Difference Making Games of 2018

grimshaw

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Not sure where to put this... and not into starting a thread for a simple question: Is Devers considered a rookie this season? Would he be eligible for RoTY (obviously way too early to start considering that)? He's been off to a pretty nice start to the season so far and from what I've seen, his defense has been pretty solid at 3rd. I'm super bullish on him as a middle of the order bat for hopefully the next 10-12 years
Nope. He had 222 at bats last year. Cut off is 130. Not sure why it isn't based on plate appearances.
 

Rasputin

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Last night's game v Ohtani might be a different kind of difference-making game. If it really was blister-related (and I'm not sure why they'd lie) and it's not some kind of recurring blister issue, then it's the kind of random bullshit that can make a difference.

The Sox and Yanks are going to face Ohtani two times each at most and if we get to face him when he's a fat pussy toad and the Yanks don't, that's roughly equivalent to a moderate comeback. 538 had the Sox a 51-49 favorite going into the game and by the end of three we had a 97% of winning.

It's not winning a game we shouldn't have won, it's having a random thing that could happen anytime turn a game that should have been close into one that wasn't remotely close.
 

m0ckduck

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Last night's game v Ohtani might be a different kind of difference-making game. If it really was blister-related (and I'm not sure why they'd lie) and it's not some kind of recurring blister issue, then it's the kind of random bullshit that can make a difference.

The Sox and Yanks are going to face Ohtani two times each at most and if we get to face him when he's a fat pussy toad and the Yanks don't, that's roughly equivalent to a moderate comeback. 538 had the Sox a 51-49 favorite going into the game and by the end of three we had a 97% of winning.

It's not winning a game we shouldn't have won, it's having a random thing that could happen anytime turn a game that should have been close into one that wasn't remotely close.
Good call. It’s one of those “That’s what you get for building a ballpark on the ocean” games.
 

Plympton91

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They sure do look very good right now. The difference maker for me has been how good the pitching depth has been. Velazquez and Johnson are proving they belong, and Price's elbow seems like it is holding up.
 

bluefenderstrat

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OK, so the Sox shouldn't have lost the 2nd game of the Yankees series because Price's pitching hand was frozen.

(Edit: I know that's not what Ras actually said, this stuff does happen to every team & maybe some years the balance is on your side.)
 

Rasputin

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OK, so the Sox shouldn't have lost the 2nd game of the Yankees series because Price's pitching hand was frozen.

(Edit: I know that's not what Ras actually said, this stuff does happen to every team & maybe some years the balance is on your side.)
It's not that they shouldn't have lost it, but it turned a game where 538 lists the Sox with a 54-46 advantage to start the game into one where BBREF's win probability chart gave the Yanks a 77% chance of winning after one inning.
 

dbn

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Looks to me that so far they've stolen victory from the jaws of defeat once, and vice-versa once, plus one other game that they might-of-probably-should-of lost. So I'd say they're about half a game ahead.

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lapa

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I thought about doing this earlier in the season after Game 1, I think the Sox were on something like 98% to win that at one point. I call them "nut punch" losses, but I don't know what a good cutoff is, I think if you ever get to 80% to win you've kind of blown it if you lose,anything over 90% is really a stinger, maybe 95% can be the real "nut punch". But the Sox pulled off their own nut punch wins, 2 of them vs the Rays actually at 91 and 98% to lose but won.

I dont know why you need to mess about looking up values by inning, just use a cutoff value. Its obviously harder to get to a "95% chance to win" after 2 innings than after 8, that will be reflected in the score needed in both cases. So simply tally all the games won where the other team got to a 95% level to win via fangraphs WPA charts, and vice versa.

I wonder if there have been many games where both teams have had a 95% chance to win at different points in the same game. Would be interesting to find out games where there were lots of points at X% on both sides of win expectancy as well, where leads changed a lot in crazy ways.

Probably nothing more useful than a bit of fun on the side. It was cute that the Sox started off the season with a horrid nut punch loss then suddenly went on a crazy tear including giving out a few nut punches of their own
 

lapa

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Of course, that was a great game, and also pointed out a flaw in one of my comments directly, by defintion any "nut punch" loss will include both teams having a win% over 95 :) so maybe I will try and find a game where one team had a 95% chance to win based on WPA, but then the other team got to 95% but then the first team went on to win again (or something like that).

I don't know if I should be ashamed to say that I nodded before the end of the opener, so missed the "nut punch" defeat in that one.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Does it count at bats after the rosters expand on September 1st?
I think roster expansion after September 1 is a reason, if not the reason, why the threshold for losing rookie eligibility is 130 PA. If you make your debut on September 1 and then play every day through the end of the season, you're still unlikely to get 130 PA in that time.
 

Rasputin

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Last night's game--the first one against Oakland for those of you reading from the future--probably doesn't really belong in this thread. If you go by the strict definition of the original poster, it absolutely doesn't.

But...we had a "bad" start from a starting pitcher that was essentially a glorified rehab game. He allowed three runs. Sure, he came very close to allowing six, but the only reason he allowed more than one was a defensive miscue by our really good defensive catcher.

People got on Farrell a lot for leaving guys in too long and this was clearly a situation where leaving a guy in for one more batter could have been leaving him in way too long. But it wasn't. And he went a couple more innings and saved the bullpen a few dozen pitches.

But that's not really what I came here to talk about.

During the pitching change, Moreland and JBJ were looking at what was presumably scouting info and potentially video of the guy coming in. Then Moreland did exactly what we've been talking about in the offensive approach threads. He took tendency data from the scouts, zeroed in on a likely pitch, got it right away and hammered the shit out of it.

This game didn't make a difference. It was made by a difference. But at the same time, the game would have been entirely different if one fly ball had been a little bit fair instead of a little bit foul. There is so much you can do in this game to prepare, analyze tendencies, predict what your opponent is going to do next and develop a plan of attack that maximizes your chances of dancing around in goggles with stupidly large bottles of what I assume is ridiculously expensive champaign. And if on one swing the ball hits the bat a fraction of centimeter differently it's entirely possible that none of that preparation means a goddamn thing.

Also, remember when that little shit didn't have a hitter's meeting before the Oakland series? Fuck him.
 

Reverend

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Last night's game--the first one against Oakland for those of you reading from the future--probably doesn't really belong in this thread. If you go by the strict definition of the original poster, it absolutely doesn't.

But...we had a "bad" start from a starting pitcher that was essentially a glorified rehab game. He allowed three runs. Sure, he came very close to allowing six, but the only reason he allowed more than one was a defensive miscue by our really good defensive catcher.

People got on Farrell a lot for leaving guys in too long and this was clearly a situation where leaving a guy in for one more batter could have been leaving him in way too long. But it wasn't. And he went a couple more innings and saved the bullpen a few dozen pitches.

But that's not really what I came here to talk about.

During the pitching change, Moreland and JBJ were looking at what was presumably scouting info and potentially video of the guy coming in. Then Moreland did exactly what we've been talking about in the offensive approach threads. He took tendency data from the scouts, zeroed in on a likely pitch, got it right away and hammered the shit out of it.

This game didn't make a difference. It was made by a difference. But at the same time, the game would have been entirely different if one fly ball had been a little bit fair instead of a little bit foul. There is so much you can do in this game to prepare, analyze tendencies, predict what your opponent is going to do next and develop a plan of attack that maximizes your chances of dancing around in goggles with stupidly large bottles of what I assume is ridiculously expensive champaign. And if on one swing the ball hits the bat a fraction of centimeter differently it's entirely possible that none of that preparation means a goddamn thing.

Also, remember when that little shit didn't have a hitter's meeting before the Oakland series? Fuck him.
I love this post. And it reminds me of @absintheofmalaise once observing to me that people don't really realize just how tight the margins of difference between winning and losing is--it's actually obscured by the nonsense of standings' percentages being expressed to three decimal places to make the differences seem more substantial, if no less significant.

In a game like this, you want to play all the angles. It's why people flip out here whenever anything is left on the table; there are no worthless scraps in baseball. Hell, isn't that why we love the scrappy player?

Total professionalism is more satisfying still, though, than scrambling for scraps.

I love this team.
 

Rasputin

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I love this post.

Total professionalism is more satisfying still, though, than scrambling for scraps.

I love this team.
That post loves you back. It told me so.

Preparation is always going to play into it and the greater your preparation the more situations you're ready to handle with confidence.

You know, it strikes me that the heart of this game is two of the most difficult things in sports. Executing on one pitch is hard. Getting it all right--the velocity, the location, the spin, the grip, the delivery, the whole thing, getting it all together is hard. And we ask pitchers to do it a hundred times a night.

And we ask hitters to identify the type of pitch, location of pitch, and decide whether, where, and how hard to swing and give them maybe a third of a second to do it.

Every now and then you see good hitters hit good pitches, but so much of this game is built on mistakes. Pitcher hangs a curve, you hammer it. Batter misidentifies a pitch, he screws himself into the ground. Add up all the mistakes and you get a score. Add up all the scores, you get a champion.

This game is fucked. Aint it great?
 

streeter88

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I am glad you guys talked about this, and speaking as someone reading from the future, I am hoping that none of the media asked Moreland what he was looking at -- or at least that he deflected the question somehow. I thought it was a bit unlucky that NESN showed Moreland looking at data during the pitching change -- because that has now been attached to the replay of his Grand Slam for everyone to see.

It has been noted that the Red Sox are swinging at more first pitches. May even have been confirmed by Sox coaches or Cora. So it's only a matter of time before the scouting by opposing teams starts to counter that tendency, which raises the question of how will the Sox coaches counter?

So not only is it a game of milimeters, execution, luck and timing, teams also need to anticipate how other teams might scout and therefore attack them.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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I don't think the Sox are just "swinging at first pitches" as much as "willing to swing at first pitch strikes". They're not just blindly going up and flailing at the first pitch, obviously.... while I think the opposite of that may have been true in the past- go up there and blindly allow the pitcher to throw a first pitch and do not swing at it.
This approach seems like other teams scouts understanding that the Sox are not just allowing a pitcher a first pitch and are willing to swing, is more difficult to adjust to. What do you say.... throw a more difficult strike on the first pitch?
It doesn't seem like blind aggression to me, which I'm sure no one here is saying, but "swinging at first pitches" sounds kinda like that.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I am glad you guys talked about this, and speaking as someone reading from the future, I am hoping that none of the media asked Moreland what he was looking at -- or at least that he deflected the question somehow. I thought it was a bit unlucky that NESN showed Moreland looking at data during the pitching change -- because that has now been attached to the replay of his Grand Slam for everyone to see.

It has been noted that the Red Sox are swinging at more first pitches. May even have been confirmed by Sox coaches or Cora. So it's only a matter of time before the scouting by opposing teams starts to counter that tendency, which raises the question of how will the Sox coaches counter?

So not only is it a game of milimeters, execution, luck and timing, teams also need to anticipate how other teams might scout and therefore attack them.
I don't think it's a secret that teams look at data and video. It's just rare that it's on display right at the front of the dugout during the game where the cameras can easily pick it up, and certainly not when the player about to step into the batter's box is the one doing it. Players and coaches have been doing that kind of thing for decades during pitching changes, just not with the benefit of an Ipad with video of the pitcher at their finger tips. It's been verbal instead..."likes to start down and away to lefties" or "tendency to throw first pitch change-ups" or things like that. Now they can say those things and show the hitter exactly where the down and away pitch goes or where the change up tends to come in.

And I don't think it's a matter of more swinging at first pitches than it is less frequently watching the first pitch no matter what. If the pitcher knows you're going to look at the first pitch, he can groove one and get away with it. If he knows you'll swing at a hittable pitch, he'll try to paint the corners instead which is far more difficult. I think the Sox philosophy is go up looking for your pitch and hit it even if it is the first one. Gomes was talking about this with the Devers grand slam in Anaheim. Not so much the first pitch but that Devers was clearly looking for a certain pitch in a certain spot and even passed up two pretty much middle-middle strikes he could have swung at before getting what he was looking for and hitting it off the scoreboard.

So with Moreland last night, I think it may not have necessarily been "this is where he throws his first pitch" so much as "this is the pitch/location you want to jump on with this guy". Moreland went looking for it and he happened to get it on the first pitch. A lot tougher to counter-scout against that sort of thing, especially if it means pitchers working away from their strengths.
 

tims4wins

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I don't think the Sox are just "swinging at first pitches" as much as "willing to swing at first pitch strikes". They're not just blindly going up and flailing at the first pitch, obviously.... while I think the opposite of that may have been true in the past- go up there and blindly allow the pitcher to throw a first pitch and do not swing at it.
This approach seems like other teams scouts understanding that the Sox are not just allowing a pitcher a first pitch and are willing to swing, is more difficult to adjust to. What do you say.... throw a more difficult strike on the first pitch?
It doesn't seem like blind aggression to me, which I'm sure no one here is saying, but "swinging at first pitches" sounds kinda like that.
Right, this is spot on. Here is some context:

Last year, the Sox walked 571 in 6,338 PAs for a 9.01% BB rate.
This year, the Sox have walked 69 times in 771 PAs for a... 8.95% BB rate. At that rate over 6,338 PAs it would come to 567 BBs, only 4 down from last year. Which is statistically insignificant.

So they are walking at pretty much the exact same rate despite the early aggressiveness.
 

Adrian's Dome

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I don't think the Sox are just "swinging at first pitches" as much as "willing to swing at first pitch strikes". They're not just blindly going up and flailing at the first pitch, obviously.... while I think the opposite of that may have been true in the past- go up there and blindly allow the pitcher to throw a first pitch and do not swing at it.
This approach seems like other teams scouts understanding that the Sox are not just allowing a pitcher a first pitch and are willing to swing, is more difficult to adjust to. What do you say.... throw a more difficult strike on the first pitch?
It doesn't seem like blind aggression to me, which I'm sure no one here is saying, but "swinging at first pitches" sounds kinda like that.
Agreed on all counts.

I think it's a good philosophy to try and hammer hittable pitches. I remember thinking back in the day, not that I know a damn thing about hitting compared to him, mind you, that it was curious that Manny almost never swung at those 3-0 (or 0-0) get-me-over meatballs pitchers would throw. That worked for him, but seeing what hitters like Moreland can do versus what someone with Manny's talent can do to those nothingballs, it makes me wonder if he actually could've been more productive than he already was.
 

Reverend

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Agreed on all counts.

I think it's a good philosophy to try and hammer hittable pitches. I remember thinking back in the day, not that I know a damn thing about hitting compared to him, mind you, that it was curious that Manny almost never swung at those 3-0 (or 0-0) get-me-over meatballs pitchers would throw. That worked for him, but seeing what hitters like Moreland can do versus what someone with Manny's talent can do to those nothingballs, it makes me wonder if he actually could've been more productive than he already was.
Perhaps. But by the same token, maybe he doesn't get the counts he did if they knew his approach was different, yes?

It's all a rich tapestry. ;)
 

santadevil

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This game didn't make a difference. It was made by a difference. But at the same time, the game would have been entirely different if one fly ball had been a little bit fair instead of a little bit foul. There is so much you can do in this game to prepare, analyze tendencies, predict what your opponent is going to do next and develop a plan of attack that maximizes your chances of dancing around in goggles with stupidly large bottles of what I assume is ridiculously expensive champaign. And if on one swing the ball hits the bat a fraction of centimeter differently it's entirely possible that none of that preparation means a goddamn thing.
Good post Ras. I coach a lot of ball and you're 100% correct. The little differences end up making big differences and it's easy to look back at the score of the game, or even the box score and think the Sox won the game easily. It sure wasn't easy.
 

grimshaw

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There is absolutely no guarantee Joe Kelly would have pitched a scoreless 10th, 11th etc. whatever inning he would have been in, but it sure would have been nice to have him tonight.

Due to the lack of options they are basically stuck with a pretty well spent pen now too.

Reason # 800 why throwing baseballs at people is stupid.

The defense was the main reason they lost, but being a reliever short when you don't have off days hurts the team.