really just one play, and one play only. But there's not much you can do; he made a mental error.
Note also: if Figgins is able to come up with the ball cleanly -- as he really should have -- a good throw gets Hairston at the plate pretty easily, I think. So even after the Izturis error, the Angels still had a great chance to get the out anyway.
I thought the percentages he posted were interesting. Why wouldn't they be? The players have their own version of these percentages in their head anyway. "Ground ball to my left I need to make sure of one" or whatever. Izturis just had a brain cramp. It happens. These guys have such great skills that sometimes they don't factor in that their chance for error is higher than they think it is. Izturis probably makes that play over and over again without that happening.
On another note, given the frigid weather, I'm really glad MLB gives the teams like five days to set up shop between the ALDS and the ALCS. We wouldn't want the World Series to end before Halloween or anything...
Also would have been interesting to see the reaction from people if Izturis had gotten the out.
Spot-on. Players don't have time to think in these situations, normally - they react based on instinct and training. If they DO think, they often wind up getting nothing from a play.
-- MWE
"Well, that was kind of dumb, but it worked out anyway."
Right. The mistake was thinking he could get two not that he was trying to get the lead runner.
I'm thinking more "Oh, what an agressive play from Izturis. That's Angels baseball!"
(From the MSM)
The problem might have been he did go over those possibilities. It happens all the time -- we even had a fairly recent link about it. You tell yourself not to go for the force at second unless it's easy or you have a chance at two and this makes it more likely you'll end up doing what you just told yourself not to do.
This is a silly example, but a game of softball in college and the batter was clearly aiming my direction at 1B. I reminded myself "all you have to do is knock it down and keep it in front of you" and then I'd beat him to the bag and make the out. So he hit a medium liner just above my head. Instead of just catching it like I normally would (it was an easy play), I knocked it down, kept it in front of me and stood there ... because my brain had told me that if I did those two things he'd be out. Not a shining moment.
This visualisation stuff is tricky.
WTF do you think he was thinking? "Getting the out at second will improve the chance of winning from 27.17% to 43.9%, which is clearly better than the 32.6% that it would improve to if I got the out at first instead, and so much so that in fact it's obviously better to try getting the out at second even after taking into account the minimal chance of an error occurring which would decrease the chance of winning significantly, so I will therefore throw to second - OK, here I go, I am throwing to second - Oh no! It's actually twenty-three point nine percent, not thirty-three point nine percent! I should have double checked my arithmetic!"
People are being hostile to Tango's blog post for no good reason. His basic point was to show that there was no upside to going for the out at second there. Yes, that conclusion is intuitive, but he's just putting numbers to it. He wasn't -- unless one adopts an overly literal interpretation of his words -- saying that Izturis should have had the number .013 in his head or whatever. Please with this.
"Don't think; you'll only hurt the ballclub."
Well, when you title a blog post "What was Izturis thinking?" and then say this:
how else do you EXPECT people to react?
-- MWE
Ideally people would react rationally. True, I don't always - or often - expect it.
Yeah, like this:
Are you kidding me? Are you !@#$% kidding me?
? It was not irrational to be surprised to see Izturis go to second.
First, I regret coming off as hostile, as I didn't intend to. Second, I didn't say that Tango was saying, literally, that Izturis should have had the numbers in his head. I *speculated* that the juxtaposition of speculation as to what Izturis was thinking and the numbers themselves would lead to confusion.
Edit: As Mike says above, to say "You don’t go for a .013 win gain, when the chance for disaster is possible." implies that Tango thinks Izturis purposely chose to go for the .013 win gain. This seems poorly worded at best to me.
Izturis' mistake is in the lead up to the batted ball. Players usually only have time to react. He seems to have failed to assess the situation prior to the ball being hit. His thought process, as Scioscia suggested, should have been to only go for a high-percentage double play or to take an easily achieved out. I don't know if Izturis thought this through before the play, but his actions suggest he didn't.
Not really. They've been surprisingly accurate when gambling this year, and set a franchise record for fewest errors.
I think that's true. Players may not be able to consider every possible outcome in advance, but ground ball with no real double play chance was something Izturis should have thought about. It appears that he didn't and/or badly misjudged the DP chances, as well as not executing on the throw. Some players are probably better at this sort of thing, e.g. "DiMaggio always threw to the right base". The analysis here also undermines those who insisted that every Major or Minor League SS would have made the same play as Jeter did on Punto. A fair number would have thrown late to 1st because they didn't think ahead or they were just desperately trying to help their team by trying for a play that wasn't really their, just as Izturis did.
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