The game is still in progress, but I'm extremely unhappy right now, as the Braves have willingly given away (tried to, anyway) four outs in this game against arguably the best team in the National League. Lets make the best pitching staff in the National League record 4 less outs. Awesome, great strategy. Lets also give Shane Victorino 4 strikes to get a hit. Oh wait, sorry, that wasn't Fredi Gonzalez' fault. Keep it moving, nothing to see here....
Anyway to prove my point, lets look at the stat Win Probability Added from this game to help me prove my point. This stat measures the percentage that a team's probability of winning the game changes based on the events that occurred during the game. On the 3 sacrifice bunts that were successfully turned into outs by the Phillies (one was booted rather hilariously by Cole Hamels), the total win probability added of those 3 bunts was -.047. Basically, the Braves decreased their chances of winning by almost 5 percent by giving away those 3 outs, and I have a feeling it would have been more than 5% if Hamels had recorded an out like he should have on McLouth's first sacrifice attempt.
The most egregious of these bunts was Joe Mather's bunt with a runner on first and nobody out, with the Braves trailing by a run in the bottom of the 7th. Mather sacrificed himself, and decreased the Braves chances of winning by .041 in the process, or 4.1%. Because when you are down by a run, scoring one run only ties the game. Duh. With 2 more innings to play, I'm trying to score as many runs as possible to increase my chances of, you know, WINNING the game. I like winning the game, not tying it. And Fredi Gonzalez should too.
Which brings me to another decision that grinds my gears. Why the hell is Christian Martinez hitting with nobody outs in the fifth with runners on 2nd and 3rd, down by 2 runs in the fifth inning? I understand that Martinez pitched brilliantly tonight, and I also understand that he got a hit, but you really want to use a player with zero major league hits in a high leverage situation? About 10% of at bats in a game are considered to be high leverage situations. This was one of them, as a stat called leverage index tells us. Average leverage index is set at 1, and anything above 1.5 is considered to be high leverage. Martinez's at bat registered a leverage index of 2.37 (10% of game situations/at-bats register above 2 to give you some context). I know he got a hit, but the process must be better, as baseball is a game that has highly variable results in small sample sizes. We must pay attention to the process as opposed to the results, as that is what wins out long term. And Fredi Gonzalez failed on multiple levels tonight, and that is not good enough.
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