The Milwaukee Brewers optioned Dave Bush to their AAA Nashville club this week following an 0-3 start with a 6.75 ERA. This irked many in the statistical community, especially MGL, because not only is Bush pitching better than the barometric numbers indicate, he is pitching right on par with normal #3 or #4 starters.

The problem, after looking into it more, is not necessarily that Bush’s optioning stems from his slow start but that it may have to do with his Jekyll-like transformation once runners get on base. In 1649 career PA, batters are posting a .253/.307/.420 clip against Bush while the bases are empty. When occupied, though, this jumps to .314/.355/.546 in 1121 PA. Despite these numbers, if the decision to option Bush stemmed from a kneejerk reaction to a small sample size, this argument does not even hold water.

This year, with 57 PA, opponents are hitting .320/.404/.560 with the bases empty. In 47 PA, they are hitting just .263/.340/.368 with runners on base. In the early going he has allowed a higher percentage of runners to reach base but has actually reduced his slash line once they get to their respective bases.

Ned Yost attributed the move to control issues. In his four 2008 starts, Bush has thrown 57.6% of his pitches for strikes. In 2007 he threw 65.6% strikes out of 2972 pitches. In 2006 he threw 66.4% strikes out of 3021 pitches. He has thrown a lower percentage of strikes, putting himself into more “Hafta’ Counts” and forcing himself to pitch from behind. The Brewers had a pitching surplus entering the season, often fostering rumors of trading Bush and/or Claudio Vargas.

Seemingly happy with the production from Ben Sheets, Yovani Gallardo, Jeff Suppan, Carlos Villanueva, and Manny Parra, the team felt they could handle letting Bush get his control back in a few minor league starts. The decision was definitely based off of a small sample size and, in that regard, makes little sense, but I hope they realize it is way too early to sell their stock on Bush.

When discussing the early season productivity of a player it is important to remember that the barometric statistics analyzed by those on television often have better evaluative indicators beneath the surface. Many of these indicators deal with luck, or a lack of luck, and provide a more telling window into what should be expected from the player in the coming weeks and months. Dave Cameron wrote earlier today about Nick Johnson and how, based on his high percentage of line drives but low BABIP, Johnson has experienced an unlucky streak this month. Using a slightly expanded method to the ones currently used to determine luck (relative to GB/FB/LD and BABIP) I decided to figure out the unluckiest pitchers of the month.

Initially the method consisted solely of BABIP and the difference between FIP and ERA (FIP-ERA) but I then extended it to include their current W-L records. Though anyone at least casually versed in statistical analysis will explain the faults of a W-L record, fans that simply love the game without analyzing anything equate W-L records to quality.

A pre-requisite also found its way into the criteria in that the FIP could not be above 4.30, a cutoff I usually look for when determining the difference between good and average. This way players like CC Sabathia and Barry Zito could be avoided; players who, despite having large FIP and ERA discrepancies, still had very high FIP and ERA counts. In summation, the players I considered to be the unluckiest were those with high FIP and ERA discrepancies, a high BABIP against, and a W-L record that does not do a good job of representing the quality of games pitched. This left me with the following four candidates:

Nate Robertson: 6.91 ERA, 4.18 FIP, -2.73 FIP-ERA, .333 BABIP, 0-3 W-L
Nick Blackburn: 3.45 ERA, 2.72 FIP, -0.73 FIP-ERA, .347 BABIP, 1-1 W-L
Ian Snell: 4.45 ERA, 3.03 FIP, -1.42 FIP-ERA, .358 BABIP, 2-1 W-L
Zach Duke: 5.34 ERA, 3.97 FIP, -1.36 FIP-ERA, .369 BABIP, 0-2 W-L

So, of these guys, whom do you consider to be the unluckiest this month?

One of the hot topics during spring training revolved around the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and how this would be the year they experienced significant improvement. Photos surfaced of an interesting shirt Troy Percival donned on which he compared Scott Kazmir, James Shields, and Matt Garza to John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Steve Avery. Steve Phillips added fuel to this fire by repeatedly mentioning how the shirt compared the three Rays youngsters to Greg Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. With no disrespect towards Avery, he is not Greg Maddux, and any comparison to one of the best pitching trios in the history of the game is going to generate some buzz. As of right now, Kazmir is yet to pitch and Garza has not yet met expectations; Shields, however, has pitched quite well.

Great pitching trios are so valuable for the more obvious reason that, over the course of any given three game series, the team is likely assured of having at least one solid starter on the mound. Seeing as April is about to come to a close I decided to take a look at the WPA totals of starting pitchers from 2002 until now to generate a basic list of the best recent pitching trios. The only real “rule” stipulated that all three of the pitchers needed to have a positive WPA. For instance, last year, the combination of CC Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, and Paul Byrd accounted for a WPA of 7.13. This would normally qualify as second-best across the league, but the numbers broke down as follows: Carmona at 4.25, Sabathia at 3.49, Byrd at -0.61. Clearly the WPA total belonged to CC and Fausto; Byrd actually brought their total down. Here are the top trios from 2002 until now:

2002 – Athletics: Barry Zito (3.85), Tim Hudson (3.28), Mark Mulder (3.15)
2003 – Cubs: Mark Prior (4.37), Kerry Wood (4.05), Carlos Zambrano (2.46)
2004 – Twins: Johan Santana (5.52), Brad Radke (3.61), Carlos Silva (0.61)
2005 – Astros: Roger Clemens (5.77), Andy Pettitte (4.86), Roy Oswalt (3.91)
2006 – Tigers: N. Robertson (2.92), Justin Verlander (2.29), Kenny Rogers (2.21)
2007 – Padres: Jake Peavy (4.61), Chris Young (2.67), Greg Maddux (1.17)

A month into this 2008 season and there are three rotations very close to each other: the Cardinals (2.20), Mariners (2.11), and Angels (2.08). The Cardinals trio in question is Adam Wainwright, Kyle Lohse, and Braden Looper; the Mariners are Felix Hernandez, Carlos Silva, and Jarrod Washburn; the Angels are Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana, and Jered Weaver.

Update: The Indians can also be thrown into the mix, but not with Sabathia. The combo of Lee, Carmona, and Westbrook are currently at 2.35. Add them into your consideration. As I mentioned in the comments, though, for potential Mariners fans reading here, Bedard does not count because he does not qualify for inclusion yet. Clearly he is a better choice than Washburn, but the question pertains to the aforementioned threesomes.

Felix Hernandez is the best of the nine pitchers comprising these three teams but, overall, none of them appear to be on the same level as some of the aforementioned trios. Here’s the question: If you had to win a three-game series, which of these three 2008 trios would you pick, and which of the 2002-2007 trios would you pick?

Being a magician myself I am very familiar with the work of the legendary Harry Houdini. A masterful illusionist and escape artist, Houdini ruled the magic world from 1899 until his untimely 1926 death. His name continues to live on in magic lore but apparently has found its way into the game of baseball. At Bill James’s website a statistic is kept, titled “Houdinis.” Much more of a list than a stat, persay, it keeps track of every pitcher that finds himself in a bases loaded, no outs situation, and escapes unscathed. In terms of technicalities, the pitcher cannot be charged with a run at all in the inning, regardless of whether or not it scored as a result of the bases being loaded; if I give up a home run, then load the bases and escape the situation, it does not count.

This year, the following pitchers have recorded Houdinis:

• Rafael Betancourt, 3/31, Top 8
• Rich Harden, 4/2, Top 1
• Michael Wuertz, 4/2, Top 7
• Jamie Moyer, 4/3, Top 2
• Tony Pena, 4/5, Bot 8
• Dustin McGowan, 4/9, Top 5
• Jamey Wright, 4/14, Top 8
• Jesse Carlson, 4/16, Top 11
• Franklyn German, 4/21, Bot 6
• Nelson Figueroa, 4/22, Bot 2

Seeing as Fangraphs specializes in win probability data it seemed natural to look at the WPA of each situation. This will enable us to determine which Houdini act was the most magical. There is a potential problem right off the bat, though, in that a pitcher inheriting the bases loaded and escaping without damage will always have a higher WPA; they would not be debited at all for loading the bases. Due to this, Jesse Carlson’s performance of +.479 would completely dwarf everyone else; the other nine pitchers, who began their inning, came in at +.112 or below. We could revert to WPA/LI to get a context-neutral feel but, since Carlson is alone in terms of inheriting the bases loaded it is easier and just as WPA-effective to simply exclude him. Here are the results:

• Betancourt, .112
• McGowan, .072
• Figueroa, .052
• Harden, .049
• Moyer, .017
• Pena, .015
• Wuertz, .013
• Wright, .010
• German, .001

German got in and out of the jam while trailing 8-0 to the Red Sox; they were not very likely to win prior to his efforts and had not really increased their chances regardless of his magical escape act. Betancourt’s WPA leads primarily due to the fact that his Houdini occurred in the 8th inning of a 7-7 game and recorded three outs on a fielder’s choice (out at home) and double play to end the inning. Still, though, Carlson entered the top of the eleventh inning, in a tie game, with the bases loaded, and struck out the side to end the threat. Pretty darned impressive.

With one out in the top of the third, and a 2-2 count, Felipe Lopez made a futile effort to hit a filthy, down and in John Smoltz slider. With the whiff, Smoltz earned a lifetime membership to the 3,000 Strikeout Club, a group that previously consisted of just fifteen pitchers. Making this feat even more remarkable are the facts that Smoltz missed a little over a year due to Tommy John surgery and, upon returning, found himself closing games for 3+ seasons. He became the fifth pitcher this decade to join the club, joining Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, and Pedro Martinez.

Smoltz gave a phone interview to Baseball Tonight following the game in which he admitted to downplaying the milestone as much as he could until the reaction of the Atlanta crowd proved too much to simply brush aside. Later on the show, Kruk and Showalter answered e-mail responses to the posed question: What active pitcher has the best shot at 3,000 strikeouts? Kruk went with CC Sabathia and Showalter went with Johan Santana. Some of the e-mails suggested the likes of Carlos Zambrano, Felix Hernandez and Cole Hamels. This got me thinking: Which current pitchers really do have solid shots at joining Smoltz and the others in this illustrious group?

In order to help answer that question I called upon Bill James’s Career Assessments formula; this used to be known as his “Favorite Toy.” ESPN set up a page on which you can type in numbers corresponding to the appropriate fields and generate the current total a given player will amass based on the projected length of his career, as well as the probability said player reaches a specific target. For instance, I used Sabathia, who is currently 27 years old with 1142 career strikeouts entering this season. Plugging those numbers in as well as his strikeout totals for the last three seasons, the system projects Sabathia to pitch 7.5 more seasons averaging 188.5 strikeouts per year. This would give him 2,557 strikeouts for his career with a 26.2% chance at reaching 3,000.

I repeated this for every pitcher that currently has at least 900 strikeouts and was born during or after 1975. Pitchers like Mike Mussina and Jamie Moyer have upwards of 2,600 strikeouts but they are not likely to pitch much more after this season and do not quite rack up the K’s anyway. It is also difficult to plug King Felix and Hamels in because parts of their prior years are not likely indicative of what is to come. Of the 22 pitchers assessed only eight actually had a chance at 3,000; everyone else came out as having a 0.0% chance. Here are the eight, with their projected career total and chance at 3,000:

• Johan Santana: 2961, 47.6%
• Javier Vazquez: 2941, 44.9%
• Jake Peavy: 2827, 40.8%
• CC Sabathia: 2557, 26.2%
• Carlos Zambrano: 2510, 24.6%
• Josh Beckett: 2216, 11.3%
• Roy Oswalt: 2170, 4.0%
• Chris Carpenter: 2106, 1.3%

Of course things can change, and this system is not completely perfect, but it does shed light on just how hard it is to strike 3,000+ batters out. For fun, I plugged Felix Hernandez in and he came out with a projected total of 2,066 K with a 13.4% chance. After adjusting his 2005 season to be closer to what he may have gotten in 30+ starts, though, he comes out with 2286 and a 21.1% chance. Another interesting case is Aaron Harang, who has seemingly learned how to strike out guys as of late; Harang currently projects to 2210 with a 13.1% chance.

If you had to pick just one pitcher, in the above list or not, who would it be?

On April 17th, John Smoltz and the Braves shut out the Marlins by a score of 8-0. Still being closely monitored Smoltz lasted just five innings. These five innings were all the Braves needed from Smoltz, though, as he twirled a tremendous game; he did not give up any runs and struck out ten en route to his third win. On Baseball Tonight, Tim Kurkjian mentioned that this was the first time in over 100 years that a pitcher recorded a win while going for the exact line of 5 IP, 0 ER, and 10 K.

Though Retrosheet and the B-R Play Index do not have the game-by-game data capable of checking this assertion it is definitely true that Smoltz is the only pitcher to record this line since 1956. With that in mind I thought it would be fun to look at some more obscure pitching lines. To qualify as obscure there could be no more than three owners of the pitching line in question.

WINS

• 5 IP, 8 ER, 0 K: Andy Pettitte, 9/29/07 at BAL
• 5 IP, 8 H, 6 BB: Dan Reichert, 7/31/99 at TEX
• 6 IP, 4 HR, 5 K: Jeremy Bonderman, 6/15/07 at PHI, Jim Brower, 9/24/99 at TOR, Mike Mussina, 5/19/96 vs SEA
• 9 IP, 8 BB, 12 K: Nolan Ryan, 5/19/77 vs MIN AND 5/19/74 at MIN

That is not a typo: Nolan Ryan, in the span of four years and against the same team, posted the same obscure line.

LOSSES

• 9 IP, 0 BB, 12 K: Roger Clemens, 6/16/97 vs ATL
• 10 IP, 1 ER, 5 H: Jerry Robertson, 8/21/69 vs SD, Don Sutton, 6/10/68 vs NYM, Catfish Hunter, 9/18/67 vs MIN
• 6 IP, 8 K, 2 pickoffs: Pat Zachry, 6/26/76 at HOU

Only three pitchers since 1956 have recorded the 10 IP, 1 ER, 5 H line and all three came in consecutive years between 1967 and 1969.

These are just some examples of interesting and obscure pitching lines. If anybody else has some good ones post them in the comments. We can have a contest to help discover the most obscure pitching line.

Back on April 3rd, I witnessed quite the odd series of events in the tenth inning of a Braves/Pirates matchup, ultimately resulting in Braves reliever Chris Resop coming into pitch, then moving to leftfield, then returning to pitch. Based on the looks I saw develop on the faces of the players involved, I was not the only one a tad confused as to exactly what was happening.

Mike Hampton had been scheduled to make his first start since 2005 but, as expected, this did not happen. A decision was made just prior to the game to scratch Hampton from the start and it was soon learned he would be placed on the disabled list. Since the umpires were already out on the field when the decision was made, the start of the game had to be delayed to allow replacement starter Jeff Bennett time to warm-up. Bobby Cox, after using seven pitchers in this seesaw game, and fulfilling his promise to give Peter Moylan the day off, was left with just Resop and Royce Ring as extra innings rolled around. The goal was for Resop to go the distance unless a crucial lefty-lefty matchup presented itself.

Resop began the frame by walking speedster Nyjer Morgan. Luis Rivas then sacrificed Morgan to second and Jason Bay walked; Morgan advanced to third on a passed ball. With runners on and lefty Adam LaRoche coming up, Cox decided to make his move. Matt Diaz came in from leftfield, Chris Resop went to leftfield, and Royce Ring came into pitch. Ring promptly struck LaRoche out, serving his LOOGY purpose. Ring came out, Resop came back into pitch, and Gregor Blanco replaced Resop in leftfield. As fate would have it, Resop gave up what would turn out to be the game-winning single to Xavier Nady as soon as he came back in. This proved to be the first time in eighteen years that an NL player both pitched and played the field in the same inning.

In that instance, the first game of a doubleheader between the Cubs and Mets, Les Lancaster accomplished the same feat. The day prior, June 12th, the Cubs got waxed 19-8, a game that saw the bullpen get used so heavily that even Doug Dascenzo, an outfielder, pitch. So we have pitchers playing the outfield and outfielders pitching in this article. In the 6th inning of the June 13th game, Cubs starter Jeff Pico had two outs, with one on, and an 8-5 lead when Les Lancaster came into relieve him. Lancaster made quick work of Mark Carreon to end the inning.

When Les trotted out to the mound for the seventh inning, however, things did not go as he planned. He gave up four singles while retiring just one batter; with the lead now just 8-6, and lefties coming up, Lancaster was replaced by Paul Assenmacher. Les moved to leftfield, though, so he could come back into the game. Assenmacher walked a batter and gave up two singles, handing the lead to the Mets. Lancaster came back into pitch and took the brunt of the Mets offense, lasting until the ninth inning. In two separate pitching stints that game, Lancaster’s line: 2.2 IP, 8 H, 9 ER, BB, K. His ERA ballooned from 3.79 to 5.02.

Another incredibly interesting story along similar lines took place on July 22, 1986, again in a game involving the Mets. The Mets roster was in shambles following a usage of relievers and the ejections of Ray Knight and Kevin Mitchell after a brawl. In the tenth inning, Gary Carter replaced Knight at third base while Jesse Orosco and Roger McDowell alternated between pitching and playing the outfield. Unlike the Resop, Lancaster, and Assenmacher examples, this one actually paid off as Orosco and McDowell combined to give up four hits and no runs in four innings of relief work. Orosco even caught a fly ball as Tony Perez hit a liner right into his glove in rightfield.

These are just three examples of why baseball will forever be the most interesting and strategic sport. And, to tie everything together, Roger McDowell is currently the pitching coach for the Braves. I can only guess he experienced a wicked case of deja vu on April 3rd, thinking back to his similar experience over twenty years ago.

The DL bound Joe Borowski has apparently had soreness in his right triceps that the Indians staff decided to let him pitch through for weeks. I guess that helps explain his 18.00 ERA and super slow fastball.

Despite leading the AL with 45 saves last year, he also led it in blown saves with 8 and his ERA of 5.04 was by far the highest of any closer last year. He did have pretty decent peripherals though, with a K/9 of nearly 8 and a BB/9 of 2.33. His season was mainly marred by an extremely high .348 BABIP and a pretty sub par LOB% of 68.4%. Typically both of these will regress toward the league averages in following years.

The main problem with Borowski is that he’s a bit of an extreme fly ball pitcher and will be prone to giving up home runs. Last year he allowed 9, which was just 4 home runs shy of Al Reyes‘ reliever leading 13.

So the question is, if Borowski is out for an extended period of time, who will get his job?

Rafael Betancourt is the obvious choice. He had a gaudy K/BB of nearly 9 last year, and a 1.47 ERA in 79+ innings of work. He also entered games in high leverage, non-save situations last season with a gmLI of 1.78. Borowski entered games in slightly higher leverage situations with a gmLI of 1.94. Even though he has an ERA over 5 this year, his strikeouts and walks are almost identical to last year, so there’s probably not much to worry about.

Rafael Perez had nearly as great a season as Betancourt did in 2007. He struck out over a batter an inning and had a BB/9 of just 2.23, which led him to a career low 1.78 ERA. This year his ERA is over 8 and he’s allowed a few more walks then he should. But, he’s only pitched 4 innings this year and allowed his only 4 earned runs in one of his appearances so definitely take those numbers with a grain of salt.

Masa Kobayashi has had a solid season so far with a with a 2.08 ERA and 3 strikeouts and 1 walk in 4+ innings. He amassed over 200 saves in Japan, and technically has more career saves than anyone on the Indians. Kaz Sasaki and Takashi Saito had zero problems stepping right into the closer roles when they first arrived in the majors.

Finally, there’s Jensen Lewis who last year had a 34/10 strikeout to walk ratio in 29 innings pitched with a 2.15 ERA. This year, it appears to be more of that same excellence, though his K/9 is down to 8 from 10, but small sample size and all that….

Here’s how they’ve been utilized this year so far, according to gmLI:

Joe Borowski – 1.86
Jensen Lewis – 1.61
Rafael Perez – 1.48
Rafael Betancourt – 1.27
Masa Kobayashi – 0.23

Borowski should have the highest gmLI as the closer and does. Oddly enough, Jensen and Perez have entered the game in higher leverage situations than Betancourt has, despite his reputation as a fire putter-outer. Kobayashi is clearly not used in confidence, but there are only so many high leverage situations and he just hasn’t had the opportunity with such an overall excellent bullpen.

Judging from tonight’s game, Betancourt was being “saved” to close out the game and was not utilized in a tie game in the 8th. Nor was he used in the 7th with the Indians up 2-1 and the Red Sox threatening with a man on 1st and 2nd.

So for the moment, it looks like Betancourt is going to get to close out games, but the Indians have a pretty stellar bullpen and I think if needed any of these guys could handle the closer job.

When Borowski comes back and if he’s healthy, chances are he’ll be given a shot to reclaim his role as closer. And while he’s not as bad as he’s often made out to be, he really is one of the worst options in what appears to be a very stacked Indians bullpen.

Before getting into the good stuff I wanted to take a paragraph to introduce myself. My name is Eric J. Seidman and I am a baseball fanatic/statistical analyst/superfan from Philadelphia. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to write here at Fangraphs in order to help further the tremendous work David Appelman has done. In addition to posting daily at this great site I currently write for Statistically Speaking, MLB Front Office, and occasionally The Hardball Times. I welcome all questions, comments, and/or post suggestions via e-mail and you will definitely find me hanging with Dave Cameron around the comment threads.

For my inaugural post I am going to take a look at Phillies leftfielder Pat Burrell – a guy that somehow has the ability to garner the monikers of both overrated and underrated – and why the Phillies should not even think twice about whether to re-sign him. Burrell, the former #1 pick out of Miami came up to “the show” in 2000 as a first baseman. He had played third base in college but with Scott Rolen manning the hot corner needed to learn a new position. Then, with the acquisition of Travis Lee as part of the Curt Schilling deal, Burrell was forced out of the infield entirely. Never known for his fielding prowess Burrell has not been atrocious defensively but definitely will never win any gold gloves.

Early in his career Burrell was known as nothing but a power threat: he couldn’t run, he couldn’t field, he struck out too much, and his batting average too often hovered near the .255-.260 mark. Take away a horrid 2003 season, though, and Burrell has without a doubt shown signs of improvement and consistency. His strikeouts have decreased, walks have increased, and his confidence has seemingly returned. I wrote an article a couple of months ago on Burrell showing how his BABIP, save for 2003, had historically been consistently high. On top of that, here are his OBP, SLG, and HR figures from 2005-2007:

• 2005: .389 OBP, .504 SLG, 32 HR
• 2006: .388 OBP, .502 SLG, 29 HR
• 2007: .400 OBP, .502 SLG, 30 HR

Already off to a great start Burrell has really been the glue so far holding this injury-plagued Phillies team together. As of right now Burrell ranks 1st in all of baseball in WPA/LI with a 0.98; his 0.98 is a full eighteen percent ahead of closest competitor Mark Reynolds. Burrell also ranks 1st in BRAA and REW, ahead of Joe Crede in both; in BRAA he is a full half-run ahead of Crede. Much of the talk surrounding the Phillies this season has pertained to whether or not Chase Utley would be the third straight Phillie to win the MVP award. If the season ended today, for whatever reason, Burrell would be the Phillies frontrunner.

His 6-yr/50 mil contract expires at the end of this season and Burrell has made it adamantly clear he wants to stay in Philadelphia. This raises an interesting question: Should the Phillies re-sign him? As that article states Burrell is no longer the franchise-savior and he is 31 yrs old. Being a devout Phillies fan my initial reaction is “heck yes they need to re-sign him!” On a more logical approach though, I decided to look at the 2009 Free Agent Class, via Cot’s Contracts, to see who his replacements could be should they go in a different direction. According to the site, the only left-fielders available via free agency, following this season, are:

• Moises Alou
• Garret Anderson
• Adam Dunn
• Raul Ibanez
• Jacque Jones

There are two other notables in Carl Crawford and Manny Ramirez but both have options for 2009 that I fully expect to be exercised. This means that, unless the Phillies can pull off some sort of magical trade to land Matt Holliday, there choice is going to be between Burrell and the five guys listed above. None of those five are remarkably better than Burrell. Throw in the facts that Burrell wants to stay in Philadelphia above all else, will likely give some type of hometown discount to ensure that happens, and his power hitting is perfect for a bandbox stadium and it just makes sense for the Phillies to get moving on an extension.

The Nationals ended their bid at a 4-0 start to the season when Jesus Colome walked in the winning run after intentionally loading the bases. This is not the first time Manny Acta has walked the bases loaded.

On April 20st in the bottom of the 13th inning, Hanley Ramirez was walked with a runner on 1st and 2nd to load the bases for Matt Treanor in a move that eventually worked out to the Nationals advantage.

There was a very informative post by MGL and discussion following those events on The Book Blog.

However, this situation was considerably different in that there was already a runner on third with one out and Chase Utley was intentionally walked leaving a runner at 1st and 3rd. Walking that batter actually increased the win probability of the Nationals and was unquestionably the correct move. Then Ryan Howard was intentionally walked to load the bases to bring up Jayson Werth.

To me this seems like you’re pitting Ryan Howard’s batting average and sac fly potential against Jayson Werth’s OBP and sac fly potential. A ground ball or an error could score the run too, but I think that’d be just as likely to happen with Werth at the plate as with Howard, so lets run some quick back of the envelope calculations.

Let’s say any outfield fly will score the runner and Howard hits outfield fly balls in about 22% of his plate appearances. That’s a 22% chance he’ll score the run right there. Then there’s the chance that he gets a hit on a non-fly ball, which is about 12.3% of his plate appearances. Now we’re up to a 34.3% chance that Howard will win the game in this at-bat. There’s also a 16% chance he’ll walk anyway, making the Nationals chance at a “favorable outcome” in this at-bat about 50-50.

Then there’s Jayson Werth, who if we run the same exercise for, hits outfield fly balls about 28% of the time, non-fly ball hits about 19% of the time, and walks 15% of the time, giving him about a 62% chance to win the game.

Maybe we add +10% to Howard and -10% to Werth because of righty/lefty splits, making the game winning percentage for Howard 44% and the game winning percentage for Werth 52%.

I guess the question is, how much more likely is a double play going to be made with the bases loaded than with a man on 1st and 3rd? I’d think the chance would have to be considerably higher in order to justify walking the batter unless the batter is much much worse.