2016 AL Wild Card: Baltimore Orioles vs.Toronto Blue Jays

Not sure why you'd say batter-pitcher stats are worthless (notwithstanding NoTime's point about the bulk of those numbers maybe going back to the NL, which is valid if true--don't know). If the sample size is large enough--and 38 AB is pretty decent--I'd want to know that as a manager, especially at the extremes. Clearly, Bautista does not hit Jiminez well.

I'm guessing 38 abs spread over years is about as worthless as it gets. it takes, what, 150 PAs for numbers to start stabilizing in the season, right? and that's at the low end. and I think it's just for pitchers.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/when-you-should-ignore-the-data/

Batter/Pitcher match-up data has been shown to have no predictive value. In The Book, Tango/Lichtman/Dolphin devote an entire chapter — Ch 6, “Mano a Mano” — to looking for evidence that previous results of specific batter/pitcher match-ups would predict future results in those same match-ups. It wasn’t there. Despite looking at the 30 most extreme examples of matched-pairs where the batter had dominated the pitcher over a three-year period, the group was barely better than average in the fourth season against those same pitchers. When looking at the flip side, where pitchers had dominated the hitters, the results were the same. Most interesting is that there was little difference in actual future performance by the 30 hitters who had dominated their rivals versus those who had been dominated by opposing pitchers. Even at the extremes, specific batter/pitcher data showed no real usefulness in projecting future results.

Thanks, I'll read that over tonight.

I don't know--intuitively, it just seems natural that batters would feel overmatched against certain pitchers (can't figure out their delivery, can't hit a certain pitch of theirs, etc.) and feel like others can't get the ball by them. (Don't tennis players play consistently better than expected against some opponents and consistently worse than expected against others? I don't know tennis that well.) In terms of projecting future results, maybe Bautista does indeed get a hit in that 39th AB--but maybe the data had done a good job predicting the results for AB 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38. Not trying to be difficult or play devil's advocate; when the numbers are as bad as Bautista's are against Jiminez, I'd just rather have that match-up as a manager.

This might be instructive:

http://www.si.com/vault/1955/08/08/604885/the-question-who-is-or-was-the-hardest-pitcher-for-you-to-hit

I'm going to go through that tonight and see what these guys actually did against the pitchers they cite.

gotcha qualx, not a pattern. mlb.com:

"On a certain level, it shouldn't be all that surprising that Showalter didn't use Britton. Like many managers, he has typically refused to put his closers into tie games on the road. Britton entered in a tie game away from home just once all season, which was against the Blue Jays on July 31, when he pitched the ninth and 10th innings of a 2-2 tie (Baltimore went on to win, 6-2, in 12 innings). And that was somewhat of an outlier as he hadn't pitched for five consecutive days before that."

And he looks like such a pleasant guy.

http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/36107

He actually looks like a younger Tim Kaine...

http://www.metronews.ca/news/toronto/2016/10/05/alleged-blue-jays-beer-thrower-identified-ken-pagan.html

gotcha qualx, not a pattern. mlb.com:

"On a certain level, it shouldn't be all that surprising that Showalter didn't use Britton. Like many managers, he has typically refused to put his closers into tie games on the road. Britton entered in a tie game away from home just once all season, which was against the Blue Jays on July 31, when he pitched the ninth and 10th innings of a 2-2 tie (Baltimore went on to win, 6-2, in 12 innings). And that was somewhat of an outlier as he hadn't pitched for five consecutive days before that."

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, October 5, 2016 11:43 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow, whopping sample size of 4 whole games

lol let's see how Buck handles him for the next 20 years, i guess

But while Showalter stated in the postgame press conference that his decision wasn’t based on some philosophical issue, the 11th inning suggests differently. Because the only way you rationalize letting Jimenez face Edwin Encarnacion is if you’re dead set against using your closer in a tie game on the road.

Now, here’s the crazy part: no team in baseball history has ever had a better option for this specific situation than the 2016 Orioles....

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-craziest-part-of-showalters-crazy-decision/

https://twitter.com/CespedesBBQ/status/786987856740974592