Jeff Samardzija on Giving Up a Gopher to Matt Kemp
Matt Kemp took Jeff Samardzija deep on Saturday. In the third inning of a game played at Petco Park, the San Diego Padres outfielder deposited a slider from the San Francisco Giants righty over the left field wall. According to ESPN Home Run Tracker, the blast traveled 398 feet.
As you might expect, Samardzija wasn’t pleased with the pitch. He doesn’t feel the location was terrible, and “Shark” has a solid slider, but he regrets not throwing a sinker. He explained why prior to last night’s game at Fenway Park.
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Samardzija on facing Matt Kemp on July 16, 2016: “I walked the first two guys in the first inning. Kemp came up, hitting in the three-hole, and I struck him out on five pitches. Four of the five were sinkers in that he mostly swung through. One of them he fouled off and then he struck out swinging.
“Third inning, he came up again with no one on. I threw him a slider 0-0 and he took it for a ball. I decided to throw it again on 1-0 and he hit a homer.
“When I look back at games, that’s the type of thing I remember. It stands out boldly. I’m thinking to myself, ‘We just had success doing one thing and I did something else.’ The old adage is that you don’t change. You don’t take unnecessary risks.
“In one respect, it wasn’t a bad pitch. It was a strike slider. The first one was under the zone, then the second was bottom of the zone and he hit it. But there was no reason for me to change. Now, if he’d have taken the fourth sinker down and in that I threw him in the first inning, and hit it for a double down the line, then you’re thinking to yourself, ’OK, let’s go to another spot; let’s go up on the hands or slider away.’ But until someone proves to you that they can hit something, why not stay there?
“Sometimes you overthink. You give too much credit to guys or you overthink a situation. I probably told myself, ‘OK, I’ve thrown him five sinkers in, so he’s thinking sinker in; let’s go to something different.’ Well, I should have stopped myself there. I should have told myself, ‘OK, he can still be looking in, but it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t hit it the first time.’
“I don’t remember exactly what happened his third time up. It was probably nothing, otherwise I’d remember. [Kemp grounded weakly to third.] But I probably didn’t throw him another slider. If I did, it was probably in the other batter’s box.
“Had I looked at (the scouting data on Kemp)? The 70 pages of information you can look at? No. I’ve probably faced him a dozen times already this year. I have a good idea of what he can and can’t hit. But you have brain farts in this game. You have momentary lapses. That what happened and I gave up a home run.”
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
Why Jeff Samardzija gives up home runs in one situation and not another appears to be an unfathomable mystery. It does not seem to be related to being tired. It does not seem to be related to early innings when he has not yet settled down. It does not seem to be related to the way he is generally pitching in a game. It does not even seem to be related to the general quality of the hitter or whether he is hot or cold. It isn’t like with other pitchers. It just suddenly happens.
See the last paragraph of the article for your answer.
Yes, but much more of samardzija’s hrs are due to brain farts (as opposed to being tired or having to pitch a strike to a tough hitter or some other identifiable reason) than the average pitcher.
As a homerun is a sparse event (less than 1 in 30 PA is a HR), you can probably model it as a random event pretty accurately. Your brain is a giant pattern matching apparatus that likes to see patterns where none exist.
Until we can build a “when should a pitcher give up a home run” model, there’s really little that can be gained by speculating about one pitcher in particular.
Sparse events are difficult for us to understand.
#kahneman
What i meant was that for example with bumgarner, cueto, peavy, or suarez you get a feeling when they’re likely to give up a homer and when they aren’t so although can’t predict anything, you’re rarely really surprised. With samardzija you’re usually surprised. I think other people who look at a lot of giants’ games would say the same thing.
What’s especially strange for samardzija is that being tired doesn’t seem to be a factor.