Archive for the ‘The Aggravating Thing That The Manager Did’ Category

Yesterday, in a move unfamiliar to the ethos of this blog, Drew Fairservice wrote a post suggesting that the San Francisco Giants brain trust was doing something right with its use of reliever Sergio Romo.

With newly found confidence thanks to Fairservice’s endorsement, Giants manager Brian Bochy made a bold and decisive statement by writing out a lineup card ahead of his team’s game against the Atlanta Braves with Hector Sanchez at catcher, Buster Posey at first base and Brandon Belt relegated to the bench.

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I think the most dogeared chapter in my copy of The Book is the one titled Boots Were Made For Walking in which Tom Tango et al. examine intentional walk situations. I probably reference that chapter at least once a week while watching a game in which a manager seems a little bit too eager to put the opposing team’s hottest hitter on base.

What I usually end up looking at is a large table that Tango created in which he lays out what the difference in wOBA must be between the player being walked and what he refers to as Teammate wOBA (a calculation of the next hitter(s) to come up based on how many outs there are). In this table, he lays out for the reader a selection of the 24 base out states (zero on, zero out; man on first, zero out; men on first and second, zero out; etc.) according to inning and the difference in score (ahead by one, tied, down by one, etc.).

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Fredi Gonzalez is the much maligned manager of the Atlanta Braves. While it would be unsurprising to learn that managers in every city around Major League Baseball have multiple faux Twitter accounts set up for the sole purpose of mocking in-game decisions, few are given as much material to tweet about as the infamous @Frediot feed that’s dedicated to Gonzalez.

Never did this seem more apparent than during yesterday afternoon’s tilt between Fredi’s Braves (or #Barves if you prefer) and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In the bottom of the second inning of the matinee, the Diamondbacks found themselves down by a run with two outs and two men on for right handed hitting shortstop John McDonald. The eighth hitter in the lineup was set to face right handed starter Randall Delgado with Arizona pitcher Ian Kennedy on deck.

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