Archie Bradley’s Triple Was More Improbable Than You Think
Technically, in Wednesday’s NL wild-card game, the lead never changed hands. The Diamondbacks went up 3-0 on Paul Goldschmidt‘s early homer, and they won by an identical margin. Yet it still felt like something of a roller coaster, because the Rockies refused to go away. A 6-0 game narrowed to 6-5. An 8-5 game narrowed to 8-7. Even Fernando Rodney’s ninth inning wasn’t clean, as the Rockies attempted to rally. The game, overall, delivered on its promise. We didn’t end up with a wild-card clunker.
It’s always fun to break these games down in retrospect. I like to take the win-expectancy angle. The game’s third-most important event was A.J. Pollock‘s triple in the bottom of the eighth. It moved the win expectancy by 11 percentage points. The game’s second-most important event was the first-inning Goldschmidt homer. It moved the win expectancy by 13 percentage points. And the game’s single most important event was Archie Bradley’s triple in the bottom of the seventh. It moved the win expectancy by 16 percentage points. Bradley is a pitcher. Bradley is a relief pitcher.
It was an altogether strange evening for Bradley. The Diamondbacks lean on him as a multi-inning reliever, but as a consequence of that, Bradley was forced to go to the plate in a one-run game. And when Bradley was left in for the top of the eighth, he allowed a double and a pair of home runs, even though during the regular season he had one of the lowest home-run rates out of everybody. Bradley finished with more runs than innings pitched, which is a bad thing for any reliever to do, but the two runs he allowed could be forgiven, because he drove in two runs on his own. The Rockies thought they’d survived. It was 6-5 in the seventh, and with two on and one out, Pat Neshek whiffed Jeff Mathis. That brought up Bradley, which should’ve brought out number three. Bradley took Neshek’s first four pitches. He swung at the fifth.
In response, people have said this is why they love baseball. This is not why they love baseball. Nobody loves baseball for its abundant pitcher triples, because there is no such abundance. But people do love baseball for its general absurdity, for the way even the most predictable outcomes follow unpredictable courses. The Yankees were expected to beat the Twins, but Luis Severino was supposed to get more than one out. The Diamondbacks were expected to beat the Rockies, but Archie Bradley wasn’t supposed to knock a two-run triple. Bradley himself was so wiped out from his charge around the bases that, when the Rockies subsequently made a pitching change, he went to the bench to re-hydrate.
It might be enough to examine the limited history of pitcher triples in the playoffs. They’re among the rarest of things. If you go back and search all time, you could count them all up on two hands. In October, pitchers don’t triple. On the rare occasion that the World Series stretches into November, pitchers still don’t triple.
It’s because, just generally speaking, pitchers don’t triple. There are three reasons for this. One, triples are already uncommon, even for position players. Two, pitchers suck at hitting. And three, pitchers suck at running. Pitchers are slower runners than non-pitchers, and they’re also just worse runners than non-pitchers. Most triples require that a runner takes a chance. Pitchers are disinclined to take said chance, because they’re just worse, and they don’t want to get winded or hurt. So little, already, is expected of them. Why try for three bases if you can please everyone by stopping with two?
This season, pitchers batted more than 5,000 times, and they hit seven triples. They hit 77 doubles. They hit 26 homers. They were hit by a pitch 16 times. They hit 10 sac flies. There were 58 times that they reached on an error. Pitchers drew 27 four-pitch walks. That’s almost four times as often as they tripled. Pitchers hit seven triples. Last season, they hit eight triples. The season before that, they hit five. The season before that, they hit three. The high point over the past 40 years is 19 pitcher triples. The second-highest point is six triples lower than that.
It’s obvious to see what we already know. Pitchers don’t hit triples, because pitchers don’t hit. When pitchers do get hits, triples make up barely 1% of them. Just on that basis, it’s amazing that what happened on Wednesday happened. And yet, we can go further still. This wasn’t just a matter of a pitcher triple. Archie Bradley tripled against Pat Neshek. Relief pitcher Archie Bradley tripled against Pat Neshek.
Neshek, this year, absolutely dominated righties. Didn’t allow a triple in the regular season. Neshek has a history of dominating righties, because of his funky delivery and arm angle. Neshek made a full and effective return from elbow surgery and other complications in 2012. Since then, 394 different pitchers have faced at least 500 right-handed batters. Here are the lowest wOBAs allowed.
- Kenley Jansen, .196
- Craig Kimbrel, .202
- Jose Fernandez, .218
- Andrew Miller, .222
- Pat Neshek, .227
Against righties, Neshek has been more effective than almost literally everyone. I’m not even exaggerating. That’s just what’s been true. It’s why Neshek still has a job. Bradley was batting against him right-handed. We should also talk about Bradley.
Bradley made his major-league debut in 2015, and over the regular seasons, he’s batted 66 times. His slash-line reads .098/.097/.098. If you’re curious, that’s been good for a wRC+ of -66. Since 2015, out of 832 hitters with at least 50 plate appearances, Bradley’s wRC+ ranks ninth-worst. He wasn’t a good hitter before now. When Bradley had the chance to hit in the minors, he posted a .298 OPS. In the majors, Bradley has basically either hit a grounder, or whiffed. Here are the highest strikeout rates, out of that same sample of 832 players.
- Jon Gray, 56.8%
- Jimmy Nelson, 56.7%
- Dan Straily, 56.6%
- Matt Cain, 56.1%
- Archie Bradley, 56.1%
Bradley’s been worse than almost anyone. He’s struck out more than almost anyone. And for good measure, I checked the expected wOBAs from Baseball Savant. The lowest expected wOBA for any pitcher since 2015 with at least 50 plate appearances belongs to…Archie Bradley. And Bradley, in 2015 and 2016, was a starter. In 2017, he became a reliever. Which meant he hit less. Which meant less practice. Which, presumably, meant more rust.
Already, the odds of seeing a pitcher triple in a given plate appearance are essentially nil. They just don’t happen, but once in a blue moon. But the details make this only all the more improbable. When you’ve got a right-handed batter at the plate, Pat Neshek is one of the very best bets in the game to get that guy out. And Bradley, since debuting, has been something like baseball’s very worst major-league hitter. This is all based on the numbers. They’re right there, and they’re not hard to find. Some righties have been better than Neshek against righties, but the number is extremely small. And some pitchers might be worse at hitting than Bradley, but the number is also extremely small. One of the very worst matchups you could possibly arrange resulted in one of the rarest of plate-appearance outcomes. At some point it exceeds one’s threshold of disbelief. The probability might as well be 0%. Bradley, then, could be said to have pulled off the virtually impossible.
As it happens, Bradley had most recently batted in September, in San Diego. He faced a righty reliever.
Bradley’s swing produced a line drive, and when the play was completed, Bradley stood on third base.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
So glad you ended with the hit in San Diego. that was a rope too, although clearly misplayed allowing him to get to 3rd. That hit was on my mind when he came to the plate last night. Obviously odds still wildly stacked against him hitting a triple, but thanks to recency bias and a good amount of hope, it wasn’t a complete shock he put a good swing on the ball and hit it hard. Also worth noting is Bradley was a top ranked high school quarterback when taken in the first round of the draft by D Backs. He’s a really great athlete who can run. So he had that going for him too.
He didn’t look great. On the replay, all I could think was “how did you not hurt yourself?” because the way he kept pumping his legs made it look like he’d never run before.
Still love this. Baseball is glorious.
His pop-up slide looked like it came out of an instructional video.
He looked fine to me until he rounded second. It still looked like he was running relatively fast, but his gait was a bit more unorthodox at that point.
I was watching that game against SD. They originally scored it a triple, and I figured they’d change it later, and I had forgotten that they did. When I read the beginning of the article, that pointed out he’s a RELIEF pitcher, therefore has virtually no ABs, I was thinking that since he was a starter up until this year, it wasn’t like he NEVER hit. But looking at the stats you showed, he may as well never have.