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1. Best Regards, Larry M. Posted: October 23, 2009 at 02:13 PM (#3363695)I don't like walking him there, but I also don't like Fuentes in there to begin with. He was fine for Damon and Teixeira, but I would have like Santana in there from that point. You also can't ignore the fact that A-Rod is the only righty in that stretch of five batters, and I'd probably rather face Teixeira as a righty, though that's a close call. So you have four of five hitters where you want a left hander in, and they'd already used Darren Oliver (unfortunately). I don't think they would have used Kazmir or Saunders there.
Please. He's definitely nowhere as cool as Matter-Eater Lad.
If Scioscia doesn't think Fuentes can get ARod out, there's a better solution - let someone else pitch to him. Hell, put Fuentes in left field for a batter and bring in Bulger or Santana if you want to keep Fuentes around for Matsui and Cano.
-- MWE
GET OUT OF MY HEAD, SATURN GIRL!
I'm really confused at the intense opposition to this move. Scioscia can't blow up the team's and bullpen's brain by moving Fuentes out of the closing role there. Shrieking about walking the tying run on base with two outs when it's the best player in baseball on a vicious tear seems to utterly ignore the fact that reality and humans are present. It was a risky move, and it almost went terrible because of the unknown things that happened afterward, but it just wasn't an insane, unreal, or incompetent thing to have done and is clearly open for debate as opposed to a given.
Agreed. So what's a person to do? Walk him or....
Agreed.
Disagreed. #### the little babies who can't bear to be used other than one way. Tom Kelly woulda had him catch if necessary.
The management of both pitching staffs was eccentric in the extreme, well, or maybe what I mean is once it went eccentric, it didn't go eccentric enough. I also agreed with the statement elsewhere that you just bring in Rivera and SAVE the friggin' game in the 7th inning when there's a save to be made.
The conventionality of the closer is a blemish on the intellectual integrity of a game that has none anyway. So never mind.
Bounce four curveballs. Maybe he'll swing at one.
Right. The intentional walk there was absurd. Two outs in the 9th and you're jump-starting a rally for them. The _best_ ARod can do there is tie the game. And he has, what, a 5% chance of homering? 10% if you believe in hot hitters?
Absurd.
I'd go with 7%, his career rate vs lefthanded pitchers.
He needs to swing at three for this to do any good.
It makes me feel dirty to say so here, but the reliance on statistics as ironclad predictive tools for every specific case without taking a single other thing into account does strike me as a little out-of-whack.
-cocks shotgun- GET BACK! I'm not afraid to use this!
Vlad only needs to swing at one. Then again, the strategy may backfire against Vlad.
One of them off the very pitcher he was facing. And it set up the platoon advantage for the next two hitters, both of whom were already far weaker hitters than Rodriguez. And if somehow those two got on, it brought up the player in the worst slump on the team.
And I suppose it's bad form to point this out, but it worked. Walking Rodriguez gave Fuentes three more shots at getting out of the inning, and he needed all three, but he got out of it.
What message does he send by saying "I don't trust you to get ARod out, so let's put him on"?
-- MWE
I was screaming at Fuentes to just throw another fastball down broadway when he got 2-2 on Swisher, given how horrible his swing looked on the previous pitches there was no reason to think he was going to do anything with it. And he didn't. There is something to be said for a guy in a slump with mechanical problems in his swing, if he had walked him it would have been inexcusable.
Well, even a blind sow finds an acorn now and then :) The fact that it worked doesn't mean it was the best thing to do.
-- MWE
Every single HOF pitcher has been called on to IBB people. If you listen to Fuentes speak, he's a pretty sharp and reasonable human being, and I truly doubt he took walking A-Rod as any kind of insult, seriously. Equating this with altering the bullpen roles is ridiculous.
The thing I don't get is that it's easy to pitch around him. Throw him 4 straight down and out for all I care
And Fuentes would NEVER miss his location. ;-)
And if Fuentes misses his spot? It's not worth the slim chance that Rodriguez chases 3 bad pitches to not just put him on.
1) Out
2) Walk
3) Hit
It's important to note that Out is still a better outcome than Walk here. There should be a way to pitch him that maximizes the chance for outcomes 1 or 2, and minimizes #3 (particularly a strong hit). Even if your pitcher is scared ****less against A-Rod, as long as he's smart enough not to give him a cookie on 3-1 (I'm looking at you, Joe Nathan), this is clearly a better idea than a straight intentional walk.
Especially since Out=Win.
-- MWE
With no one on and two out in the bottom of the ninth, up by a run?
-- MWE
Anyway, I think this was a bad decision. Just looking at the next batter, is Matsui more likely to hit any extra base hit than A-Rod is to hit a homer? I think so, not to mention the odds of the next guy getting a double, or Matsui getting a single, etc.
Moving the goalposts, Mike. Your only point was countering my addressing the reality of the personalities involved - everyone, not just Fuentes - by saying that the IBB was similar to yanking him; it wasn't.
The situation is another argument, one which my position is clear on in various posts. I think Tom does a better job than I in #25, and combining that with my #23 is where I stand.
Career numbers vs. LHP:
A-Rod: HR in 7.1% of AB
Matsui: XBH in 9.1% of AB
Even if you don't account for the fact that over 40% of those XBH by Matsui are home runs, which turn a lead into a deficit for the Angels, a Matsui AB with A-Rod on first is more likely to result in a tie game than an A-Rod AB with the bases empty.
Incidentally, using 2009 only numbers doesn't help the case. Matsui hit 13 HR in 131 AB against lefties this year. Not that it really means much.
Well, there is. Walk him and then have the lefty pitch against the lefties. Doing that will most certainly maximize your chance of an out.
- Any Matsui XBH
- A steal/WP/PB advancing the runner, then any base hit/reach-on-error by Matsui
- A walk/HBP/hit/ROE for Matsui, then any base hit/ROE by Cano
- A walk/HBP/hit/ROE for both Matsui and Cano, then a WP/PB scoring the runner from third
- A walk/HBP/hit/ROE for Matsui, Cano, and Swisher
There are just too many permutations of the tying run scoring there, which don't involve any exceptional performance.
I am with you in a general sense (particularly on the shotgun issue) but in this case, I can't agree. Hideki Matsui and Robinson Cano are not Alex Rodriguez, but they're not Moe and Curly, either. Fuentes was missing the zone a lot--one thing that ran through my mind is a WP or a PB puts ARod (or actually Guzman) at second. You can't IBB Matsui, so then a grounder in the right spot, a blooper in the right spot, or an error, and the game is tied. As an aside, I also thought that Guzman HAD to try to get the SB after being put in, and I thought pinch-running for ARod was dumb.
It also occurred to me that Fuentes was trying to get to Swisher after Matsui reached, so he just dinked Cano with the floater on purpose.
I was aware of that, and it is a good point. I don't think Sciosica was "nuts" or whatever, but I ultimately cannot agree with his move.
Probably not much of a difference, but I prefer to avoid the straight intentional walk as much as possible -- it just seems to mess up a pitcher's rhythm sometimes. Although I guess telling him to throw 4 straight junk pitches might do the same.
True. But most lefties Brian Fuentes has faced aren't Hideki Matsui or Robinson Cano (neither of whom shows much of a platoon split).
So, I'd say the walk was okay.
No. He is not. He's a great hitter and I don't use the term lightly, but both Ruth and bonds had OPS+ averages over 200 for a four year period. A-Rods lifetime high is 177. Phenomenal as he is, he is nowhere close to the hitter those two were, much less Bonds in 01-04.
Bonds numbers during those years are absurd.
For the record I hated the walk. Worst case scenario A-Rod ties the game. Put him on base and all sorts of cans of worms are opened with the most obvious being that a home run wins the game for the MFY.
Not even Jeter can enable the Yankees to win on a walk-off as the away team.
OK, maybe Jeter, but he wasn't up.
I really hated that walk. I was foaming at the mouth at the time.
So going by COC, it's an easy decision.
But I was talking about this specific situation, two outs and no one on in a close game - which as I pointed out earlier is the second time in this series he's had Fuentes issue an IBB to ARod in that situation. I wouldn't have made the comment otherwise. And I think it DOES say something to Fuentes about Scioscia's lack of faith in his ability to restrict the damage that ARod can do. I don't know if it's worse than removing him from the game under those circumstances (especially when you've already burned your other key lefty reliever and have Matsui and Cano following) but I don't see how it's a good thing to say "we trust you - except when ARod is batting, we're going to IBB him no matter what".
-- MWE
I'm sure it's been debated on other threads here, but that was about as head scratching as it gets, even for sabermetric inclined fan. Sometimes the human element is more important than a few percentage points from a platoon split and I thought that was one of those instances.
This isn't true. If Matsui had doubled home the tying run, and the Yanks went on to win in extra innings, the IBB to Rodriguez would have been ripped to pieces.
I like this side of Lassus.
This is significant, and considering the extreme tendencies we've seen for managers to use pinch runners in these series, I think it may tip the scales in favor of walking him.
As someone who has watched Fuentes all year and seen plenty of A-Rod in his career, I'd say that the chances of a HR there were approximately 75%.
I just think you don't intentionally bring the potential winning run to the plate there, especially with good hitters coming up.
I'm not a big fan of the "it worked" type of analysis. If Scioscia decides to walk three hitters intentionally to load the bases and then Fuentes retires the next batter, would we bother to argue that "it worked"?
All snark aside, Scioscia made absolutely the right call in this instance.
94.3% of all statistics are made up.
All these moves patent losers. There's never been a hitter who's worth more than an automatic base and probably never will be. And it's not close. Antyime it happens it's a significant downshift in the odds. Fuentes stayed in because of the closer mythology, and the Lackey move was just inexplicable.
"Sciosche, are you shitting me? Schiosche, this is mine. This is mine, Sciosche. Sciosche!"
Also, Fieldin Culbreath is a lousy umpire. I don't really have a comment on him last night, having missed most of the game (which I'll eventually get over), but I've noticed poor performance from him in the past.
I loved that. I mute FOX but obviously could appreciate that anyway.
You've seen the Angel bullpen this year, right? If a zombie had gnawed one of Lackey's legs off and Lackey said he was feeling "under the weather", I still would have had more faith in Lackey to get out of that inning than anyone in the Angel 'pen.
Starters SHOULD think they can get this next guy... and managers SHOULD ignore their self-evaluations, generally.
I'm not sure I understand this comment. Of course hitters get hot. I've lived it. Some at-bats I was so locked in that I knew I was hitting the ball hard somewhere. Just like basketball - days where I rained in five or six threes in a row. Not just luck. You "feel it" sometimes. Sometimes a hot or cold streak may be the product of chance - but only sometimes. Some days you have it and some days you don't. You find your level over time. Perhaps on average you hit around .280 with 15 HR. Two or three days a year you might as well be Pujols. A few more days a year you might as well be poo. Most days you're somewhere in between.
Hitters get hot. This isn't an article of faith.
No definitive answers (sometimes "hits" just drop in, sometimes you get an "atom" ball, etc.), but this was wonderful:
http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/06/29/are-we-coins/
The basketball argument is a pretty poor one, IMO. Thomas Gilovich studied this in "How we know what isn't so." IIRC he found that there is no such thing as a player being "in the zone."
Grich - Oliver has been nails and turning Teix around is the thing to do from a percentages point of view. I missed a lot of the game, but caught most of the top of the 7th before heading off to a gig. Lackey checked out after the missed strike call to Posada. He was an emotional mess and pissed off. Sometimes that is a positive factor for Lackey, and then there is 2003-04 where every minute obstacle turned good Lackey into bat-shi* crazy Lackey.
I don't know that I would have pulled him, but I completely understand the decision to do so.
So?
I loved that. I mute FOX but obviously could appreciate that anyway.
Just imagine how much I enjoyed it.
Understand I'm not talking about "streaks." I've had hot streaks where I didn't feel anything particularly special. I've had cold streaks where I actually felt pretty good. I do think that random chance is usually the primary reason for players having good games, good weeks, good months and, yes, good seasons.
But I have most certainly been in what some people call "the zone." This isn't some lame attempt to attribute mystical meaning to performance after the fact. The feeling didn't happen all that often but I've been there multiple times in both baseball and basketball - and, more rarely, on the golf course. It's impossible to describe fully, but I felt a "locked in" feeling of intense focus and hand-eye coordination. This has happened to me about a dozen times in my athletic background. Difficult things suddenly became almost effortless - but only for a limited time. I believe artists, poets, songwriters, etc. experience similar moments.
I think that depends entirely on how organized and professional you approach the task in question. Before I gained all this lousy weight, I was a pretty decent playground/YMCA basketball player. And I too felt and still remember some torrid hot shooting streaks where it felt every bit as good as the results were.
But looking critically at those periods of time, almost all of them were in the midst of a period of time where I was playing more ball than I ever had in my life. It wasn't so much a hot streak as it was getting enough practice and reps in where I could get decent shooting form grooved in and could start doing the only thing a white kid my size is expected to do: rain threes in by the gross.
I'm not sure that necessarily applies to professional players for whom their job requires them to practice the necessary skills on a daily basis every day throughout the season. Or even if it does, it may apply a lot less than one might think.
To put another way: Kyle Korver is always on his hot streak because it's his job to shoot three pointers for a living and he practices it every day of the season.
I've always been amazed that Peter Frampton wrote arguably his two best songs ("Baby, I Love Your Way" and "Show Me the Way") on the very same day. Maybe that was dumb luck - but I think something was going on there for a few hours. I'm fascinated by it. What was different about that day? Does he go through his life wondering how the hell it happened? But I digress.
There is a lot of randomness to streaks but being physically or mentally in a "zone" happens.
Problem: Rectified.
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