Game 2 of the World Series, Detroit's Prince Fielder on first and Delmon Young at the plate. Young tags one down the right field line against San Fran's Madison Bumgarner. The ball rolls over the right field bullpen as Fielder waddles to third.
How big a hairball did third base coach Gene Lamont cough up by sending Fielder home? The numbers paint a grim picture. (Warning: innumerates should shield their eyes.)
As Cecil's kid was reaching the corner base, Young was pulling into second with none out. Left there, on average, the Tigers could be expected to score a run 84% of the time. On average, they would score 2.017 runs. (Of course, these are averages, and don't take into account the aptitude of pitcher Doug Fister or the following batters Jhonny Peralta, Avrail Garcia and Gerald Laird. Presumably, Fister's edge would lower all these numbers a bit.)
Had Fielder lumbered under Buster Posey's tag at the plate, Detroit would have made certain the plating of one run, and with a man on second and none out, still be on course to score another 1.165 runs on average. In other words, on average, the Giants would have hiked the likelihood of scoring at all from 84% to 100% and tweaked their expected yield from 2.017 runs to 2.165 runs. Meh.
How about the risk? Getting Fielder thrown out slashed Detroit's expected run yield by two-thirds to .708 and the odds of scoring at all with a man on second and one out to 41%. In other words, the downside was losing two thirds of the run expectancy and chopping the odds of scoring anything in half.
(You can start reading again if you've been cowering under the adding machine.)
Put more bluntly: Fielder was probably going to score anyway, so creating a contested play at the plate offered little gain. Getting him thrown out was likely to ruin the inning. And that's in fact how it turned out.
If you think that's a fair risk/reward, every Las Vegas hotel would like to offer you a free room and complimentary drinks. Maybe they'll give Gene Lamont a call.
No comments:
Post a Comment