Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

Stupid move. Especially with two outs.

 

See the post by HanSense.

Nobody is under any obligation to make life fair for the urchins in Philadelphia.

 

The intentional walk is almost always a stupid move. Babe Ruth has been dead for 60 years.

 

Christ, it is not about the Phillies.

 

How about you offer up some thoughts of your own instead of these womanly exclamations about how shitty other people's are?

 

What's wrong with "womanly exclamations"?

 

I already have , but people like you turn it into that I am making excuses for the Philies, which I am not. Now please go back to entertaining us with your logical closer arguments.

 

You're beginning to bore me. Go hump somebody else's leg for a while. Pretty please.

 

The biz prof in me is intrigued by this discussion. I think we'd all agree that a good closer adds value to a team. The question is how much? And when is upgrading your closer, on the margin, more important (or advisable)? I suspect it's when you have a workable team that'll have its share of late-game leads. Thus, greater certainty with regard to the sustainability of those leads is of more value to that team than it is to, say, a weak team that's going to lose 100 games anyway. That assumes, of course, that the closer really is better at securing those last outs than some other non-closer reliever. I'm thinking I could come up with a way to test, rigorously, that assumption. Film at 11 ...

 

If you're going to invest in a top closer, you better make sure you have the setup guys to get to him first. Papelbon sat for long stretches of September because the guys in front of him failed.

 

The ideal would be to take your best reliever and make him a "stopper." Don't just mindlessly throw him out there every time you have a three run lead in the ninth. Identify the absolutely most important situations and let him pitch them.

In the meantime, closers still pitch more important outs than most. Something like Leverage Index should give you a good idea.

 

This is one of those ideas that sounds OK in theory but wouldn't work well in practice, certainly over the course of a 162-game regular season, which is why no Major League club uses its bullpen this way.