The Blowout That Wasn’t
Mike Napoli was the 9th batter to hit last night, if you’re counting batters from when Matt Carpenter led off for St. Louis. Napoli launched a three run double to left center field, clearing the bases thanks to the help of Shane Robinson‘s defensive misplay. From that point on, there were exactly three at-bats where the leverage index was greater than 1.0; Dustin Pedroia’s bases loaded chance in the second, and then the at-bats by Yadier Molina and David Freese when the Cardinals had their best chance of scoring in the fourth.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that the game was decided by Napoli’s double, but it was mostly decided after the Red Sox took a 5-0 lead in the second inning. At that point, their win expectancy was 92%, and the play where the fifth run scored forced Carlos Beltran from the game, limiting the Cardinals line-up and forcing Jon Jay into the #2 spot in the batting order against a good left-handed pitcher. This game was, for all intents and purposes, pretty much over after the second inning. Game 1 of the World Series was a blowout.
Except, it wasn’t really a blowout. It was on the scoreboard, but that’s basically the only place where the Red Sox really trounced the Cardinals last night.
Let’s just look at the team’s offensive totals, side by side:
| Team | PA | 1B | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | HBP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOS | 36 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| STL | 34 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
The Red Sox came to bat two more times than the Cardinals did. Overall, the numbers are pretty similar, with the difference in the two lines essentially coming down to doubles; they hit two, and the Cardinals didn’t hit any, but St. Louis did have one more single, so by total bases, we’re looking a very slim gap. The Red Sox hit .242/.250/.394 yesterday, so it isn’t like their offense just ran roughshod all over the Cardinals pitching staff.
In fact, this game was actually a postseason record. According to the Baseball Reference Play Index, the Red Sox were the first team in postseason history to score 8 runs in a game where the team got on base at a .250 clip. Only seven teams in MLB postseason history had ever scored 8 runs while getting on base less than 30% of the time. Here’s the full list of 8 run postseason scoring games, filtered for OBP under .300.
| Rk | Date | Series | Gm# | Tm | Opp | Rslt | PA | 1B | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | OBP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10/23/13 | WS | 1 | BOS | STL | W 8-1 | 36 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.250 |
| 2 | 10/17/01 | NLCS | 2 | ATL | ARI | W 8-1 | 39 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0.282 |
| 3 | 10/7/27 | WS | 3 | NYY | PIT | W 8-1 | 36 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.286 |
| 4 | 10/7/03 | NLCS | 1 | CHC | FLA | L 8-9 | 46 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0.289 |
| 5 | 10/11/99 | ALDS | 5 | CLE | BOS | L 8-12 | 38 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0.289 |
| 6 | 10/12/96 | ALCS | 4 | NYY | BAL | W 8-4 | 38 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0.289 |
| 7 | 10/18/77 | WS | 6 | NYY | LAD | W 8-4 | 34 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0.294 |
| 8 | 10/15/86 | ALCS | 7 | BOS | CAL | W 8-1 | 37 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0.297 |
Not only did the Red Sox have the lowest OBP of any team to score 8 runs in a postseason game, they had hit the fewest home runs of any of the other teams who managed to score that many runs without actually getting themselves on base very often. Of the 323 teams who have scored 8+ runs in a postseason game, the Red Sox slugging percentage last night ranked 306th. 323rd in OBP, 306th in SLG. This was perhaps the worst offensive performance by a team that scored 8+ runs in MLB postseason history.
And it would have been a pretty rare accomplishment even in the regular season. In the last 50 years, only 14 times has a team scored 8+ runs while posting an OBP of .250 or less, and in most of those cases, the team hit multiple home runs.
We don’t have wOBA data going back quite as far, but we do have regular season data back to 1980, and I asked David Appelman to give me a list of all of the teams that have scored 8+ runs in a game while posting a wOBA below .275, since the Red Sox put up a .271 wOBA last night. In 33 years, it’s happened 52 times, and only 42 of those came with a wOBA of .271 or worse. Basically, MLB sees a game like this once per year, where a team gets a bunch of runs despite not really hitting very well. It happened twice this year (before last night), with the Angels putting up 9 on the Pirates despite a .274 wOBA — the baseball gods made them lose anyway, as punishment — and the A’s putting up 10 on the Angels with a .273 wOBA, but that game took 19 innings. The Angels loss to the Pirates took 10 innings. Last night was the only time this year that a team managed 8+ runs in a nine inning game where they hit as poorly as Boston did.
This game was a blowout for two simple reasons: the Cardinals defense put three extra Red Sox on base via the error, and the Red Sox bunched their hits together. Basically, the Red Sox beat the Cardinals the way the Cardinals have beaten everyone else this year. Sequencing has been a primary key to St. Louis’ success in 2013, and last night, they sucked at getting hits in big situations while the Red Sox managed to come up with big hits when they mattered most.
In the end, the only thing that matters is the score, and the Cardinals mistakes combined with the Red Sox clutch hitting gave Boston an easy win and a 1-0 advantage in the series. And, given that the Red Sox didn’t make all the same mistakes that the Cardinals did, it is fair to say that they played a much better game and deserved to win.
But this game wasn’t really a blowout, not in the way we usually think of them anyway. The Red Sox didn’t hit Adam Wainwright very hard. They didn’t blow up the Cardinals bullpen. They weren’t pounding the ball all over the field. The Cardinals gave them a few extra outs and the Red Sox drove in runs every time they had the chance. It was a win, but it wasn’t really a beatdown like the 8-1 final score might have indicated.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
It’s a little strange to look at the stats for the whole game, as teams change their approach when games get out of hand. Pitchers throw different pitches, batters start looking for different things, defenses play differently, etc.
IE, if Kozma had made the play, Lester probably would have had more strikeouts and less hits, as he would have been throwing more offspeed stuff, and less pitches over the middle of the plate.
Clustering is important, but 5 runs in the first two innings invalidates a lot of what happens in the rest of the game.
Jon Lester, after the Red Sox took a 5-0 lead, struck out 5 of the 21 batters he faced, a 24% strikeout rate. On the season, Lester had a 20% strikeout rate.
Pitching to the score is baloney.
I hate to be that guy, Dave, but you misspelled “bullshit.”
Sorry to be the spelling police.
“Jon Lester, after the Red Sox took a 5-0 lead, struck out 5 of the 21 batters he faced, a 24% strikeout rate.”
And before the lead, he struck out 3/7 batters he faced, or a 42.9% strikeout rate.
Stop being lazy.
What a large sample size!
That was kind of the point. 5/21 batters isn’t a relevant sample size, and it doesn’t even make his point.
# pitches % game % season dif
FF 54 0.482142857 0.45 0.032142857
SI 2 0.017857143 0.07 -0.052142857
CH 3 0.026785714 0.11 -0.083214286
CU 15 0.133928571 0.12 0.013928571
FC 38 0.339285714 0.24 0.099285714
112
sooo only more cutters, fewer changeups, is that what you call pitching to the score?
Why the hell are you comparing the game to the season to figure out something that would change between the 2nd inning and the 3rd?
Do you even understand what this conversation is about?
Pitching to the score is NOT baloney. Pitchers will tell you they do it, and they’re in a position to know. What is baloney is the contention that pitching to the score makes a huge difference in the outcome. That is the thing that has been refuted statistically. Don’t make the mistake of confusing process with outcome.
As a former college catcher, and current college coach, I can tell you that less than 5% of hundreds of pitchers I know say they pitch to the score, and most of those don’t actually do it. Absolutely no evidence that “pitching to the score” exists.
Come on guys its the World Series, you honestly think a pitcher is gonna think “hey we have a 5 run lead time to get of the gas a little”. No way. Not gonna happen, not in this game.
” “hey we have a 5 run lead time to get of the gas a little”. ”
Thats not what pitching to the score is. Pitching to the score is “I’m going to do my best to avoid walks at the expense of the occasional solo shot, keep my pitch counts low, and protect the bullpen”
Which sounds about exactly what you’d want a pitcher to do.
“I’m going to do my best to avoid walks at the expense of the occasional solo shot, keep my pitch counts low, and protect the bullpen”
This. Pitching to the score is the opposite of letting off the gas. It’s being more aggressive, hammering the zone, and pushing your advantage. It is hard to get 8 hits in half a game. To get 8 runs on hits, even with optimal sequencing, you’d still need 8 hits (and two grand slams). So you can make the other guys try to get the dozen hits they’d need to get those runs.
I would also be surprised to see that pitching to the score does not impact the outcome. It probably is a fairly small effect, since you’re already trying to get ahead in the count and not walk guys, but I’d expect it to play a significant role in pitch selection with 2 or 3 balls in the count.
I’m also dubious of how you can show that pitching to the score doesn’t exist from correlational data only. When you do that, you don’t get to see the impact of a pitcher choosing one strategy versus another. You’re also more likely to see big leads for better pitchers (who, as a group, tend to be more aggressive and walk less guys anyway). There are a lot of confounds that would make it hard to find an effect, even where one exists.
I should also note that I would doubt that “pitching to the score” impacts the expected number of runs that much. I would assume that it would instead impact the shape. At one extreme, in a potential walkoff tie-game situation, giving up 1 run is as bad as giving up 4. You want to pitch for the maximum weight on 0 runs, rest of the distribution be damned.
At the opposite extreme, a 10 run lead makes giving up 1 run almost insignificant in the odds. You want to pitch to give up 9 runs or less. You want to maximize weight of the distribution that keeps you in that region. This may not actually impact the expected # of runs, but it could easily impact the WPA.
It’s not like this is some sort of dark magic. You can easily determine this by looking at WPA tables that are adjusted for the current game inning and number of runs ahead/behind. If players and managers are even marginally rational, this has to be a consideration.
I’m sick of people using “baloney” as a derogatory term. Everyone here has had fine and true baloney sandwiches. So cool it on that, you supple sexpots.
My baloney was decidedly not true. It was false. False I say!
Delicious? FALSE.
Filling? FALSE.
Left me wanting more? FALSE.
No one has ever enjoyed a baloney sandwich, except in Bologna.
NY Times is reporting this AM, Lester may have been doctoring the ball. Does Pitch F/x have any ‘ingredients’ that would reveal that?
There’s a pretty thorough review of it on SonsOfSamHorn. His stuff pretty much looked exactly like it always did.
“Pitching to the score is baloney.”
If it is baloney, wouldn’t that be a HUGE inefficiency? If you are up by 8 runs, you SHOULD be hammering the zone. You should not be walking people. Ever, practically. Let them try to hit the ball out of the park. Even very good hitters still only have a BABIP of 0.500 if you throw the ball right over the middle of the plate. So if you get to three balls with a huge lead? Throw it down the pipe. Make a team string together 8 hits to try to get those 8 runs.
On the converse, if you have a one run lead? You’ve got to nibble more. Walks don’t often lead to an RBI. Sometimes you’re even intentionally walking guys to try to get a double-play. You’re not going to confront power-hitters who can put up that one run with a moon shot unless you have to.
In short, if you think that “pitching to the score” is BS, you need to go brush up on your… well, your probability, actually. Unless you think that WPA is a bunch of hokum, the score DOES matter and it SHOULD matter in pitch selection. Saying otherwise is as dumb as saying that the chip stack doesn’t matter in poker strategy. In poker, a big chip-stack means you can be more aggressive and push your weight around by forcing the other guy to commit. In pitching, a big lead lets you be more aggressive in the zone. If pitchers are not doing this, they’re being inefficient. When was the last time you saw an 8 run lead erased with zero walks?
Two of the hits were allowed by Dempster in the 9th inning, one of them being the home run. One would expect that if the game were closer, Dempster would not be the one pitching in the 9th and the Cardinals might’ve had fewer hits and total bases.
Perhaps pitching to the score is baloney, but relieving to the score is not.
Pitchers say they do it. Managers say they do it. Hitters say they do it. Catchers say they do it.
Whether or not its effective, I have a hard time believing they don’t do it.
Well said.
The statistics say it happens too.
Pitching to the score does not mean pitching worse. It is pitching different. More strikes and less balls result in fewer walks, more strikeouts, and more hits.
But this article wasn’t so much about how closely the box scores resembled each other as it was the Red Sox did the most with their opportunities, whereas the Cardinals did not. Whether the Cardinals got two hits in ‘garbage time’ is not a big deal. The fact that the Red Sox scored so efficiently IS a big deal because typically, as the article very clearly laid out, teams don’t do that.
100% agree. Viewpoints like this article are why sabermetrics get a bad rap — looking at the game in the blinders of the box score doesn’t represent what happened on the field. It also fails to use any of the tools this site champions.
A real statistical analysis would show that Wainwright in fact didn’t have his best stuff. While typically one of the better (Top 10) groundball pitchers in the league at ~50%, the Red Sox were squaring up the ball better leading to a 37% GB%, with the delta coming in more line drives. From the Pitch f/X data, it seems like Waino’s velocity was off a touch for the game, sitting more in the 91 range vs. the 93-94 he showed in the two start again PIT and one against LAD.
Three earned runs isn’t bad at all, and yes the errors led to the score, but without the errors, STL’s ace didn’t have his best stuff and that should be concerning.
Can’t feel too bad for the Cards, as they self-imploded defensively. Also hard for Cards fans to get upset about run clustering by the Sox, as they probably had the most favorable run-clustering of any team in baseball with the absurd RISP average they had.
Speaking just for myself, I’m not upset about any of that, I’m upset that the Cardinals, especially Kozma and Freese, spent most of the game stepping on their own dicks.
Those…those are mighty big dicks.
You saw Game 6, right?
Cardinals infielders were flashing their enormous wangs in game six?! I…I’ve got to start watching more closely.
David Freese, 2011 WS. I thought Game 6 was enough of a batshit ballgame that it wouldn’t require more specificity.
In last night’s game, I don’t think they were giant cocks so much as very awkward steps, though.
The game was a cluster something.
Ok.
Kozma has made some pretty fantastic plays so far this postseason, so it sucks even more when he makes such silly, boneheaded mistakes like he has a tendency to. That dropped DP ball, dear lord Pete!
Also one caveat to the whole blowout that wasn’t thing is Beltran robbing Ortiz’ grand slam. Some things went the Sox way for sure, but things sure could have been even nastier. Ortiz looked like an animal last night, just swallowing the plate, like bro, i’m seein softballs and swinging a fucking tree I’ll hammer jur sissy pitches mang. Turns out flat 91-93 fastballs inside and belt high get crushed.
I don’t see any metric for “grit”. Joe Buck would indicate that’s an important stat, and you’re clearly overlooking it here. Pedroia for example had a grit score approaching infinity whereas Wainwright’s, as evidenced by that pop up that dropped in, was certainly finite.
Grit and momentum. I need to find a formula to quantify grit and its impact on momentum.
It’s also true that this game was one excellent Carlos Beltran catch away from a true blowout. I can’t imagine Wainwright sticks around for much longer in what would have been an 8-0 game in the 2nd inning, and you have to think that the Red Sox would have tacked on a few more in five or six innings against the Cardinals bullpen.
“you have to think that the Red Sox would have tacked on a few more in five or six innings against the Cardinals bullpen”
Why? The Cards’ pen is really strong and really deep. They’ve been tremendous over the last 2 weeks. There’s no reason to believe that having to come in the game in 4th instead of the 6th is going to make them fall apart.
He didn’t say they’d “fall apart.”
But the Red Sox did score 2 runs in 3 innings against them last night.
Because pitching five plus innings of shutout ball against the best offense in baseball in one of the best offensive environments in baseball when the Cardinals very likely would have been deploying the “mop up duty” portion of their pen doesn’t strike me as an incredibly likely result.
While I agree with you in principle, Fenway Park actually suppresses runs.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor
It’s got a huge +2B and +3B factor, but it suppresses HR pretty heavily. For every fly ball that gets turned into a HR in left, a line shot HR gets turned into a single or double.
And RF and CF are friggen huge. There’s a spot in the park 420 feet from the plate where he wall is 17 feet high.
The Red Sox lineup really let up in their approach after the 2nd inning. They knew it was over and took their foot off the gas.
The formula ESPN uses for park factors is flawed. For example, Coors Field is hitter friendly, but the ESPN formulas exaggerate the effect because the number of road games the Rockies play in pitchers parks in LA, SF, and SD. ESPN also only uses one year of data, which allows more fluke results (ex. Rangers ballpark suppressing runs).
Look at the park factors Fangraphs has for more reliable information.
http://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pfh&season=2012&teamid=3
@Mike G
This is a joke, right? The Red Sox players did not think it was worth it to keep trying in the World Series because they were up 8 runs? If so, those guys are fucking idiots. But I feel like that title fits someone else a lot better.
#baseball.
Great article.
The PA stats only look close because St. Lious got one extra inning of offense.
Take away the 5 PAs of Ryan Dempster 9th and you get 38 vs 31 and that’s pretty big margin. It also tacks on the two hits by the St. Louis offense.
Also if you look at best run output with the worst offense, it has to be when the opposing team gifts baserunners in key situations, especially the high leverage situation of the first inning.
my numbas!
Should be 36-29 for the first 8 innings. That’s basically ~25% more PAs
Yeah, the Dempster half inning really makes the table look much closer than it really was. There’s also the fact that two of Boston’s runs were scored via sac fly, which does not contribute to wOBA. So, there were still two productive outs that simply look like normal outs by the methods in the article.
Especially since one of the sac flies was caught in the bullpen.
Not only was it the lowest in a 9-inning game, but with Boston being the victorious home team, their offensive work came in only 8 innings. They could have had another hitless inning in a regulation game to drag their numbers even lower.
Wainwright, despite having substantially diminished velocity in innings 3-5 (like -2.5 mph), still managed to throw only 9, 12, and 14 pitches in those three innings.
That couldn’t be because the Red Sox were playing to the score, right? No, couldn’t be.
So, not only do pitchers pitch to the score but now we’re going to make the argument that hitters quit trying to get on base or hit home runs when they get a big lead? Interesting. Never heard that before.
And, in fact, you’d have to agree that Ortiz’s homer flies in the face of your theory.
I guess it’s impossible for someone throwing in the low 90’s to have more success than someone throwing around 94, huh? That concept is new to me, as it is to someone like Greg Maddux, I’m sure.
I agree with you, but maybe we should stop responding to impossibly stupid comments?
It’s not “impossibly stupid” to believe that the Red Sox at bat strategy differs after they have staked a large lead. Their pitches seen per plate appearance declined after the first. Wainwright’s velocity also severely dropped after being worn down for the first 2 innings/60 pitches. A plausible explanation is that the Red Sox were being a bit more aggressive after the lead, and Wainwright was taking advantage of it.
Yes. It is impossibly stupid. These guys all want to do their best at every possible moment.
If guys can “pitch to the score” or “hit to the score”, then why do they not perform better in high leverage situations than in low leverage situations? You may choose to believe that in high leverage situations, both guys are trying harder. Or that, in low leverage situations, they are not trying as hard.
Actually, I have no grasp on what it is that you believe. This is the World Series. Their friends and families are all watching. Most of all of the MLB fans in the world are watching. The World Series is where men win glory. Every pitch. Every at bat. Every swing.
With respect to these guys’ forward-looking popularity and teams’ interest in them, performing well in the World Series (even in low-leverage situations) becomes part of their narrative. “Hey, this guy played great in the World Series.”
This is not professional football or professional basketball, where the events are completely interdependent and where teams often try to stall out on offense to run down the clock. Nobody goes up to bat and says that they’re just going to swing at junk because they’re up by 8 runs. The only “rules” that are different with a large lead seem to involve not bunting and not trying to steal bases.
My initial statement was hyperbolic, and for that I apologize.
However, I have never said they are not trying hard. Neither did I say they are up there with the intent of swinging at junk. They of course want to do their best, but the Red Sox were a bit more aggressive in the middle innings against Wainwright than they were in the first. I implied that perhaps their strategy slightly changed after getting a big lead. Not that they were not trying hard.
But you can go up to the plate with the intent of waiting a bit longer to see a PERFECT pitch to hit. Or you can go up there with the intent of swinging at a GOOD pitch to hit.
Do really think anyone plays to the score in the World Series?? Obviously the team in the other dugout is pretty darn good if they made it here. Saying you’ve done enough with a five run lead after two in the World Series is ridiculous.
Ortiz was looking for a first-pitch fastball, got one, and clobbered it. If he gets a change or curve, he looks foolish. That one pitch doesn’t fly in the face of the argument that teams swing earlier in counts when they have a big lead.
It supports it.
I’m not saying they “did enough,” but I’m saying they perhaps weren’t as intent to “grind out at bats” in innings 3–5 after 60 pitches in the first two innings.
We’re not talking about Greg Maddux, and Wainwright is good. But his velocity dropped substantially over the course of a few innings. Did that happen to Maddux?
The game wasn’t played in a vacuum, and therefore looking at the outcomes (like wOBA) without context is incomplete.
OK, I can see your point a little more clearly now, but I’m still not totally on board with it. In the second inning, when Ellsbury came up with the score still just 3-0 and far from a blowout(and thus began the second time through the order), he took a big rip at the first pitch he saw. I don’t think a single Boston hitter swung at either of the first two pitches they saw from Wainwright the first time through the order. What I was thinking as I was watching it last night was Boston’s game plan going in was to grind out at bat’s the first time through, then the second time through, take some hacks on the first pitch to see if they could catch Wainwright napping
Totally agree. So the Red Sox stopped taking good AB’s in the 3rd inning because it was 5-0, against a team that led the majors in 5-run innings? I think octavius was trying to argue on behalf of the Red Sox, but his line of thinking actually makes them sound worse.
I couldn’t care less if my “line of thinking makes them sound worse.” I think it’s a plausible explanation that the Red Sox were swinging earlier in counts after getting a big lead:
1st inning: 4.42 P/PA
2nd inning: 4.14 P/PA
3rd inning: 4.00 P/PA
4th inning: 4.00 P/PA
5th inning: 3.5 P/PA
Not huge differences, but definitely a trend.
A good at-bat isn’t one where you don’t swing.
A good at-bat is one where you swing at a pitch that is a good pitch for you to hit.
Also, the Red Sox have played like this all season. Typically they watch a lot of pitches the first time through the order, pushing up the pitch count, and getting a better look at what the starter is trying to do.
If the starter has shown trends (like throwing a lot of first pitch fastballs), they tend to start jumping on them.
Of course the Red Sox were swinging earlier in counts after getting a big lead, octavius. That’s not where we disagree. Your point was that this was a deliberate strategy in response to a big lead. My point is that the context (early in the game, against a great offense, in the World Series) supports the notion that the Red Sox were not deliberately throwing away at bats.
Brian, again, I never claimed they were “throwing away” at bats, there there are different plausible explanations for why they were swinging earlier in counts, and the strategy of swinging at pitches earlier in counts (not giving away at bats, but perhaps not waiting for a perfect pitch when you see a good one) when you have a big lead makes intuitive sense. If it’s not a part of why they were swinging earlier, then I apologize for my erroneous explanation.
An overall point is, though that the context of the game in which the “Red Sox didn’t hit Wainwright very hard” (DC’s words) ought to acknowledge a different strategy by the Sox after the 1st few innings.
I gotcha, octavius. That makes sense.
This doesn’t even count the fact that the Red Sox got credit for a hit on a popup that went about 30 feet.
It wasn’t a blowout because of offense; it was a blowout because of defense
Yay for moral victories, I’m sure that’s what the Cardinals wanted.
I don’t think the point is that this was a moral victory – merely that, even in an 8-1 laugher the two teams might not be as mismatched as they appeared, and, going forward, Wainwright might not be as vulnerable as he appeared.
” It was a win, but it wasn’t really a beatdown like the 8-1 final score might have indicated.”
I love how when defending players like Carpenter, Trout and McCutchen, etc. defense and baserunning are always touted. But DC omits them here because they don’t further his narrative. It was a blow out, the Cardinals didn’t execute and the Red Sox did.
I think you completely misunderstood the article. Dave wasn’t discounting defense and baserunning (although I’m not even sure what baserunning had to do with last nights’ game). Far from omitting defense, he mentions it several times. The Cardinals didn’t execute, as you say – but Dave’s point was that their lack of execution on defense was not likely a repeatable event (i.e., 2 dropped balls from an otherwise solid fielder like Kozma, a missed popup from two otherwise solid fielders like Wainwright and Molina, etc.).
“Except, it wasn’t really a blowout. It was on the scoreboard, but that’s basically the only place where the Red Sox really trounced the Cardinals last night.”
Um, no. The Red Sox defense trounced the Cardinals defense. The Red Sox baserunning trounced the Cardinals baserunning. Those are part of baseball. The parts about the Cardinals one extra base hit being off Dempster is conveniently left out. Seriously, stop with this foolishness. The Red Sox played nearly error free while the Cardinals made a handful of unacceptable mistakes…if that’s not “trouncing” I don’t know what is, it was decisive from the jump.
I agree. Yes, the Red Sox did a good job bunching their hits and the Cardinals didn’t. But if it wasn’t a blowout, Dempster never would’ve been in the game. Comparing the numbers of the 2 teams from the first 8 innings would tell a different story than the one Cameron tells. Lester’s pitching line was way, way better than Wainwright’s, and the Cardinals defense was inexcusably bad.
What was wrong with the Cardinals’ baserunning, or so special about the Red Sox’? The only notable baserunning play I recall is Shane Robinson advancing when Gomes kicked a ball in left.
That play aside, you’re obviously right about the defense. But I think you’re just taking a broader definition of ‘blowout’ than Dave is. Yours is the better definition, his is the version that allows him to have a ‘clever’ or ‘surprising’ headline.
Ortiz scored from first on a double, which is per se good base running. He also not only slid, but made sure to cover the plate with dirt. It was awesome.
He scored on an error, actually.
I don’t think the point of the article was that the Red Sox didn’t totally outplay the Cardinals or that they didn’t deserve to win. I think it’s that the final score didn’t tell us as much about these two teams as you might think, nor did it tell us much about these two teams going forward. (And when and how did the Red Sox baserunning trounce the Cardinals’ baserunning?)
Yeah, but my point is that Cameron chooses his stats in a way that paints a very mis-leading picture of the game in order to fit with his narrative. Including the stats from Dempster’s inning, in particular (when the Red Sox didn’t even get a chance to bat in the 9th).
Comparing Lester and Wainwright’s pitching lines certainly makes the game look like a blowout.
If one actually watched the game and paid attention, it was obviously a blowout in many ways. The Cardinals didn’t hit a ball hard all night until Holliday’s HR off Dempster. And if Ortiz can get 2 more feet on that HR ball that Beltran caught (i.e. had the game been played in 10 degree warmer weather), then we’re REALLY talking about a blowout.
Oneto consider is that, if Matheny was aware of the win probability after the 5-0 score, it would have made sense to pull Wainright for Dempster immediately and potentially increase the chance Wainright could start twice more in this Series.
Actually on that point, I saw a tweet by Brandon McCarthy last night saying that would be ridiculous to even consider. His point was that Wainwright’s innings total is through the roof at this point in the season, it’s tough to be fresh enough to be dominating say in Game 3 or 4 and presumably be asked to go out for a Game 7 if necessary. Plus, he had already thrown something like 50 pitches through the first two innings anyway, how much was his arm really saved.
I’m not saying it’s ridiculous, and in the earlier eras of baseball, starting on two or three days rest for the Series was almost normal. I just thought it was cool to see the thinking of a modern SP on starting on short rest this late in the year.
I think it was closer to 60 through the first two.
That being said, he probably threw another 50 in the bullpen before the game, and went through his warm up.
Think of it as if he throws 100 pitches a game, he throws 150-200 on gameday.
Today he’d already thrown 110-160 by the time the game got out of hand.
Huh, Dempster? Is that you, Tim McCarver?
It would have been some impressive tomfoolery to sign Dempster away from the Red Sox in the middle of the game.
As others have mentioned, really weird to not even mention the effect an extra set of at-bats, against a mopup guy no less, shifted the numbers dramatically.
It really defeats the entire premise of the article, honestly. After 8 innings, the total bases count was 13-5. The Cardinals had as many total bases against Dempster as they did against Lester + Tazawa.
This says a lot more about the vagaries of scoring conventions than how the Red Sox did.
As a convention, reaching base on an error does not count as a time on base. If we add the three ROE’s, suddenly the Sox have a .333 OBP.
Getting a hit when you really want it or need it seems close on par to getting an error from the other team when you really want it or need it. The best way to get timely hits is to have good hitters and the best way to get on base through errors is to play a team prone to errors. At the same time, really bad hitting teams sometimes get timely hits and good fielding teams make errors.
Everything worked out and sequenced very well for Boston.
Agreeing with the whole Dempster thing. Its stories like this that give stat guys a bad name. For 8 innings it was not close in terms of total bases or score, and Dempster’s job at this point is strictly to eat up innings in blowouts. It was a blowout, and while the Cardinals are unlikely to have such a bad game again, they are not known for their defense, and the Sox are. To say that we didn’t expect that to play a role in any game is a major oversight by he who says it.
And on another note, I don’t see anyone anywhere talking about how the Cards struggle with lefties. That’s going to be a factor too, and they should hit better tonight.
Oh sheesh y’all, Dave Cameron overlooks one relatively minor counterpoint and now everyone it acting like he’s a cancer on Sabermetric Research, forcing us all to lose debates with internet trolls and talk radio trolls. Stop falling for the “fallacy fallacy.” His larger point remains completely valid: The Red Sox did not, in fact, blow out the Cardinals except on the scoreboard.
Prior to the ninth, the Red Sox reached base nine times, plus the three errors equals twelve runners in eight innings. Basically a .333 OBP if you include the errors. The Cards got six baserunners in their first eight innings, plus they moved two guys ninety feet on an error. I’m not sure what the run expectancy is in either of those situation, but I’m pretty Boston’s is less than eight and I’m sure as hell that the Cardinals had a run expectancy of greater than 0.00000. Even if you give the Sox credit for two HR instead of one, you’re probably looking as a 5-1 or a 4-2 scoreline in terms of how the teams actually played through eight innings. i.e. not a blowout.
Although Dempster is a mop up guy, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that 1HR/IP 2.00 WHIP is above his expected run prevention. So whatever that counts for, it’s certainly some non-zero outcome in favor of the Cards.
If it’s so obvious and so easy to refute, where is Cameron to do the actual rebuttal? His MO is to write inflammatory pieces and then sit back as page views pile up. Sad, on multiple levels.
The RE24 differential was 7.52. I wonder how often that has happened this year or in history in a 9 inning game.
The scoreboard is the only thing that counts in baseball. The blow out was not necessarily because Boston outslugged St Louis, but because St Louis choked in the field and was a bit unlucky. St Louis blew themselves out with some help from Red Sox pitching.
The premise of the article is correct, the score was by no means predictive, as we saw tonight. Offensively, the Red Sox bats were struggling and game 1 production was not due to the bats coming alive against a good pitcher (although if Beltran did not rob Papi of a grandslam we might think about it differently). The offensive struggles continued in game 2 with the except of Ortiz and Pedroia, and the Cardinals defense did not help them out this time.
Maybe both teams offense kicks it up a bit against the others back end of the post season rotation.