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2019 MLB Thread
- Thread starter Mr. Radpants
- Start date
Hike
güero
Were they all warmed up this time?
Mr. Radpants
Trog Five Standing By
Congrats on winning a game of baseball.
congrats on losing a game of baseball
Mr. Radpants
Trog Five Standing By
I'm not a member of the Washington Nationals, actually.
Mr. Radpants
Trog Five Standing By
Why are you pretending to be on a baseball team?
Mr. Radpants
Trog Five Standing By
wolfmad
Rutgers Mike
Dr. Sad
Opening Day in Trenton babbies.
NML
Well-Known Member
This is a terrible take. If they are shifting with every batter, why don’t they get credit for the 24 or 27 outs it does get?
Schauwn
Well-Known Member
who tf should be mad at either one of those situations? dumb baseball "purists"
NML
Well-Known Member
Brian Dozier is the one getting upset and simultaneously breaking the “unwritten” rules. He’s a tool
Rutgers Mike
Dr. Sad
Fantasy points babby
goblue96
Disney and Curling Expert
He gives shitty answers when reporters call him out on his analytics.
https://deadspin.com/what-did-gabe-kapler-fuck-up-this-time-1825010802
when he speaks, he sounds like the really young kid in an office that gets promoted way over his head because he knows someone or has this great grand idea that ownership has bought into.
Now we're at the part where all of his co-workers and onlookers realize he has no fucking idea what hes doing and he just throws out big/corporate words to try and sound smart.
NML
Well-Known Member
Kapler can be a shitty manager (and weird dude) and it have nothing to do with shifting. It’s a bad take to say shifting cost them the game or whatever the earlier article said since they are ALWAYS shifting - literally every run allowed that isn’t a home run will be “because” of shifting.
Yankee151
Hot Girl Summer
But baseball isn't a game where you just turn a slider on that says "shift" and you keep it on all game. Amed Rosario I believe is a 60 power prospect. Sure, there's a very small sample size on his MLB stats, but you're really going to shift your outfield shallow against a guy who can hit it over the outfielder's head? It's not a condemnation of the shift in general, but shifting in that manner lost them the game.
NML thinking this is OOTP. Theres a part of being a manager where you actually have to manage and make decisions on a batter by batter basis. Kapler sucks at it and its cost his team multiple games already
NML
Well-Known Member
No, that’s terrible logic.
If a basketball team is down one with no time on the clock, and a player who has gone 15 for 15 on the line misses two free throws, did they lose because this player is a bad free throw shooter?
an acceptable take is that Kapler shouldn’t have shifted the way he did for this at bat. But saying “shifting burned them” is wrong because it doesn’t account for all the other times it worked.
goblue96
Disney and Curling Expert
Two hard hit balls in the 6th inning (one for an out...one for a single) earns Nick Pivetta the hook after 5 2/3 and less than 100 pitches. Two outs with a runner on first and Phils hold a 3-0 lead...let the pitcher finish the 6th inning? Nope, math says take the starter out.
YAY MATH!
YAY MATH!
NML
Well-Known Member
Except you added the part that makes ur take bad and said it “cost them the game”
Mr. Radpants
Trog Five Standing By
-1 war
Yankee151
Hot Girl Summer
There ya go not sure how to spell it out more than that. Shifting did burn them and did lose them the game because they did it when they should not have. I get your argument that perhaps all 27 of the outs they got were because of shifting, but that can be flipped either way until we argue in circles as it presupposes an argument where outs are only the result of the defender being in the proper place (which is always correct). However, this is not always due to the manager's configurations.
There is a difference between the 'shift' (as a means of describing the defensive alignment irrespective of managerial tinkering, or which is to say, positing the shift as wherever the fielders are at any given time) and 'shifting' (the manager intentionally placing the fielders in a given spot, when factoring in algorithms, statistics, where the ball is expected to be hit, etcetera.)
In definition A, the shift will always be correct on an out, and always incorrect when there's a hit (on any non 3TO play, of course
) A driver following the rules will always avoid hitting another car; Unless the other car runs the red light and t-bones them. It isn't the fault of driver A, since they were following the rules of the road. This is your argument and I agree on principle that whenever the defender is in the right spot and catches an out, the shift/defensive alignment was correct.In definition B, the shift was intentionally decided by the manager given the output using inputs he is aware of. A perfectly intelligent baseball manager (say, an AGI), could calculate everything from wind speed, wind pattern, where the ball is expected to land, the weight of the ball, pitcher, and batter before the first pitch is thrown, each fielder's range, and so on. In a perfect world, the manager can always use these and other factors to calculate the exact place to play his defenders to provide the highest probability of getting an out on a non 3TO play.
The problem with this argument, which seeks to elevate the shift as a perfect means of accomplishing that goal, is that baseball to normal humans is much more quantum rather than deterministic. No human or algorithm out there can divine these factors with perfect accuracy (and never will be, because the pitch location, speed, break alone will always be too varied to judge, without factoring in batter reaction time, swing speed, swing angle, launch velocity given some of these factors, etc.) So while a perfect AGI could (and would) shift the defense perfectly, a human manager can't. Which means a human's ability to shift 'correctly' comes down to an inherent grasp of as many controllable and observable factors that he can observe.
Gabe Kapler missed two of the most obvious that even a human should control. Wind Speed, and The Batter's Power potential. As I said, I'll give him a pass on the latter, since Rosario is just a 60 power potential (for whatever one scout's opinion is worth here), and AAA stats aren't necessarily translatable. He made the wrong decision in where to place his outfielders given the factors he should be able to read. It's very easy to dismiss this because 'the shift is always the higher percentage play', but there is an inherent missing word in that sentence: "The correct shift is always the higher percentage play". Kapler made the wrong shift because he ignored two important factors (that would've changed the algorithm entirely, were he knowledgable enough to consider these as important) and thus lost his team the game. It does not invalidate the shift because the correct shift is always the correct shift.
To end with the car driving again: Driving at 80 MPH will always get you to Seattle from LA faster than it would driving at 40 MPH. But driving to Seattle in the rain with traffic at 80MPH means you're much more likely to crash and die than ever get there. Even a self driving car would know this and correct, because it has a larger understanding of the multitude factors necessary, not just one.
Yankee151
Hot Girl Summer
Saying the shift is always correct is really positing the idea that you should always shift your infield right against lefties and left against righties. In reality, batters and situations are different and require different solutions. Those solutions can (likely, should) come from a statistical inference. The problem is Kapler is using one or two factors and missing two or three others.
If you have a guy batting .150 against LHP and .450 against RHP (let's say with equal PA), you might see he's hitting .300 and hit him leadoff. Half the time that's an amazing idea! The other half (or 20%, whatever the distro of atsouthpaws there is in the majors) you're going to get an 0-5 or 1-5 day from your leadoff more times than not. Stats can be amazing but blinding cherry picking one stat and ignoring the rest will burn you badly at times
If you have a guy batting .150 against LHP and .450 against RHP (let's say with equal PA), you might see he's hitting .300 and hit him leadoff. Half the time that's an amazing idea! The other half (or 20%, whatever the distro of atsouthpaws there is in the majors) you're going to get an 0-5 or 1-5 day from your leadoff more times than not. Stats can be amazing but blinding cherry picking one stat and ignoring the rest will burn you badly at times
