The most exciting 15.7 seconds in years

[DrungoHazewood]

58 minutes ago, makoman said:

Yeah, Rule 9.12(a)(1)  Comment reads, in part

I guess if you want to change the official rules that's fine, but I don't really care. It's fine the way it is IMO.

Errors are a huge hole in how baseball accounts for what happened.  A single is a single, it puts a guy on first.  A strikeout is a strikeout, which is an out 99.9% of the time, and if it's not someone notes that there was a passed ball/WP. 

But an error... it could be four runs.  It could be nothing at all, on a dropped foul pop up.  It could be because of a bad hop.  But there's no error when a player has a terrible lapse in judgment, so failure to call for a routine fly ball is recorded exactly the same as a lined shot up the gap. There's no differentiation (in the official records) of a throwing error vice a fielding error.  I'm guessing the error rate in the late innings of no-hitters is significantly higher than otherwise.  Errors and un/earned runs are pretty close to breaking the accounting of box scores, which should tell us what happened so we can reserve judgment for later. 

[BohKnowsBmore]

28 minutes ago, Yardball85 said:

I think it had a TON to do with Davis being up.  Sure, the shifts and whatnot helped, but if Santander was batting from the left side, and there were shifts, this likely does not happen.

 

That said, I loved the play, especially with the awful Davis up at bat.  Almost worked.

22 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Good point about the shift, but Davis is not the only LHB who faces extreme shifts. The fact that he is hitting under .200 the last two years must have something to do with the calculation. Would be interesting to compare other steals of home in that situation but I don't know of any.

Against a lot of other batters, I think the shift may be less extreme in that situation, though. How often do you see the defense leave a speedy runner completely unattended on third like that?

If you think your odds there are close to 45% or 50% of success (not unreasonable in my mind given how close the play was), then there's almost no batter up who would have favorable odds to score swinging vs. the shot they took. Obviously the worse the batter is, the more it changes the balance of odds (it's tautological at that point), but I don't think it's a Davis-specific decision there in any way.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

It was definitely not a good play! By the current rules/norms regarding error scoring, it was not an Error. Hopefully it got counted as negative dWAR/DRS. 

The popup was an even worse play but was more of a miscommunication than an "error". Still, Segura did call for it and go for it. Again, terrible play, worse than many actual scored Errors, but I guess not an Error as they are defined. 

I don't believe in the justification that says making a physical mistake is an error, but making a mental mistake is a nothing.  The hitter got credit for a hit on a very routine popout, and there's no accounting for that anywhere.  You have to dig through the box score and descriptions to find the odd "single to 3B, pop fly to weak 2B" or you'd assume it was a line drive.

[Aristotelian]

51 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't believe in the justification that says making a physical mistake is an error, but making a mental mistake is a nothing.  The hitter got credit for a hit on a very routine popout, and there's no accounting for that anywhere.  You have to dig through the box score and descriptions to find the odd "single to 3B, pop fly to weak 2B" or you'd assume it was a line drive.

Oh, I totally agree, but they would have to totally change the rule/scoring for Errors. It would be awesome if they flashed "-0.3 Defensive Runs Saved" every time there is a bad play. That popup would have been maybe top 99 percentile of bad plays, both the degree of difficulty and the impact on the game. 

[Aristotelian]

57 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

Against a lot of other batters, I think the shift may be less extreme in that situation, though. How often do you see the defense leave a speedy runner completely unattended on third like that?

If you think your odds there are close to 45% or 50% of success (not unreasonable in my mind given how close the play was), then there's almost no batter up who would have favorable odds to score swinging vs. the shot they took. Obviously the worse the batter is, the more it changes the balance of odds (it's tautological at that point), but I don't think it's a Davis-specific decision there in any way.

Will just have to agree to disagree. It was a close play but still had to be stolen on the catcher/pitcher as well as the defense. I don't think the odds are that high or else we would see it more often. Then again, maybe the O's discovered something and we will see it more.   

[eddie83]

23 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Will just have to agree to disagree. It was a close play but still had to be stolen on the catcher/pitcher as well as the defense. I don't think the odds are that high or else we would see it more often. Then again, maybe the O's discovered something and we will see it more.   

Velazquez reacted to the lob throw by Realmuto. Realmuto even checked the runner before he tossed it back. If the pitcher doesn’t bare hand it he is safe even though it wasn’t a great throw.  

I loved the play.

[Frobby]

4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I figured I'd err on the side of caution.

Unlike the Phillies CF!