We finally got a close game in the 2014 World Series. It was full of drama and some head scratching managerial moves and in the end went to the Kansas City Royals who took a 2-1 lead in the Series. Ned Yost’s Royal won the game but I want to take a look at some of the moves made by both managers and offer some insight if I can. Most of these questions I raise can be found in the “Game 3 Live Blog” so these are not purely after the fact managing observations, because those are the easiest critiques to make. In the end, the observations are just a fun exercise because the Royals won and that’s all that matters at this point.
A couple of primers for this piece: I am using three situational measures that can be found at Fangraphs.com. The first is win expectancy percentage (WE%) which measures a team’s chances of winning based on what is currently happening in a game. The second is Leverage Index or LI, which is a way to measure tension and pressure situations, and a way to contextualize said pressure. The third is run expectancy or RE, which measures how likely a team is to score in a given situation. You can find more comprehensive descriptions of all three at FanGraphs, but they are pretty self explanatory.
Yost and Bochy’s Strange In-Game Decisions; World Series Game 3
Situation 1
Score: KC 1 – SF 0
Inning: Top 6 – Nobody on and one out
Pitching: Tim Hudson
Batting: Alcides Escobar and then Alex Gordon
This was the third time through the Royals order for Hudson and even though he was only at 75ish pitches at the time I stated that I felt he should have been pulled for a fresh reliever. This should have happened before Hudson surrendered the single to Escobar, but Bochy stuck with him, perhaps in deference to having games on three consecutive days.
Even the FOX broadcasters mentioned the drop in effectiveness for pitchers working through a lineup for a third time. However, Bochy stuck with Hudson, who had been effective, and he proceeded to give up a single to Escobar. That was bad enough but leaving Hudson in to face the left handed hitting Alex Gordon was the bigger mistake, as Gordon drove in Escobar to push the Kansas City lead to 2-0. These two batters dropped the Giants WE% to 31.6% to 18.0%. Bochy finally brought in lefty Javier Lopez and by the time the inning was over they trailed 3-0 and had a WE% of a dismal 13.3%. It could be argued the turning point in this game took place in the top of the 6th and the Giants were burned by letting their starting pitcher stay in a little too long.
Also in this inning, Bruce Bochy made the conscious decision to start warming up Tim Lincecum with what can only be assumed was the intention to insert him into a high leverage situation. Many Giants fans still think Lincecum can actually throw baseballs toward home plate effectively but he cannot. Tim Lincecum really shouldn’t be anywhere near a baseball mound in anything except a game where the Giants are getting blown out. If the Giants would’ve won this game, then we could point to the last out Jeremy Affeldt recorded as the biggest out of the game because it was the out that kept Tim Lincecum out of the game.
Situation 2
Score: KC 3 – SF 0
Inning: Bottom 6
Pitching: Jeremy Guthrie
Batting: Brandon Crawford and Michael Morse
Jeremy Guthrie was effective until this point tonight in terms of keeping the Giants off the scoreboard, which is, of course, the main duty of any pitcher. However, he wasn’t missing any bats and had recorded exactly zero strikeouts to this point. Brandon Crawford was leading off the 6th inning and the Royals seemed to have squeezed all they possibly could out of Guthrie, who had been the beneficiary of some great defense and good luck as every hard hit ball seemed to find a glove.
Crawford led off the inning with a seeing eye single to right side and the Giants had their first leadoff base runner and created a high leverage situation with pinch hitter Michael Morse coming to the plate. The LI for the Morse at bat came in at 1.83 which is absolutely a high leverage situation and a time you want your best pitching option on the mound, and Guthrie simply is not that for the Royals. Morse went on to double in Crawford to cut the lead to 3-1 and Yost went to the first of his “Big 3” relievers, Kelvin Herrera. Herrera was able to wiggle off the hook after walking Gregor Blanco by getting Joe Panik to ground out in the single highest leverage situation in the ballgame. At the end of the inning it was 3-2 in favor of the Royals, but the Royals’ WE% dropped from 86.7% at the start of the inning to 64.8% by the time it was over. Leaving Guthrie in to face Crawford was less egregious of an error than it was to let him face Morse, but the Royals escaped maintaining a significant edge in WE% so Yost can’t be raked over the coals too badly.
Situation 3
Score: KC 3 – SF 2
Inning: Top 7 – Runner on first two outs
Pitching: Sergio Romo
Batting: Kelvin Herrera
Ned Yost elected to let his reliever hit in a one run game in the World Series. Yes. That happened. Even though they would still go on to win the game this was not the right move. Jarrod Dyson, one of fastest players in the series was on first base and a ball in the alley would have scored him easily. The Royals’ RE at this point was 20% if Yost had gone to a pinch hitter but that went down to about nothing when he elected to let a pitcher hit that had never had an at-bat at any point of his minor league or Major League career. It can be argued that Herrera on the mound gave the Royals the best shot at preserving a one run lead in the 7th inning, but contrary to popular belief, the Royals do have an entire bullpen, and not just three pitchers, capable of getting Major League hitters out. Even a 20% chance to extend a lead to two runs is worth pulling your third best reliever. Brandon Finnegan, Jason Frasor and Danny Duffy are more than capable of not allowing a run in a single inning. Yost even acknowledged this when he went to the lefty Finnegan after Herrera faced just two batters in the bottom half of the inning. This could have been a disastrous result, but in the end it proved inconsequential.
Once we got through the roller coaster of the 6th and 7th innings the Royals were able to turn to their bread and butter for the 8th and 9th innings and close out the game. Greg Holland carved right through the heart of the Giants’ lineup retiring Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence in order to secure a victory for the Royals. Again, I am not trying to call Ned Yost or Bruce Bochy out for being dumb managers, because clearly they’ve been able to help their teams get to the World Series, these are just two situations that I believe could have turned out very differently with just a little tweaking and could have swung the series in a completely different direction. And all of that is part of the fun of postseason baseball.
Join us on Saturday night for the Game 4 Live Blog, we have a lot of fun, mostly at the expense of FOX’s broadcast crew while discussing the happenings on the field. Ryan Vogelsong will start for the Giants and Jason Vargas will start for the Royals.
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