Comments on: Late Game Management

By: MickeyZ

MickeyZ — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:15:02 +0000

I’m not sure that I agree that Putz is the obvious choice for a top of the 9th tied game. Yes, there can never be a save situation, but the chances of going into extra innings are good, and for all you know there is going to be a bases loaded no out situation in the top of the 16th you’ll need him for. Granted, putting in your worst relief pitcher is never a smart way to go, and it surely was worth putting Putz in once there were runners on.

By: John D.

John D. — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:41:04 +0000

LATE GAME MANAGEMENT – [Perhaps this has already been mentioned. (I haven't read all of the previous comments.)]
Another thing that concerns me is providing for enough pitching should the game go into extra inings.
IMO, it’s wrong to have a reliever pitch only part of an inning in the late (or extra) innings, but managers have them do it, hoping that the game will end before they run out of pitchers. (You use up your relievers faster than you realize.)
BTW, does anyone know how many innings most managers allow for? 12? 15?

By: sokala

sokala — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:35:59 +0000

#96 and 97: Well we know they will never fire themselves so the manager is always going to take the complete hit (deserving or not). With a majority owner who ceded control to a corporation, it would take a majority vote or effort from the minor owners to force a change in the Howard/Chuck/Bill axis of evil. I assume Howard and Chuck would offer a compromise and offer Bill up like Grover and that might keep the owners at bay – if they really care. I think the only way the FO changes its dynamic is not a complete scorched earth approach but a surgical strike to take out the person(s) who set the charter. I think that is either Chuck or Howard or both. I guess one can dream….

By: Nati

Nati — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:24:17 +0000

That’s a really interesting observation #95. I was wondering today if the FO could really be that oblivious to Hargrove’s mismanagement, fan perception, and/or extent of the damage he’s done, or just what the deal was. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it occurred to me that maybe Chuck and Howard are obviously waiting til the end of the year to give themselves time to decide whether Bavasi goes as well.

By: Thingray

Thingray — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:50:52 +0000

95 – Interesting observation. Considering the circumstances, I hope that your impressions are correct!

By: sokala

sokala — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:25:43 +0000

I was at the game last night and sitting behind Mariners dugout. I kept checking the boxes where Chuck, Howard and Bavasi hang out with my binoculars. Up through the Baek innings Chuck sat looking half interested. O’Faherty comes in and he jumps up and disappears.
Flash forward to Bohn coming in and he (Chuck) is pacing back and forth making what looked like “sharp” comments to Bavasi who is along one wall in the box with body english that says he is not very comfortable. They were clearly not happy with Bohn coming to the plate. It appeared that they kept telling someone in the back of the box to go do something (hold the press release announcing Grovers release you suppose?).
I often will check the activity in those boxes esp when trades are in the works as you can get a indication something is going on via the phone activity. In the years at Safeco, I have never seen Chuck or anyone else “pace” like last night. It continued to the end of the game. Something was up but didn’t happen.

By: rlharr

rlharr — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:12:31 +0000

re. Josh, #89

“I don’t have 50 on-hand, but his first 38 PAs after coming up in 2002 gave us this:

.455/.526/.576

Such a perfect example of how irrelevant it is going forward.”

There’s a difference here. What are we counting? The 0.455 is hits, so we’re talking about something like 16 hits in 35 at bats (+ 3 walks/sac bunts/whatever for the other 3 plate appearances). With stolen bases, the success rate is much higher. In WFB’s case there were 43 successful steals – that is a considerably higher number that 16 hits! You would need to get over 100 at-bats to get similar precision for a batting average estimate – and even then, you would find your estimate less than satisfying. Knowing that WFB’s successful steal rate is likely to be somewhere between 70% and 90% is enough to know that he is a decent to excellent base stealer. Knowing that his batting average is likely to be somewhere between 0.245 and 0.355 (about the range you would guess if he was hitting 0.300 after 100 at bats) would tell you almost nothing.

Dave made a point above that we also have historical information to help us set limits. We know that 0.455 is extremely unlikely to be any batter’s true ability. (Of course, by that argument we would have said there was no way Bonds would ever have a OBP over 0.550 for a season, when, in fact, he did so twice, peaking at 0.609.)

By: rlharr

rlharr — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:41:14 +0000

(re. statistics stuff) Yes Dave, Mat, I think we all agree. Mat, I did put in parentheses somewhere that this kind of analysis did not include injuries, etc., and I would certainly include quality of competition – Yankees or Royals – within the factors not covered by my argument. It only covers the random variation. And yes, the binomial is the actual distribution, I didn’t want to get into limiting values.

I still stand by the squareroot as a rough first order tool, however. I do not claim that it gives you the actual standard deviation, but I think it a rare case when it does not give an appropriate amount of “uncertainty”. For instance, Mat, you argued that you need hundreds of at bats to judge something like batting average, but my earlier message showed that using the squareroot you would not even put much credence in a 650 at bat sample – after all, a 40 point difference in batting average is huge. The squareroot rule for 200 at bats for a 0.300 hitter would yield a range of 0.261 to 0.339. I expect if you looked at 200 at bat samples of 0.300 hitters you would find something like half in that range – less than you would if it were a true standard deviation, certainly, but at the same time representative enough to give a handle on the expected size of variation.

That’s all I’m suggesting. A rough, easily-computed, first-order tool that can be used by the average reader.

By: pinball1973

pinball1973 — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:19:07 +0000

A thread about Hargrove’s obvious – even to the fans – mismanagement (and he isn’t even lucky)? Duh!

Dear Mariners’ FO,

Please remove Mike Hargrove from his position as manager. If he is released in the dead of night and dressed in one of the beer vendors uniforms perhas he can be safely whisked away to an undisclosed “safe house” until Mariner fans’ anger abates.

By: Thingray

Thingray — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:56:00 +0000

#88 – I have seen that happen before. I’ve also seen it happen where the runner starts on 2nd, the bunt is laid down, fielded and thrown to first, but the runner rounds third and keeps steaming home (little league style!).

They’re rare plays, but occasionally through either laziness or lack of concentration on the defense, they do happen.