ashbury

There goes the perfect game.

Didn't see the play, but I think with his past back problems, his game has to be to minimize risk of injury. It's most evident in his defense, but he's also tied with Morneau for least-likely to get sent by the third-base coach and not solely on the basis of speed, and he probably gets a pass on any baserunning decisions he chooses to make.

ftfy

AccuWeather's hourly forecast has another hour or so of "light rain", then very low precip probabilities after that. I think they get this game in.

C'mon Hicksie. C'mon Dozier-zie. C'mon, especially, Hendriksie.

Much better. Not, "you took the cowardly path in that game, Ron." Just, "you look tired, Ron." That's what I'll say when I shake his hand.

You all are just comforming to me.

I've been dancing around this for several posts in this thread, and came to realize a few of them ago that I'm basically accusing Gardy of cowardice. I don't like that, and it would not be something I could say to his face, so I don't know how to reconcile that.

Thanks for the compliment. As for this particular point, I would not go as far as you do to say ignore past stats in this situation; a game like Strat-o-Matic can do a convincing job of giving you a game scoresheet that is hard to distinguish from a real-life one, just from season-long stats and a set of dice. Things we don't thoroughly understand we lump together as "random chance", and if someone else (like a baseball manager) believes he has additional insight but it blows up on him anyway, it *may* be correct to crow that I could have told him better just by looking at the stats - we know that experts in any field may believe things that aren't actually true. But, the comment you highlighted is my acknowledgement that there remains a very human factor in the game, and also that Gardy may have information that is not only not available to me, but might actually be pertinent. I say that a little humorously, but also with plenty of humility, to go along with a less-humble view that it's still best in the long run to rely on past performance rather than hunches and loyalty and short-run results.

Probably "everybody" should send you private messages instead of posting, to assure you. Just to be clear, I'm in the "send him out to start the 8th but with a one-baserunner leash" camp, not "don't send him out at all". So, running the clock back to the 7th, I don't think I have Burton warming up, but maybe Fien (did Gardy?). Correia did get the first two guys out, then gave up the single to Hosmer. Dangerous but non-Allstar Francoeur coming up to bat, and Hosmer's not a bad runner. I think I roll the dice with Correia to get the third out. If Francoeur reaches, whether or not Hosmer scores, I go to Fien, planning for Burton in the 8th and Perk in the 9th. So then, in your scenario... if Correia actually gives up 3 runs, I am griping about not having the bullpen come in, same as now. My argument in this scenario isn't so much that Correia's gone 7 only 3 times, but it's a 1-0 game up to that point, things are just different when it's 1-0, yadda yadda.

Agreed. Front offices everywhere need to look up the word lagniappe if they don't remember and need a vocabulary refresher; it is the mot juste here.

I would have liked more details on the rainout. What was the WAR (Wind Above Replacement) and the OPS (Optimum Precipitation Sensor) reading? Was there a cool lightning show?

It's a fair question but I think there is a big difference. If you have constructed your bullpen, as a lot of teams do, to have a setup man and a closer who are markedly better than the rest of the options, then in a one-run game having your starter finish 7 instead of 6 is a big deal. But that raises the question, is Burton as your setup man that good? And that's where Gardy may have specific information that trumps my analysis: if he and his coach don't think he's in midseason form yet, or is nursing an unpublicized injury, or any of various other reasons, then maybe Perkins is the only option who is clearly better than a starter who has put up 7 innings. So that's an argument in favor of what Gardy did. I'll turn the Our Bullpen Rocks argument on its head, though, and say that if we *don't* have two pitching options better than a guy with Correia's track record, to pitch the 8th and 9th in specifically a 1-0 game, maybe Our Bullpen Sucks. You can manage by looking at the statistics, but what most statistics can't convey is the additional information that in *this* game Correia has pitched 7 innings in unusually good form. Maybe someone has performed a Bayesian kind of analysis and concluded that no, pitching results in the next inning are more like a Markov process and thus memory-less, but I don't remember it. If your pitching coach and your own eye don't tell you that he's starting to physically wear down today, then that also argues in favor of the manager's chosen strategy, that a reliever would not be an improvement. Finally, since I'm at it, I meant to add in my earlier post about 1-0 games being unique, that they are different from similar games in two contrasting ways. If it's a shutout but is 3-0 instead of 1-0, then you have a lot more latitude to give your starter the chance to complete the shutout. If instead we are talking about 1-run games, a 3-2 or even 2-1 game is different in that your starter has done at least something to merit his removal when you give him the bad news, whereas the 1-0 variant means you are really the bad guy for taking him out. Being in a 1-0 game definitely is the harder of both worlds, for the manager. (And then there's the 0-0 games - remember Tom Kelly's quote after leaving Morris in for one more inning, "hey, it's only the 7th game of the World Series". )

Not only that, it's the most unique kind of one-run game, 1-0. Your pitcher has done literally nothing wrong so far, in terms of the end result of keeping the other team from scoring, whether that means he mowed them down or worked in and out of trouble. As manager, you've gotten what you always claim you want: the chance to win in the late innings. Now you have to manage to meet that claim, and it has to be without regard to egos, particularly when it's a veteran on the mound. Quite often both bullpens are hotbeds for the remainder of the game, pitchers of either hand throwing in tandem. And now you as manager may have to tell this starter he's done nothing wrong, in fact pitched one of the best ten games of his life, but you're taking him out anyway. "Great game, stud, now it's on me if it goes wrong." This is whether you bring Burton in to start the inning, or wait to allow a first baserunner (my option), or wait another batter longer to bring him in. Gardy didn't do any of these; he didn't even set up the possibility to do these if the bullpen was quiet.

This site is relatively new, but we've already seen the pattern before, and several of us already have lived it ourselves and then toned ourselves down (a little). Somebody age 40+ runs across this forum, decides it's incumbent on him to share the wealth of his experience with others, and reacts badly when this experience is contradicted, and doubles down with a new post that explains a new sheriff is in town. My apologies to the OP in case he's a spring chicken of 39 or lower.

NOW I'm really learning something. Let's you and him fight. / I'm not a mod, but: nicely, my brothers.

That was then. This is now.

Or, if you accidentally develop a high-end catcher too quickly, he's still of value and you can always swap him for a Proven Closer.

Success depends greatly on not tipping pitches, and perhaps that is never more true than on the change. Good batters will detect a difference in your delivery, so of course you can't throw a change-up by easing up on the gas or anything major like that. Maybe a Ted Williams can spot the different placement in the hand on a circle-change, but against human batters that or something similar seems like the way to go. I really enjoy reading these deeply introspective interviews with players. When I've asked old-timers on panels to "scout themselves as a player", 9 times out of 10 they'll say something on a par with "don't walk him, heh heh heh". And young players have an incentive not to say anything that might benefit an opponent, so I don't seem to run across a lot of interviews like this one. But it's great, and leads me to believe that current players are better students of the game than ever before, contrary to the narrative some grouchy fans would like to pass off.

The one previous season they intersected, Correia did as well with Doumit as any of the other catchers, so why not. In a vacuum, I might think a guy like Correia who depends on command would suffer if a catcher has a poor reputation for framing pitches, and I would opt for another veteran, which right now would only be Pelfrey. If Liriano were still with the team, I'd pick him, or when Deduno makes his appearance I might opt for him; wild guys seem like they need a different skill set from a catcher than the framing we're focusing on here.

Not having played the game at a better level than beer-league softball (and badly at that), I had not run across this analysis/advice. Interesting.

Scouting of the pitchers will be as welcome, or maybe even moreso, as for the position players. The parent roster needs help, and and the fans need hope!

He took a strike but then was going after anything in the strike zone after that - can't ask for more, really.

Unjustified. I blame Gardy. If he had had Burton and Perkins warming up in the first, this outcome could have been averted.