But before all that, there was Tony La Russa hitting the pitcher in the eighth spot in the lineup. La Russa, when he managed the Cardinals, was known to be willing to experiment a bit to gain an edge.
In , he even tried a pitching strategy which had three groups of three pitchers each that worked a three-day rotation. The experiment lasted a week, but he gave it a shot. But now, the La Russa gambit of hitting the pitcher eighth is back. Joe Maddon, a National League manager for the first time in his career, seems to be sticking by the strategy in the early going.
Actually, Collins put the pitcher eighth three times last year. Hitting the pitcher eighth seems to defy conventional wisdom. The pitcher is almost always the weakest link in the lineup, and since there are nine spots, he should be in the one that is least likely to come up, right? It seems to make sense, but like a lot of things in life, it makes sense until you think a little deeper about it.
A manager usually puts his best hitters at the top of the lineup, hitters who are usually good at not making outs. The problem comes from the fact that in baseball, a lot of scoring depends on stringing a couple of hits together consecutively before the out clock runs out.
On average, they happen in one out of about 40 plate appearances, and even the really gifted home run hitters only hit them 5 or 6 percent of the time. To win baseball games, a team needs to have runners on to knock in. The problem with the pitcher hitting ninth is that those really good hitters find themselves without runners to knock in and with more outs on the scoreboard when they come up, because the guy in the number nine spot, the pitcher, is generally a bum with the bat.
In fact in , pitchers in the NL put up a combined. Even lowly no. The eight-hole guy gets on base almost twice as often as a pitcher. Maybe it makes sense to put the actual major-league hitter in the nine spot. It turns out that batting the pitcher somewhere other than ninth is historically pretty rare. And then the idea went into hibernation. The s saw a total of four games with a non-ninth pitcher, the s saw nine such games, and the s featured only two games with the pitcher out of the lineup cellar.
In the s, though, pitchers hitting ninth became a little more optional. By , the pitcher hitting somewhere other than ninth happened an astounding 66 times with Boudreau, Casey Stengel , and Bobby Bragan experimenting with the idea. And then just like that, it vanished again with not a single instance in or It happened total of five times in the s and s combined and not at all in the s.
But La Russa is, by far the patron saint of the movement. Since through last year , there have been games which featured a pitcher penciled into the lineup somewhere other than ninth. Tony La Russa wrote more than half of those lineups.
But is it a good idea? The fact that La Russa was hitting the pitcher eighth nearly two decades ago means that someone noticed and ran a study , in this case John Beamer at The Hardball Times. We know that lineup construction itself is vastly overplayed.
People place far too much emphasis on lineup construction relative to the added benefits that it can bring to a team. I pulled out my lineup simulator and created a lineup composed of the composite average of a MLB leadoff hitter, a no. The model that I use is a Monte Carlo Markov simulator, which essentially uses a bunch of dice rolls to simulate a baseball game.
I ran that model through , simulated nine-inning games. Afterward, I flip-flopped the pitcher and the eight-hole hitter. We see that the pitcher hitting eighth wins… once you get to the third and fourth decimal place. Not 0. And at that, some of that is blunted by the fact that rarely do teams let their pitchers bat past the sixth or seventh inning my model plays all nine so the difference between the two models should probably be chopped by about a third.
Additionally, in this simulation, the pitcher was always swinging away. In fact, when anti-DH advocates make their case, they often point to the delightful agony of this particular situation. But if you pinch-hit here, you lose the pitcher and have to hope that your bullpen is solid. Now batting… who? Some of these may be relievers. Some of them may not be the nine-spot, because of double switches, but right now I just want to establish something.
In the seventh inning, the rate is down to roughly one quarter! Now that decision is a pretty big one. Maybe someone has to get four outs today instead of three or maybe the fourth-best reliever has to pitch today. Pretty much, no matter what he does, the manager gives up value somewhere.
His team is losing, although the game is close within two runs. Our pitcher has only given up three or fewer runs.
This is a situation that a manager faces in In other words, a manager is going to have multiple games during the year in which he has to make a choice between some much-needed offense or keeping the pitcher in the game and where the game could be very much in the balance. He has to make that decision. But how often does this set of circumstances visit the eight-spot in the lineup?
A quick comparison:. If the pitcher is batting eighth, that means that the manager will have to make that decision two or three more times per year than he otherwise would have to. He might be pitching well, but why risk an injury? But even if we allow that one of those situations might have the decision made for him, we still have one or two extra times where the manager is in a tough spot tactically, all because he hit the pitcher eighth and that decision snuck up on him. If the manager hits the pitcher ninth, then in these extra situations, it would be the eighth-spot hitter at the plate, rather than the pitcher.
Note: I looked to see how often real eighth-spot hitters are intentionally walked in these situations. The answer is—surprise! The average eight-hole hitter in had a.
All of a sudden, most, if not all, of what little value there was to be gained from hitting the pitcher eighth is gone. It looks daring. The biggest effect might be that it probably annoys the guy who has to hit ninth behind the pitcher. Pitchers hitting eighth is the bumper sticker of baseball. This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Read the description here. Subscribe to Baseball Prospectus. Thank you for reading This is a free article. Subscribe now. In This Article View article on legacy site. Russell A. Louis Cardinals. You need to be logged in to comment. Similarly, the Cubs used this tactic a ton: in a whopping of their games with no DH, pitchers batted 8th. However, Cubs batters in the 2 spot finished second in the league with 98 RBI over the season.
This might just be the kickstart to the Mets offense that could elevate it to greatness. Mets: Matt Harvey ready for another comeback shot by Richard Heaton. Next: Matt Harvey is ready for another comeback shot. Rising Apple 3 years Mets: Matt Harvey ready for another comeback shot. More MLB News ». View all MLB Sites. More AL East News ». View all AL East Sites. More AL Central News ».
Even more notably, 11 teams have used the strategy at least once — three-fifths of NL clubs, and even two AL teams the Twins and Angels. That buy-in more than doubles the previous high of five teams from It also makes it an easier sell to skeptical fans, media members, and ownership. Maddon does have that luxury: He just signed the most lucrative contract of any National League manager. In an environment in which runs are scarce, teams are more desperate to create them.
The added value of each out has made teams consider smaller edges that rightly or wrongly they might be less likely to prioritize when runs are flowing freely. Maddon might not be the only manager with player development on his mind. Relative to the league, pitchers have never been more inept at the plate than they have been in recent seasons.
0コメント