Third Time Through the Order Penalty
- Thread starter Vermonter At Large
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No you are 100 percent correct. Cora is carrying out the front offices pitching strategy. My post and many others don’t differentiate between the two. Cora is essentially the front man for the front office so he gets an unfair proportion of the blame, which I am often guilty of doing.
The issue is that we don't know whether this is Cora's philosophy or not. I can't imagine he wanted to come manage for an organization that had a vastly different philosophy than he does. So it's my working assumption that Cora is managing the way he would manage if he could make all the choices himself.
This is a great point. I remember a game last year when Sawamura came in and it was clear from the first batter that he was WAY off. Couldn't find the strike zone at all, and he's a pitcher that you kind of know whether or not he has it pretty quickly. But they were stuck. Had to use him for three batters. He ended up walking all three.
Wouldn't this be obvious in the bullpen too? I mean... yeah, I know it's different but it seems pretty crazy that a guy who is throwing well in the bullpen suddenly can't find the zone.
Maybe, but it really is different throwing in the bullpen versus having a live batter up there. Kind of like how you can splash threes all day long in warmups but then even when you're wide open during a game, it's completely different. Or hitting on the driving range versus getting up to the tee for real.
Does it matter? The end result is the same for us watching at home. Whoever is responsible for what's happening should make a change.
BJ covered the obvious reason of bullpen throwing not being the same as game throwing. There's also a timing problem. Most relievers are up and warming as quick as they can so they may not be paying much attention to their "stuff" as opposed to just getting loose. But even if they did, what happens if they do realize that they don't have it that night? They call back to the dugout and say "sorry Skip, I'm useless." Meanwhile the game is still going on and the pitcher in the game is forced into a bad match-up or pitching beyond his limitations because it will take more time to get someone else up. What then?
This accurate point leads me to another that the Sox *might* have in mind. One way to lessen the "one of them sucks" risk is to have enough multi-inning relievers such that a 4-5 inning start means 2-3 relievers not 5-6. They obviously can't fall too far out of the race to see if, for example, a competent Sale helps move them in that direction more effectively. But I think, with Houck and Whitlock in the pen, that might have been a big part of the plan. (It's fair game to ask why they didn't adjust the plan).
Exactly. And one of Cora's strengths in 2018 was bailing quickly on a guy who didn't have it; and he eventually ran into one that did.
For reference, here's the Sawamura game I was referring to:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS202106260.shtml
Two outs, top of the 8th, Yankees up. Eovaldi had gotten the first two guys, then allowed a homer to LeMahieu to make it a 4-1 game, Boston in front. In comes Sawamura to try to get the last out. Walks Judge on 10 pitches. A real struggle, but a good at-bat by Judge. Then he walks Sanchez, bringing the tying run to the plate in Stanton. He walks Stanton on 4 pitches, loading the bases. Thankfully, Ottavino got out of it to preserve the game. They'd go on to win 4-2, but still, that 8th inning, Sawamura was stuck out there and there was nothing Cora could do about it.
While these things make sense, I imagine clubs wouldn't be doing this if the numbers didn't support it. And I doubt the sample sizes are small.
Unfortunately, it appears the optimal way to play baseball is incredibly boring.
On top of that, there are far more guys who can succeed out of the pen for an inning than can start for 5 or 6 effectively. Even with the chance one of the 5 MRs stinks up the joint, the other 4 will be good enough more often than not to overcome that.
There's also the fact that SP have bad innings pretty often, too. If the majority of those bad innings come the 3rd time through even if they were having an easy time before that, do you continue to do it?
I don't know the math, but if the math heavily supports this idea... it's hard to ignore math.
There's also the fact that SP have bad innings pretty often, too. If the majority of those bad innings come the 3rd time through even if they were having an easy time before that, do you continue to do it?
I don't know the math, but if the math heavily supports this idea... it's hard to ignore math.
Well, a lot of baseball math is theoretical, and frequently applied by guys who have day jobs tracking market trends. No matter how elegant your theoretical model is, you need to have the right pitchers in place, the organization to draft and develop lots of young pitchers, the capital to acquire outside players and pay them, and the coaching staff to maximize them efficiently. Even if all that works out, there are a million other variable outside of your control that can send you into crisis mode at any time.
The math models consistently ignore the uncomfortable fact that the players are human and thus are prone to inexplicable variations in performance and confidence.
All of that would be factored in though, wouldn't it? That 1 reliever out of 5 who just didn't have it today would be baked in. Those performances would show up in the math. It's not like those inexplicable variations in performance and confidence are being excluded from the sample size.
And it's not like you can predict inexplicable variations in performance and confidence. At least not on a day to day basis when it comes to bullpen usage.
Is the math being used even theoretical? One can look up numbers for a pitcher the 3rd time thru and the numbers for your typical reliever the 1st time through. I guess it treats all pitchers the same? I don't get the argument against the math unless that's it.
There are available numbers for every pitcher X number of times facing a batter. So you can look at how Hill has done through his career and this season facing the lineup the first, second, and third time through.
What the data doesn’t tell you is how Hill would do TODAY facing the lineup a third time. My issue is that if a pitcher is dominating the first two times through, those numbers are less instructive because it would appear he’s got his best stuff and is on top of his game that day. I mean it’s important to look at the data and it absolutely should inform a manager’s decision, but the human element must be taken into account too.
Two years ago when Cash took out Snell in game 6 of the WS, he was DOMINATING that game and afterward the Dodger hitters were all quoted as saying that they knew they couldn’t touch him that night and when he came out they suddenly believed they would win that game. They went from a defeated group to an energized one. The human element. It’s a real thing.
What the data doesn’t tell you is how Hill would do TODAY facing the lineup a third time. My issue is that if a pitcher is dominating the first two times through, those numbers are less instructive because it would appear he’s got his best stuff and is on top of his game that day. I mean it’s important to look at the data and it absolutely should inform a manager’s decision, but the human element must be taken into account too.
Two years ago when Cash took out Snell in game 6 of the WS, he was DOMINATING that game and afterward the Dodger hitters were all quoted as saying that they knew they couldn’t touch him that night and when he came out they suddenly believed they would win that game. They went from a defeated group to an energized one. The human element. It’s a real thing.
Of course it is and people are crazy if they think that's not factored in. The oft-cited Snell example is especially hilarious to me as he faced an almost identical situation in his previous game against the same opponent, game 2 of that World Series. The 18th batter homered to cut the TB lead to 5-1 in the 5th, Cash left him in, the next two batters walked and singled and then Cash took him out.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN202010210.shtml
As long as you assume the markets and participants are all rational, anyways.
I think this is like playing poker and betting with your gut despite all the numbers being against you. More often than not, it's a loser.
How would one solve this problem at an MLB level? In my circles, this is an incredibly unpopular trend but I'm not sure how you can force pitchers/teams to pitch 5-6 innings or reach certain pitch counts. How does one get the math to favor letting SP go a 3rd time through? A person mentioned limiting bullpen sizes. To what? I think limiting bullpen sizes would also allow for more specialized benches, which could lead to more excitement and shouldn't slow the game down any. 6 man rotations? I have no idea why it would help, just throwing it out there.
SP pitching less has been a trend for a very long time now, though. What would one do to reverse this trend?
SP pitching less has been a trend for a very long time now, though. What would one do to reverse this trend?
And this is exacerbated when you have a bullpen predominantly full of JAGs. If you run 4-5 of them out every game, you’re practically guaranteed that 1-2 of them will not have it on a given night.
The reality is that their starters are unlikely to pitch meaningfully more innings (Rich Hill isn’t suddenly going to be a 7 inning pitcher). So where do the “good” innings come from? I think that ultimately their best bet is to have several relievers that can throw multiple innings. For now, bring up Seabold or Winckowski and put Pivetta in the pen (where I think his stuff plays better anyway).
When Sale and/or Paxton come back you can end up with a pen that includes Whitlock, Houck & Pivetta that you can deploy to maximum advantage. They can throw 2-4 innings as the situation dictates. By having multiple guys that can do this you’re not stuck in this artificial piggyback situation.
But does it need to be reversed? Isn’t this like any other transition/evolution— someone will find a way to exploit it for competitive advantage. I don’t know what it will be— maybe it’s having 2-3 guys that can dominate once or twice through the order after the starter. Maybe some team will finally turn the system on its head and decide to run relievers out there for 3-4 innings and then turn it over to the “finisher” for the rest of the game. I don’t know how it will evolve but I’m really curious to see where it goes. It’s probably the area most ripe for change in coming years.
All that being said, my 17 year old self still cringes when an effective pitcher is yanked after 68 pitches.
Fans want to see starting pitchers pitch well, and pulled if they don't. What they don't want to see is starters pulled after 68 pitches to hand the game over to mostly mediocre (in the Red Sox case) bullpen arms. Maybe the models say that over a 162 game season, it makes sense to pull effective starters after going through the lineup twice. But those models could also be total junk when applied to the real world. Given the fact that many models are indeed garbage-in, garbage-out, I don't discount this possibility, no matter how many smart people and/or AI engines think otherwise.
Im not sure how to quantify, beyond noting that FB velocity spiked over the last many years (and I wouldn’t be surprised if spin rates have done as well.) but I think throwing an effective MLB pitch is just more physically demanding than it was. Maybe this opinIon will not survive this boards scrutiny (which would be fine) but I think the only way to get pitchers to last longer is to have them pitching at lower effort via doctoring the ball, moving back the walls, allowing spider tack, etc.
Not sure if the cure I’m proposing is worse than the symptoms…probably so.