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That’s a Nicky Two Strikes Winner!!


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Not a fan of TLR but the guy has earned the right to exercise his perogative in the moment. He's seen this movie many times, weighs what the analytics say and has a feel for each player and how best to use him in a given situation. If he didn't feel having Grandal bunt him over was the best move, he obviously wouldn't tell him to. Its not like he wasn't aware or didn't calculate the various scenarios. He processed the situation in real time based on his many years of experience. Sometimes, it goes against the book.

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4 minutes ago, Flash said:

Not a fan of TLR but the guy has earned the right to exercise his perogative in the moment. He's seen this movie many times, weighs what the analytics say and has a feel for each player and how best to use him in a given situation. If he didn't feel having Grandal bunt him over was the best move, he obviously wouldn't tell him to. Its not like he wasn't aware or didn't calculate the various scenarios. He processed the situation in real time based on his many years of experience. Sometimes, it goes against the book.

We have no idea that he’s running scenarios and playing the odds.  He easily could be going by gut.  Either way, it’s fair to question the decision.

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2 minutes ago, Flash said:

Not a fan of TLR but the guy has earned the right to exercise his perogative in the moment. He's seen this movie many times, weighs what the analytics say and has a feel for each player and how best to use him in a given situation. If he didn't feel having Grandal bunt him over was the best move, he obviously wouldn't tell him to. Its not like he wasn't aware or didn't calculate the various scenarios. He processed the situation in real time based on his many years of experience. Sometimes, it goes against the book.

It’s weird how fans have the gall to think they know baseball at a higher level than ANYBODY actually in the sport.  
 

What, because you read fangraphs?  Did you go to bref and look at splits?  Lol

 

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1 minute ago, Jerksticks said:

It’s weird how fans have the gall to think they know baseball at a higher level than ANYBODY actually in the sport.  
 

What, because you read fangraphs?  Did you go to bref and look at splits?  Lol

 

It’s also weird how certain fans think these guys get it right all the time simply because they are in baseball.  I’m really starting to think you’re a Jerry Reinsdorf burner account. 

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9 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

We have no idea that he’s running scenarios and playing the odds.  He easily could be going by gut.  Either way, it’s fair to question the decision.

It's always fair to question a decision. I don't think its fair to say it was absolutely the wrong decision and there is no question it was the wrong decision as some are saying.

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9 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

We have no idea that he’s running scenarios and playing the odds.  He easily could be going by gut.  Either way, it’s fair to question the decision.

Of course he's going by his gut. Like all managers, his gut instincts are informed by experience which include years of processing scenarios and having a feel for his players. I disagree its fair to question his decision. Thats what JR is paying him for. 

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5 minutes ago, ptatc said:

It's always fair to question a decision. I don't think its fair to say it was absolutely the wrong decision and there is no question it was the wrong decision as some are saying.

That’s fair and obviously there contextual factors we don’t always have access to as fans.  I just personally think it was a poor decision for the reasons I outlined earlier, but not one I’d say is 100% black & white.

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1 minute ago, Flash said:

Of course he's going by his gut. Like all managers, his gut instincts are informed by experience which include years of processing scenarios and having a feel for his players. I disagree its fair to question his decision. Thats what JR is paying him for. 

I think it’s more than fair to question whether a manager who has been out of the game 10 years and has managed this team for 20 games total has his instincts up to snuff.  His usage of Leury Garcia is evidence he hasn’t figured this roster entirely out yet.

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1 hour ago, Vulture said:

Grandal’s bunting technique looked perfect though. Maybe instead of looking at a stat TLR looked at the apparent fact Grandal has the ability to bunt

Exactly what I was thinking.  Tony watched Grandal bunt during spring training and knew that he could, two sac bunts for his career be damned.  A few of our bunting bozos could take a lesson from Yas.

More importantly, this thread has degenerated into The Big Bunting Argument Revisited, which is why I love White Sox fans in general and you guys in particular.  

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3 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I think it’s more than fair to question whether a manager who has been out of the game 10 years and has managed this team for 20 games total has his instincts up to snuff.  His usage of Leury Garcia is evidence he hasn’t figured this roster entirely out yet.

You make a good case for not hiring him to begin with. 

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12 hours ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

Grandal xwOBA is the highest of his entire career. Having bad luck with your batted balls is hard for some fans to understand and accept

If this is supposed to make me think that a .130 hitter is good, it isn't working.  So call me a Neanderthal. 😁

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7 minutes ago, Stinky Stanky said:

Exactly what I was thinking.  Tony watched Grandal bunt during spring training and knew that he could, two sac bunts for his career be damned.  A few of our bunting bozos could take a lesson from Yas.

More importantly, this thread has degenerated into The Big Bunting Argument Revisited, which is why I love White Sox fans in general and you guys in particular.  

I am not against bunting in every situation,  but that one, yes. Worst case scenario,  Yas rolls into a DP, and Yermin gets to hit. And they will pitch to him then because Hamilton is next and they don't want him making the last out and starting the bottom of the 10th on second base.

If you want to give Tony credit, let it be for inserting Hamilton defensively an inning or 2 before just about every other manager would have. It probably saved the Sox a run.

 

Edited by Dick Allen
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33 minutes ago, Stinky Stanky said:

If this is supposed to make me think that a .130 hitter is good, it isn't working.  So call me a Neanderthal. 😁

And thats a fair point, and at the end of the day actual production is the only way you score runs, but I think its fair to acknowledge hes had quite a bit of bad batted ball luck.

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Sometimes when I’m trying to decide what the best decision is, I think about what the other team is hoping we would do. I think Texas would rather have Grandal bunt than have Robert attempt a steal. And I’m saying that as somebody who doesn’t hate the decision to bunt. 

It’s like when you’re watching a football game and the opposing team has 4th and inches at their own 40 yard line. You’re probably thinking “Please punt.”  That tells you right there that they are probably better off going for it.

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9 minutes ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

And thats a fair point, and at the end of the day actual production is the only way you score runs, but I think its fair to acknowledge hes had quite a bit of bad batted ball luck.

A big part of his "bad luck" is that he's hitting into half of a baseball diamond covered by four infielders.  I'm not being sarcastic here, but I don't know if the advanced stats consider that.  OK, I am a Neanderthal. 😄

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9 minutes ago, Stinky Stanky said:

A big part of his "bad luck" is that he's hitting into half of a baseball diamond covered by four infielders.  I'm not being sarcastic here, but I don't know if the advanced stats consider that.  OK, I am a Neanderthal. 😄

Yes, the shift effects him but they've shifted on grandal for a while now. Thats not new to this year. His xwOBA is higher than all the years in the past where his actual production was much better.

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On 4/25/2021 at 9:12 AM, SoxBlanco said:

We need @gusguyman to run his simulations. 

 

On 4/25/2021 at 9:23 AM, Chicago White Sox said:

Yeah, would love to see that

 I didn't have time to look into it over the weekend but I  was still curious so I got around to it this morning.

TLDR: Yasmani bunting is a bit worse than Yasmani swinging away, but both are WAY worse than having Robert try to steal second base.

So comparing the three scenarios depends a lot on what Robert's chance's of successfully stealing second are. Here is a plot of the Sox' chance of winning in the 9th versus the chance of Robert stealing second base. 

76iEqPy.png

 

We can see that Yasmani sac bunting dropped the Sox chance of winning in the 9th from 42.6% to 37.6%. If Robert succesfully steals second, the Sox won in the 9th 63.4% of times. If he got caught stealing second, they won in the 9th 17.1% of times. Robert currently has a career stolen base success rate of 86.6%. If that is the true chance of success, having Robert attempt to steal second would have given the Sox a 57% chance of winning in the 9th. However, to be better than having Yasmani swing away without Robert stealing, the stolen base success chance only needed to be 55%. And to be better than the actual scenario (Yasmani bunting), Robert only needed a 44% chance to steal 2nd base. The Yasmani bunt win percentage is a bit of an overestimate too, since I had no way to take into account the possibility of the sac bunt failing. 

So we can see that having Yasmani bunt instead of swing was probably not a good decision, but didn't have a huge effect, but not having Robert steal 2nd was almost certainly a terrible decision.

Methodology:

Player performance for this simulation was based on the 2021 updated ZIPS projections on fangraphs, adjusted to reflect career platoon splits using data from the last three years. There isn't enough baserunning data on Robert yet so I ran the simulations with the chances of taking extra bases or advancing on an out set to league averages from 2019 (which is almost certainly a conservative estimate). I ran 100,000 simulations for each scenario.

Reasons these win percentages might be an overestimate:

  • ZIPS is not really buying John King's breakout yet. In particular, his walk rate according to ZIPS is much worse than he has shown so far this year. He may be a better pitcher than ZIPS indicates.
  • ZIPS is still projecting Yas to be about what he has always been, so if you think he is worse than that, the Sox chances of winning would go down a bit, less so for the bunt.
  • Double play chances are set to league average, but Madrigal has high ground ball rates and may be more susceptible than league average to a double play.

Reasons these win percentages might be an underestimate:

  • ZIPS projections for Mercedes and Madrigal are arguably too conservative.
  • John King had thrown a lot of pitches already, and the simulation does not have a model for pitcher fatigue
  • Robert is almost certainly much better than league average at taking extra bases

General sources of innacuracy:

  • No strategy is taken into account (i.e., you could have Robert steal second and THEN sac bunt him to third, or you might have fielders playing in and coming home with it, etc)
  • King, Mercedes, and Madrigal have too small of sample sizes to be very confident in the platoon adjustments.
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