Bunting To Oblivian…pretty sure The Styrofoam Drone blog just gave them a smasheroo review.
This Royals team… I tell you… Every day it’s something new.
On Tuesday, it was Nervous Ned Yost explaining why he’s OK with Alcides Escobar bunting Alex Gordon over from first with nobody out in the first inning.
...Yost: “Do you know what our record is when we score first?” (It’s 38-16.) “That’s why I don’t have a problem with it.”
Good grief. It’s as if they’re running a 386 PC with Prodigy dialup service at One Royal Way. Yost’s comment is just so hollow… But it’s just another day at the office for Dayton Moore and his crew. Sadly, this is what we’ve come to expect from the Royals Brain Trust.
This was posted as a FanShot, but it deserves much more than that. So much more.
...This all leads me to the insanity that is bunting in the first inning because it allegedly sets up a run and the Royals record is so gosh-darn good when scoring first. Yosty is giving us a split. A meaningless nugget that tells us absolutely nothing. Most teams win games when they score first. That’s the Win Expectancy model I discussed above. To cite the Royals record when scoring first is just like when they were talking about juggling the rotation to start Brian Bannister in day games or some such nonsense. Splits are fun (at least to me) but by no means are they something you should build game strategy around.
Because in baseball, it really doesn’t matter who scores first. What matters is who scores most. And the best way to ensure you score the most runs is to value your outs.
The Royals don’t understand the value of the out. That’s why they win 43 percent of their games.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. charityslave is thinking about baseball Posted: August 15, 2012 at 09:39 AM (#4208616)Lisa: That’s specious logic dad.
Homer: Thank you honey.
Lisa: According to your logic, this rock is keeping tigers away.
Homer: Hmmm, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t.
Homer: How so?
Lisa: Its just a rock, but I don’t see any tigers anywhere.
Homer: Lisa, I’d like to buy your rock.
LQDK70A.
Wow. This is pretty retarded.
This like the splits that say "The Yankees are 18-8 when ARod hits a home run." (So all we need to do is to have ARod hit a home run!")
Except it's worse than that.
I would imagine that the reason the "score first" splits tend to be favorable are:
1. You know you've scored, which is better than not scoring.
2. You know you've scored at least one run - and maybe multiple runs.
3. It was probably early in the game, which meant you had several more innings to add on runs.
4. Or maybe it was late in the game, which meant that you probably only had to keep the opponent off the boards for a few more innings.
5. Your opponent may not have scored.
The biggest flaw in Yost's thought process centers on item 2. When you've "scored first," that may well have been more than one run. But Yost's "bunt to score first" strategy likely caps a big inning, which means that he may have only gotten the one run. In general when you've "scored first" you haven't limited your chance for multiple runs, so you may have gotten multiple runs.
The goal is to score more than your opponent after 9 innings, not to "score first."
The reason why the Royals are winning 43% of their games has very little to do with how many SH they employ. It has more to do with the fact that since 1996, they've had exactly one team whose RA/ERA ranked in the first half of the league. "Scoring most" also involves "allowing least."
EDIT: maybe this never happens.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main