A Frustrating But Exciting Finish To A Frustrating First Half

The score in this game wasn’t really important for what I’m going to say here, but the Cardinals won 4-2 behind 2 2-run home runs off the bat of Ryan Ludwick. Randy Wells didn’t pitch great, but he kept his team in the game going 7 innings, allowing 7 hits and 4 earned runs. That was just the 2nd time in his career he’s given up 4 earned runs in a game (June 12th vs. Minnesota) and only the 3rd time he’s allowed 3 or 4 runs in a start. A fantastic first half and beginning to a career for Randy Wells. The Cubs, as has happened to them so frequently in the first half, failed to capitalize on a couple of opportunities they had and were only able to score 2 runs tonight. Adam Wainwright is a really good pitcher so you don’t have to get down about losing to this. Yes, it does get old saying “tip your cap” but the Cubs offense right now just isn’t very good and they’re not going to beat pitchers like Adam Wainwright very often. Now let’s move on to what was exciting in this game. It was only the 9th inning and in fact not even when the Cubs were batting. I first want to just say put the events down here for those of you who weren’t able to watch the game. I’m not going to add any of the Cardinals names as it’s not important. The only thing that matters here is the handedness of the Cardinals batter so I will just give you that. Marshall brought in to relieve to face lefty with one out. Marshall walks the guy after a short 3-2 count battle. Righty coming up for the Cardinals who now have the bases loaded and Lou naturally goes to the right-handed Aaron Heilman. Sean Marshall replaces Alfonso Soriano in LF. Yes. You read that right. Heilman strikes the righty out. Sean Marshall brought from LF to pitcher to face scheduled lefty. TLR does pinch hit with a righty, but let’s ignore that for a moment. Marshall gets the strikeout and the Cubs get out of the inning with no runs score behind what was probably the loudest crowd of the season. Sadly, the crowd was probably not cheering as loudly as they were for the right reasons. Many of them probably just thought it was funny. A typical old senile Lou Piniella creating one of his own Cubbie occurrences. Not so. For those of you who have read The Book this is information you’ve read before. In the chapter about platooning, it is mentioned that if a lefty pitcher is not effective against righties he should face as few as possible, which is obviously common sense. We already know that. Anyway, The Book adds: “An unorthodox solution to all of this is to have two pitchers in the game at the same time, one lefty and one righty. Depending on who is at the plate, one will be on the mound, and the other can be put in the outfield. the worst corner outfielders in the majors cost their teams about 30 runs per 162 games, which equals .185 runs per game or about .005 runs per plate appearance, assuming 39 plate appearances per game. Supposing that a pitcher moonlighting as an outfielder were twice as bad as the worst full-time outfielder in the majors, this would leave us at a penalty of around .010 runs per plate appearance. Now let’s look at the positive side of attempting this. Left- or right-handed hitters (i.e. non-switch hitters) account for 85% of all plate appearances. In the majority of these (62%) the pitcher has the platoon advantage, according to our 2000-2004 MLB data. Using this strategy we can guarantee that the pitcher has the platoon advantage in 100% of those plate appearances. The difference (38% of these 85%) accounts for 32% of total plate appearances. Assuming that all pitchers and batters in question have average platoon splits, our two-pitcher strategy will lower the opposing hitter’s wOBA by .044 in those 32% of plate appearances. That’s not all. We’re also forcing switch hitters to hit from their less favorite sides, which will reduce the hitter’s wOBA by an average of .012 in the 15% of plate appearances that switch hitters account for. The total effect is an average wOBA drop of .016, which saves the team an average of .014 runs per plate appearance. This is more than the presumed cost of sticking a pitcher in the outfield (0.10 runs).” I should point out that in theory you could have the advantage in 100% of the plate appearances, but as we saw tonight that is not possible. Teams can still pinch hit and the new pitcher must face a batter. So, in this instance the Cubs cost themselves runs by doing this. I figured that as soon as TLR pinch hit for him. You could have kept Soriano in the game let Marshall face the next 2 batters (one of which he’d have the platoon advantage and one in which he would). Same thing happened in the 9th inning. You could however come nearly close to 100% by doing this. Let’s say you managed to get 3 innings facing 12 batters combined and having the platoon advantage in every one of them. By doing this you’ve decreased the offense by a total .168 runs and your defense in LF has gotten worse by .120 runs so the team gains 0.048 runs. That’s just one game. Those are mostly meaningless numbers in one game, but imagine how many runs you could save over the course of a season if you did this. In 10 games you’d save about half a run. That’s about 1 run per 20 games or 8 runs total or nearly 1 additional win. This has undoubtedly been done before, but it’s something I have no seen and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t happened for quite awhile. This was one of Lou’s best decisions as the Cubs manager. It would have been that way even if it had not paid off, but the fact it paid off makes it that much more enjoyable. Lou is a smart manager and I’m not qualified to make comments on what he’s doing. Lou showed me up today. I’ve been bitching about him on and off this year and that will end now. That was just brilliant. I hope Lou does it again. It’s the right way to use your relievers if you don’t want them not having the platoon advantage.