Examining the Intentional Walk To David Wright
April 17, 2012 at 12:32 am by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
Much has been made of the decision to walk David Wright with a 2-0 count to face Ike Davis, where Ike Davis subsequently hit a three run homer that drastically changed the game.
First, we must understand the game situation.
At the time the score was tied 1-1, in the top of the 6th inning. David Wright was ahead in the count 2-0 when the decision was made to intentionally walk him in order to face Ike Davis. There were two outs and Ruben Tejada was on third.
First, let’s just compare game situations with a man on third with two outs and a man on first with two outs. We will use the run expectancy charts in The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball
The overall expected number of runs with 2 outs and a man on third in any inning is 0.387. The expected number of runs with 2 outs and men on first and third is .538. That comes out to 1.39 times more runs by having men on first and third. This indicates that in general, you better have a really darn good reason to intentionally walk a hitter in this situation, because the vast majority of the time it doesn’t make sense. You aren’t setting up a double play because there are already two outs. You are simply taking the bat out of one player’s hands, and putting the bat in another player’s hands in a more advantageous situation. You better believe that the player you walked was at least 1.39 times better than the player you will now be pitching to.
So, next, let’s see if David Wright actually was 1.39 times better than Ike Davis, given the situation. First, we’re going to ignore hitter-batter numbers, because those are unreliable due to sample size issues. However, we will look at Davis and Wright’s splits against righties, which should be useful, since Hanson typically is a fairly normal RHP with regards to his lefty right splits, using wOBA, probably the single best pure measure of hitter ability.
Over Wright’s career, he has a .366 wOBA against RHP. Ike Davis is a .358 career wOBA guy against RHP. While these differences are real, they aren’t substantial, and certainly come nowhere near the 1.39 we needed, given the change in base-out state we talked about above, this difference is very close to being statistically insignificant. ie for all intents and purposes, trading the righty Wright for the Lefty Davis is a wash, given a RHP.
However, that isn’t the end of the analysis, because Wright wasn’t 0-0 when the decision was made. If the decision had been made to walk Wright right off the bat, it would have been a very poor decision. Trading virtually equivalent hitters, but putting him in a place where, on average, more runs will be scored. We also must consider that Wright was in a hitter’s count at the time. To see that, we will now see what increase in productivity Wright see’s after he works himself into a 2-0 count.
Over David Wright’s career, he has been an astonishing .485 wOBA hitter any time he manages to work a 2-0 count (this means all counts including and after a 2-0 count is reached). Given that .340 is a roughly league average type number for any count, after 2-0 counts wright is an extremely dangerous hitter. However, what is important isn’t how Wright fared in 2-0 counts, but how Wright fared in 2-0 counts to righties. As it turns out, the best way to figure this out is simply take his 2-0 count and after delta (ie how much better he did after 2-0 counts than all counts) and add that to his overal RHP wOBA. We find that Wright’s 2-0 and after wOBA is .101 higher than his overall wOBA. Because this delta for most players is the same regardless of what handed pitcher they are facing, we will then add it to his RHP overall wOBA. As stated above, Wright’s wOBA against RHP is .366, meaning that trading Wright in a 2-0 count for Ike Davis is effectively like trading a .467 wOBA hitter (wright after 2-0 counts against righties) for a .358 wOBA guy (Davis against righties). That is quite obviously no longer an insignificant difference.
Now things have gotten a lot murkier. We are trading a much better hitter (David Wright in a 2-0 count against a RHP), for a worse hitter (Ike Davis against a RHP), but the worse hitter is in a more advantageous situation.
Is the 109 wOBA point difference between the two worth the 1.39 times more runs that are scored on average in the resulting situation? To answer this question, we must move to wRC+, a number based on wOBA that gives an idea of what percentage more runs than average given players will score.
Ike Davis is a 126 wRC+ v. RHP. This means he is worth 26% more runs than a MLB average player. Using similar methods as to what we used with wOBA above, we get that Wright is likely a 191 wRC+ player in 2-0 counts against RHP, ie 91% better than a league average hitter in any count in any situation. So, in all base/out situations we figure that Wright is worth 65% more runs than Davis, given the count Wright faced at the time. Let’s apply these numbers to the given base/out states we had when the players were up:
Davis: 126 wRC+ applied to .538 expected runs from an average player given men on 1st and 3rd with 2 outs = .678 expected runs.
Wright: 191 wRC+ applied to .387 expected runs from an average player given a man on third with 2 outs = .739 expected runs.
So, it does look like Fredi made the right call, though on average the difference is .06 runs (a relatively insignificant number). Ultimately, a large exercise and a lot of words and thoughts to describe a decision that really was a wash either way. We made a few assumptions in getting to these numbers, but the point remains that given the statistical tools we had at the time, it’s hard to really question the move, even though it didn’t work out. I hesitate to say it was the right move, given how insignificant the differences were, but by no means was it clearly the wrong move. It was just a move.
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Absolutely fascinating breakdown. Just wanted to say I appreciate all the work you guys put into this blog. I can’t imagine where you all find the time, but I’m glad you do because this site truly enriches my love of the game and the Braves.
It’s a joy to read everything you guys write here at CAC.
Thanks
Great stuff, although I doubt Fredi gave nearly as much thought and analysis into the decision during the game. He probably just “felt” it.
I hate Fredi as much as the next guy, but there’s something to be said for general baseball knowledge in a situation like this. Fredi knows that Wright is a very good hitter, he knows that Wright is already in a hitter’s count, and he knows that Hanson made Davis look foolish with off speed stuff in his last start vs. NY. Obviously, he’s not going to calculate it out to the degree that Franklin did here, but so long as he was considering the right factors (and it’s not like Franklin dredged up anything too esoteric here–he just put specific numbers on several obvious and important considerations), I think there’s no reason to think his intuition wouldn’t lead him to a reasonable call.
Sorry for the double post, but… that said, I was frustrated by the decision to let Wilson hit for himself with two on and one out in the 7th. Why not let Freeman go up there and take a shot at the righty? Letting Wilson hit there is basically a surrender of the scoring opportunity in a game that was still sorta-kinda within reach.
Past the decision to let Wilson hit for himself, there was also the choice of pinch hitter. Personally I would rather have Freeman pinch hit than Francisco. And that strikeout by Francisco was terrible….
Pretty much everything “El Niño Destructo” Francisco does is utterly terrible, sans one double play he turned and the 2B that gave the Braves a 2-1 win. After that, he has looked utterly outmatched. However, I’m not sure there is a Major Leaguer that looks as outclassed at the plate as Jack Wilson. I understand him spelling The Rev occasionally, but good lord… the guy is 0-for-2012, with no end in sight.
Oh, and DFA Durbin, bring up Buddy Carlyle!
I find it quite interesting to mathematically describe what would most likely be a gut decision made on a very limited sample size by Fredi.
It of course would be impossible to comment for sure on what Fredi is thinking. However, based on his former decisions based on near statistically irrelevant points such as Constanza garning playing time due to a “hot hand” you have to think that the main consideration for his decision was based upon Wright’s near .500 BA this year only. Then were left with trying to quantify circumstances like how well Wright is playing right now on a more limited sample size, which is of course quite well to describe Fredi’s logic. Based on that, I believe you have to factor in that Fredi would be considering that Wright’s ability would not be consistent with his career stats, but rather what he has done this season at a higher impact than his overall career.
I think were then left with the difficult task of answering a completely theoretical question of whether or not Wright’s season so far merits a different response in this situation compared to say his numbers last year. Even though stats wise over his career it may be a wash, it obviously seems that Wright is seeing the ball well right now, and it impacted the overall decision. It may be difficult to quantify because with the season being so young observations are more qualitative than quantitative, but I think pitching to Wright would have been a mistake.
The truth is Hanson made a mistake pitch, hung a curve, paid for it, and cost us the game.
OK, no no no no, you do NOT have your right handed pitcher who is throwing (at THAT point a mediocre fastball , walk the right handed batter to face the lefty)
No, I’m as much a Saber guy as any of you, but that was a horrible call, is Wright “Hotter” yep, is Ike Davis a power hitting lefty? yes, is he more likely to have a longer look at a breaking pitch from a righty rather than a lefty? Yes…………
Hanson’s mistake was too many consecutive breaking pitches of course, yet the original mistake was adding a potential run to the base path. I am against same side intentional walks in favor of the opposite side. Regardless of the batter’s recent history. If you look at his long term history, you are adding flame to the fire. A POWER hitting lefty versus a tired righty ?
That’s a bad play, a lousy move by Fredi, I don’t care of Wright’s history was 15-16 against Hanson.
Although our diligent bloggers have described the move as mathematically correct, even by a slight margin = a “move,” you still say it is wrong. It seems you believe it to be an asinine decision to walk Wright? The move was a very smart baseball move along which is backed up by the numbers. The reason the homerun was hit had nothing to do with the decision, throwing 4 curveballs in a row is what led to the homerun. Or, possibly a hanging curve as the 4th was the reason behind the blast?I agree with blasting Fredi when he deserves it, not when his players do not come through as they should.
After reading all the numbers behind the decision, I’m a little confused as to how you’re so sure it was such a lousy move. Of course there are a million other factors you could somehow add to the decision making process, but generally I think it’s fair to say that neither move would be that great nor that bad. Which is why it was described as just a move.
well, you’re throwing out a LOT of the issue, by boiling this down to walking a righty for a lefty. Wright is a better hitter than Ike Davis, and Wright was in a hitter’s count. Meaning he was most likely either going to be walked anyway, or catch a Hanson mistake. Wright is not only a good hitter, but he’s a really smart hitter. He doesn’t swing at pitches in hitter’s counts unless he knows he can drive them. With Davis, we at least had the chance of getting him into a pitcher’s count and forcing a swing at a pitcher’s pitch.
Like I said, it really didn’t matter, and either way it came down to execution WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY more than it did the manager’s choice.
To clarify, first I can totally acknowledge Bravos’ view, I just wanted to make a few points that I previously intended to make more clear.
1. Fredi most likely made his decision based on Wright’s overall success this year. I know I cannot say that with complete certainty, but based on past history I would assume it’s highly unlikely Fredi’s thought process was able to wander anywhere near what Frankin’s analysis points out.
2. Even though the decision may have been based on intuition based on a limited sample size, in this case the difference between the two decisions is so negated that I don’t believe it mattered.
3. The decision was so close, that I even though I would like to call myself someone that sides with a SABR argument, I question whether or not there would be room for at least a slight acknowledgement in Wright’s success this season, despite how difficult it would be quantify and work into a sabr argument, and I personally would not have pitched to Wright.
I agree completely on the fact that Hanson threw too many breaking ball consecutively, and that he of course made a mistake pitch of the last one. That said in this case, the fault doesn’t really lie with Fredi, it lies with Hanson.
Tough break on the Wright for Davis call. I’m not sure when you made the change but the new slogan is awesomeness.
Unless it’s the juice-enhanced Bonds, I hate the decision to add runners to the bases with 2 outs,however, this post diffuses a bit of my hatred toward Fredi’s moves. I’m back down to 9.92/10
I agree with others who’ve already stated same: Incredible analysis. Well done.
Thanks for the analysis, FJR. Considering the count at 2-0 is a huge factor; I didn’t realize the count was 2-0 as I was checking the PBP and box score.
A few quibbles, none of which alters the conclusion (I think): using the career splits as estimate of “true talent” wOBA vs Hanson. Projection systems think Davis and Wright are now about equal hitters, before splits (Steamer likes Davis a little better, ZiPS likes Wright). If you use projections as estimates of true talent, and then apply a splits adjustment for vs RHP (and you should regress their career splits, but don’t ask me how), you’ll figure that Wright is 20 to 30 points worse than Davis vs RHP.
I’m also willing to give Fredi some credit for the things he knows that the projections don’t, such as whether Wright has been hampered by injury the past couple years but is 100% healthy now. Of course, Wright, with a broken pinkie, isn’t 100% right now. And what Fredi probably took into account is that Wright is “hot.”
I’m also sympathetic to the view that getting out of the inning with zero runs is more important than minimizing total runs allowed. That is, if for whatever reason Fredi thought we’d have trouble scoring runs tonight, then the question might boil down to whether Davis or Wright is the easier out (in other words, ignore the “extra” run expectancy Davis gets because he’s hitting with an extra man on).
Also, consider that Hanson is better than the average RHP, though it is his third time through the lineup. That’s probably a wash.
Finally, I’m not sure you can multiply wRC+ by run expectancies to get the “true” run expectancy. wRC+ is based on weighted runs created in all situations (or the average situation); I would expect the differences to be exaggerated in high-leverage situations. That is, assuming your estimates of wRC+ are correct, then Davis is 26% better and Wright is 91% better than league average _in the average base-out situation_. I don’t think that translates directly to each and every particular base-out situation.
All that to say, these points may nudge me a little to pitching to Wright, but it’s still probably a “go with gut” situation, as you conclude.
one other issue for just using ZiPS projections is that when players make improvements as they age (as Davis is projected to do), a lot of it comes from improving against same handed matchups. ie a lot of Davis’s projected improvement will come from getting better against LHP, you expect much more improvement there than his improvement against RHP, which there was obviously less to improve upon. So, just using ZiPS and then adding his career splits would still be making some questionable assumptions. Really, to do this right, we’d have to create a projection system that not only projected performance, but splits as well, which I wasn’t up to the task of doing last night after watching that game, haha.
You’re right, you could do a lot of extra work without materially improving precision. But I think the value-add in starting with projections is worth it, particularly when a player like Wright has 4 excellent seasons, but all 2008 or before, propping up his career stats and projection systems know to discount or ignore them appropriately. And Davis should be improving and is 5 years younger. I especially think the value-add is worth the extra work when someone else is doing the work….
Anyways, while projections may overestimate Davis’s improvment vs RHP (or mask a relatively smaller improvement vs RHP compared to improvement vs LHP–I hadn’t thought about it before, but that makes sense), I’d guess the effect is small enough that Davis should still be considered the better hitter right now vs RHP.
Yes – good post.
First off, this was amazing.
Second, and not totally related: Where is Tommy Hanson’s FB velocity? What’s going on?
I think it’s a mix of three factors: 1) adding a 2-seamer in 2) aging/injuries 3) not throwing as hard for better command and less shoulder strain
In addition to the reasons already given, is there a chance that Hanson is entering the year somewhat out of shape? He appeared winded at times last night, and the pitch that lead to this entire article (the hanging curve to Davis) was the classic mistake of a tired pitcher despite a relatively low pitch count. To my eye, he and Freeman both appear to be in worse shape than last year.
I don’t see any reason to believe that. He hung one pitch.
I do not even know how much that pitch hung. I thought it was a good pitch low in the zone. To me i thought it was a backdoor attempt that ended up starting on the corner and ended up a little over the plate but not really high.
He really didn’t hang it, as you say. Too many consecutive curve balls, and Davis tracked it and whacked it.
To address a few points:
1) Yes, I am in no way trying to defend whatever Fredi’s reasons for making the call were. I have no idea what his reasons were, and they were most likely bad. I was merely addressing the question as to whether or not the move was actually a good or bad move. Or at the very least a clearly good or bad move. I came to the conclusion that the move almost certainly wasn’t either clearly good or clearly bad.
2) Hizouse, you made some excellent points. The points you brought up were most of the things I was alluding to when I said “we made some assumptions along the way”. The issue I had with using projection systems instead of just career splits is projection systems only give total projections, not split projections, and we used multiple splits here, for both count and handedness. Additionally, I felt that projection systems are probably slightly overrating Davis and underrating Wright this year based on analysis I’ve seen from scouts anyway. Yes, absolutely, you technically cannot just multiply wRC+, which is calculated for all situations and then apply that to a give situation. However, I felt it was probably the best we could do, and would at least get us in the ballpark.
Ultimately, I felt that I could sacrifice a little precision because the question I most wanted to answer was “was the move clearly right or wrong?” If the move had been clearly right or wrong, these relatively minor quibbles probably wouldn’t have mattered much. There were really only two factors at play 1) adding a runner on first with two outs is usually bad and 2) David Wright with a 2-0 count is a better hitter than Ike Davis (though I wasn’t 100% sure this would be the case until I looked at the numbers). I felt that once we used numbers to at least get us in the ballpark, we’d see that either it was clearly the wrong call, clearly the right call, or roughly the same either way. Almost all signs point to “roughly the same, either way”.
Again, you guys had awesome comments. Thanks for all the thoughts.
I see only one problem with this. I think the decision to walk Wright was made before the 2-0 count. Listening to Hanson’s comments after the game, it’s clear he was not going to give Wright anything to hit. They took two pitches to see if he would chase something, then just threw the intentional balls when he didn’t.
So, I think the decision should be analyzed without the consideration of the 2-0 count.
well, considering the fact that pitch f/x actually called the first pitch a strike, I don’t know that I entirely agree with that. Tommy obviously wasn’t pitching him like he would in a normal situation, but that is far from saying Fredi ordered a walk from the bench.
Yeah, fair enough. I think Hanson’s comments after the game were, “I wasn’t going to give him anything he could hurt me with.” Now, I suppose you could argue this is a pitcher’s goal with every batter, but I took Tommy’s comments to mean he wasn’t going to pitch to him, unless he chased on the first couple of pitches. But you make a good point about the first pitch.
Didnt like the idea of ONLY throwing breaking balls to Ike though
I totally agree. More specifically curves. Were his curves good in the AB? Yes but he still needs to change it up sometimes.
I know I’m late to the party and this might have very well been said, but this is just one of those decisions where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If Fredi keeps pitching to Wright and he gets the run(s) home, we would be upset, if he walks him and pitches to Ike and he gets the run(s) home, we’re upset.
On the reverse, if he does either and the hitter records the final out, we immediately forget the inherent risk and say it was genius.
How is the issue here not the decision to walk Wright but to allow Hanson to face Davis. If you put an average lefty in, which we don’t have – all of ours in the pen are above average, Davis has a career wOBA of 0.317 coming off of a 0.230 year last year. Against right handed pitching he has, as stated above, a wOBA of 0.358 but coming off of a year where he had a wOBA of 0.475.
The career wOBA against left handed pitching of 0.317 translates to a 97 wRC+ and last year’s 0.230 wOBA translates to a 41 wRC+. Using the calculations you get a range from 0.489 runs to 0.221 runs.
If you use last years vs. right handed pitchers wOBA and corresponding wRC+ of 210 you get an upper bound of 1.129 runs.
Clearly the issue was not weather walking Wright was right or wrong but in leaving Hanson in to face a left hander who crushes right handers.
*whether
I agree with that point. Though people would have freaked out about taking Hanson out when he only had given up 1 run and was only in the 6th inning.
I can guarantee you if Fredi had done that he would have been skewered for over-managing and overtaxing the pen, regardless of whether or not it had worked.
Additionally, I can’t even remember if we had relievers warmed up at the time or not.
Hanson still had a low pitch count at the time (remember he went through the 7th and only threw 105 total). One batter on with 2 outs, or two runners after the walk, is not exactly a huge jam. Its not like he hadn’t been able to get an out in the inning. Plus taking him out would force us to use our high leverage relievers yet again (or else surrender the game to Livan/Durbin).
From a statistical point of view, it was a high leverage situation. There was a 50% chance of a run scoring in either scenario. That’s what your relievers are there for. I understand that he might be skewered and that Hanson had more arm left, but we lost the game because the lefty move was not made. A bad outcome for the Braves as predicted by the numbers. In the end its another loss and isn’t the point to win games.
As an aside, I would love to see a manager spit some analysis like Frank posted here out when the media is giving him a hard time. Would be awesome to see the media talking heads heads explode….
Again, I agree, but the fact that managers manage to keep their jobs more than to win games is just a fact I’ve come to accept over the years. I basically feel like the best you can hope for is that when traditional analysis could go either way, the managers makes the right call according to more in depth research. Problem with Fredi is that he also often makes the wrong call in cases where the traditional media wouldn’t have skewered him for it either.
Managers outside of Tampa, where there’s nobody to do the second guessing anyway, just simply aren’t going to make decisions that will cause a media frenzy and get them fired by reactionary bosses. We’d first have to educate the media to get that to change, and the only way the media is going to get educated is if consumers are educated enough to know what they’d be talking about, and well, we’ve made progress but we’re still a long way off from that happening.
good point. Also, if you’re going to put Wright on, why not put Davis on also and pitch to the clearly-worse Bay? Sure, you put Tommy in a situation where he has to throw strikes, but Bay looks terrible this year, was terrible last year, and wasn’t good the year before, either.
Yep. That would work.
Last 3 years wRC+ for Bay against RHP….
2009 – 129
2010 – 105
2011 – 76
Career – 120
I do not question the walk to Wright honestly. Wright has had a fantastic start to the year while Davis really hasn’t. What I really question is the sequence to Davis. In Davis’ 1st AB he saw 2 pitches both curveballs. In his 2nd AB he saw 3 pitches(a Fastball and 2 Curves). On his AB with the HR he saw 5 pitches… all were curveballs. At some point the guy is going to make an adjustment if he sees it enough. He saw it 9 times out of 10 pitches. He did hit a good pitch out(low in the zone) but come one. Tommy even had him with 2 strikes. His outpitch is his Slider and his 2nd best pitch is his Fastball.
I was just watching the Gamecast, but when I saw the intentional balls come up, i thought for sure a reliever was coming in. What’s the point of having a LOOGY in the bullpen if not to pitch against a LHB in that situation. Hell, if this was MLB 2012, I wouldve brought in Venters there.
This would have tilted it in their favor. The Braves have figured that throwing breaking balls to Ike is the way to go though, and have generally been very effective in doing so, so I can see why they felt confident with Hanson staying in to face him. I would have gone to O’Flaherty there though. Davis is very bad against lefties, and it would have certainly made the move a better one rather than “just a move.”
did we have guys int he bullpen warmed up at this point? Not saying that would change whether it was tactically the right or wrong move, as perhaps Fredi should have have been planning for the possibility of such a move as soon as Tejada doubled (though even then that may not have been enough time to get a reliever warmed). But I just can’t remember if by the time we got to Wright it was even going to be an option to bring a LOOGY in to face Davis.
Yeah, I have no idea what the situation was at the time, but if I was going to end up walking Wright I would have had that plan in mind with a pitcher warm. I am pretty much fine with either decision, but bringing in a lefty to face Ike is the only way I would dead sold with walking him being the definite correct decision. With no pitcher warm, I don’t mind the way they did it, I just probably would have done it differently.
First of all- this article gave me a hard-on. Don’t know if I can say that but whatever. A few random thoughts…I was glad they didn’t take Hanson out, can’t take out your supposed number 1 because the other team put a guy on third with two outs in the sixth. I didn’t get to watch the game, just listened on the radio and as soon as they announced Wright’s name I wanted Hanson to do the old “Maddux” and throw 4-6 close pitches and if he swings at 1 of them he grounds out. Hard for me to comment but I wish I could watch both at-bats. Did Hanson set his curves up with anything?? Too many in a row in the same spot?? Hes lost velocity because hes working on a two-seamer…supposedly, does he have the arsenal to run that two-seamer low and away for a ground-out?? Could he work Davis harder and make him chase something low and away, 2 seamer or change-up?? Maybe I’m over thinking the Glavine Maddux days, but I remember them same sit making pitchers pitches even to the Davis and making him chase (same situation) and getting the next guy if they have to. Anyway, it seems like a NUMBER 1 Starter should be able to find a way out of the situation without a 3 run homer, If Davis hits a grounder thru a hole…then whatever. I’m at work so I can barely think straight, …..whoever you guys are who run this sight, your doing God’s work, haha, great job.
I like a lot of your thoughts and agree with them. To answer your question, it did look like Tommy was trying to get Wright to chase something close. In fact, the first pitch should have been a strike that Wright took, but instead was called a ball. When Wright didn’t chase ball 2, they intentionally walked him.
I think most agree that decision wasn’t truly what hurt the team. It the sequence of pitches to Davis or the fact that Hanson was even still pitching to him in the first place.
One misconception that seems to be running rampant through this discussion is that Tommy is a #1 starter. He might be our team’s #1, but that doesn’t mean he IS a #1. No disrespect to Tommy meant at all, but asking him to paint corners in hopes that Wright chases, then to throw 4 straight curveballs that manage to stay just barely in the zone is a stretch.
Fact is, he made mistakes and he got beat on the last one.
In the 3 Ike Davis ABs against Hanson he saw 10 pitches. 1 was a Fastbal which was in the second AB. I guess they found that you have to work Davis with breaking balls but you still have to keep him honest with a FB, Change-up or Slider over constantly throwing curves.
The move was made because Wright is hitting over .500 in the early season and Davis was hitting under .200. Davis was obviously struggling. I would have made the same exact move.
The only reason it backfired was because Hanson grooved a fourth straight curveball to Davis. The pitch was astoundingly hittable, and Davis hit it.
Walking Wright was absolutely the correct move. Period.
I don’t think you can say Davis is ‘obviously struggling’ given the relatively few number of games played this year. Davis is mostly feeling the pinch of a tremendously unlucky .150 babip (compared to his career mark of .318). Davis’ other numbers are down as well, but the vast majority of his ‘struggles’ are just purely bad luck. And you shouldn’t base tactical decisions on whether or not a player has been lucky or unlucky. I’d basically ignore what the two players were ‘hitting’ over a 10 game sample and prefer to use the thousand plus at bats over their careers to get a better feel for what a player is likely to do in a given situation.
Wright over the past three years, while hurt or not, has not been the same hitter of the first five years of his career. Walking Wright given how the PA opened might has been fine, but it seems pointless to have him face Davis if you are punting the Wright PA due to Hanson’s potential ineffectiveness. Walking Davis either without a lefty ready to face Davis, or using the many options available to delay for a lefty to get up as fast as possible is unprepared and bad managing.
For vast amount of time last season Fredi ignored a lot of public pressure. He kept using Linebrink and Proctor. Hears the media claim about overuse on Venter/Kimbrel then completely changes the next season? This is a guy who came into the job effectively as a chosen one, I don’t even recall there being an other serious candidates for the job.
It wasn’t overuse of Venters/Kimbrel last season that was a problem, that’s on the offense for constantly putting him in 1-2 run games. Fredi using them correctly, if often isn’t ideal but not wrong, as I am sure many people realize. It was several times he would use them in irrelevant situations. I recall a game against the mariners that was 5-0 or so and Venters came in and I believe allowed a home run and triggered a huge backlash against overuse. This situation seemed to change Fredi from making better decision, to simply making different ones.
Making bad decisions isn’t the worst part of Fredi’s manaing, because everyone makes the wrong decision at times. People should be allowed a chance to learn and adapt. Fredi is not learning better tactics, and is allowing himself to be influenced by incorrect media assumptions. If he can’t come out and say I am going to use Venters and Kimbrel over Chad Durbin and Livan Hernandez because they are ridiculously better, then there is a problem. If they get overused, it’s unfortunate as long as it’s because of misuse but a part of the game.
While admitting in part of the inexact process of measuring Wright vs Davis, a large reason why Wright is so good in 2-0 counts is the 31% walk rate he manages when in that situation. With a career walk rate of 11%, Wright is gaining a significant value i that count from his ability to further draw a walk. Elimination of this bonus walk rate would be necessary to determine more accurately the potential run difference between the two hitters as you are already conceding the acceptance of a walk.
1. He should have pitched to Wright. Adding baserunners wasn’t a good idea with a power hitting lefty coming up next. Worst-case scenario is that Wright launches one and the Mets go up by 2 runs. I’d take my chances they don’t go back-to-back after that.
2. After Wright was IBB’d, then Davis also should have been IBB’d. Pitch to Bay with force outs at all the bases and RH vs RH.
3. Ike was looking for a curve and he didn’t miss it. Gotta keep him off balance.
As much as Fredi is criticized for his process making these decisions, can we list out how many managers are making these types of in-game decisions with advanced statistics by their sides? Is there any manager that is sitting in the dugout with a spreadsheet with updated wOBA against righties and lefties, wOBA against certain pitchers, wOBA after certain counts? This is an honest question, who else is baseball is usiing this data on a day-in-day-out basis to inform their decisions?
it’s not necessarily about saying that Fredi should have these sorts of charts out there, but simply that in a lot of situations Fredi does something that almost never makes sense (eg bunting with your #2 hitter).
The whole point of this exercise was to say that this call was probably too close to really worry about either way.
@Jeff
You wouldn’t take out the value Wright gets from walking out of 2-0 counts in doing this comparison, because you’d then have to then not count Wright’s run to make the comparison fair.
Consider it this way, if you don’t consider the value of a walk in a given situation, it always makes sense to intentionally walk the hitter.
Wright is a career .300 hitter with .327 2-0 counts. Wright has a career 387OBP vs 537 in 2-0 counts Using wOBA to measure a player’s talent level over a prolong period of time works well. Using it as well as player approach knowledge in specific tactical instances is faulty. Wright’s value in those counts is bloated severely by his ability to force 2-0 counts into walks. A walk is the single most likely outcome for David Wright in that situation.
This is where there has to be a difference in scouting and pure math, and I do love pure math. David Wright is more likely to not take the third pitch than he is to swing at it, and this is the important detail. He has 179 hits vs a resulting 257 walks after a 2-0 count. Aside from the fact that this is in part buoyed by Wright’s early career which injuries has potentially affected, walking him intentionally is merely playing into the most likely outcome at that point. If there is no faith at the pitcher can avoid lobbing something for Wright to hammer to hell, then there is no reason to leave the pitcher in for the next batter.
This is what should be at question. Walking Wright is somewhat fine IF the objective is to get the platoon advantage vs Ike Davis who is to good of a hitter to PH for, but with a noticeable decline in quality against left handed pitching.
The reality is that a walk doesn’t score that run. Wright gets a hit in roughly 33% of the time in that situation. Ike Davis is starting about 27%. Walking a batter for 6% chance of scoring the runner? Wright is still a smart base runner and had he attempted to steal, would mccann have even tried to throw him out given his CS% and a runner on third?
There’s a reason why intentional walks are horribly detrimental, and this situation was no different. It makes sense if the manager is prepared to go for the platoon advantage, but Fredi wasn’t. He made no attempt to delay for bullpen time, or even indicate that it was a thought in his head. He walked a batter with an injured hand to face a LHB with a RHP pitcher with no discernible R/L splits.
[...] Avenue takes a look at the intentional walk given to David Wright on Monday night just before Ike Davis‘ three-run home [...]
[...] Avenue takes a look at the intentional walk given to David Wright on Monday night just before Ike Davis‘ three-run home [...]