Another Positive Indicator for the Orioles Season to Date

[dystopia]

59 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Kimbrel is striking out 14.9 per 9.   Lack of strikeouts hasn’t been an issue for him.  

No but sucking has. 

[RZNJ]

2 minutes ago, dystopia said:

No but sucking has. 

Your screen name is perfect for you.  

[Frobby]

12 minutes ago, dystopia said:

No but sucking has. 

I’m not really going to take issue with this.  He was excellent in his first 11 appearances but pretty lousy in 3 of his last 4, and that’s not consistent enough for a good closer.   But if the issue is, would he have a good chance of stranding a ghost runner on the days when he’s on his game, the answer is he’d nave a better chance than most closers due to his K rate.   

[dystopia]

15 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’m not really going to take issue with this.  He was excellent in his first 11 appearances but pretty lousy in 3 of his last 4, and that’s not consistent enough for a good closer.   But if the issue is, would he have a good chance of stranding a ghost runner on the days when he’s on his game, the answer is he’d nave a better chance than most closers due to his K rate.   

I was very specific with my examples of Miller and Bautista because they are excellent strikeout guys and are super effective. That’s going to be great for your 1-run record.

I would expect Oakland to have a good record in 1-run games this year. 

[Sports Guy]

The Kimbrel bashing is so dumb

[Sports Guy]

Ken brings up a point that can’t be overstated enough…beating up on your opponents is the true measure of how good you are.

Winning 1 run games is great and all but winning 8-0 shows a much more true level of dominance over your peers.

 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Ken brings up a point that can’t be overstated enough…beating up on your opponents is the true measure of how good you are.

Winning 1 run games is great and all but winning 8-0 shows a much more true level of dominance over your peers.

 

Exactly. Even if you have a great bullpen there is always some degree of luck when it comes to winning one run games. If you are consistently beating teams by 5 runs or more that's not luck and it means you have the better team.

[btdart20]

1 hour ago, thegardner said:

Yes, but the ghost runner is a big advantage for the home team.

We play the same amount of road and home games.

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

The one bad assumption people make about 1-run records is that a good late inning bullpen crew should automatically lead to a better record.

Sure, the good bullpen will protect more 1 run leads and give you more 1 run wins that way.

But a worse bullpen may start the 9th with a 2 or 3 run lead and given up a run or two, so you win by 1 run.   So a bad bullpen can also lead to more 1 run wins.  The Orioles bullpen failure Saturday night gave us a 1 run win which improved our record in 1 run games.   If Kimbrel had been lights out, we would have had one LESS 1 run win.

1-run wins aren't just games where you lead by a run and hold on because your bullpen pitches well.   They are also games where you lead by more and your pitching allows the opponent to get to within 1 run.

Similarly, 1 run losses are not all the result of bad bullpen.   Maybe you are a run behind in the 7th, and you lose by 1 run because your good pen doesn't let the opponent add any more, and you don't score.   Whereas a worse bullpen, you might have given up runs in the 8th and 9th lost by > 1 run.   So you get an extra 1-run loss on your record BECAUSE your bullpen is good in that case.

These situations all muddy the water when it comes to 1-run win%.   There is not necessarily a correlation between bullpen strength and 1-run game win% because of all the different ways a game can wind up a 1 run game.   We tend to focus on the single case of "1-run lead in the 9th" where having a good bullpen will obviously make your 1-run record better.   But those games are actually a small % of the cases.

High leverage/low leverage usage plays into that too.  We rarely trot out Baumann in a 1-run 9th.  But we may with a 4-run lead.  It is muddy waters for sure...

[thegardner]

7 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Exactly. Even if you have a great bullpen there is always some degree of luck when it comes to winning one run games. If you are consistently beating teams by 5 runs or more that's not luck and it means you have the better team.

Yes, luck is a factor, but I think, especially in some of the O's late comeback wins earlier in the season, competitive grittiness -  just wanting it more makes a difference.  This team does not quit and does not give up.

[spiritof66]

8 hours ago, dystopia said:

That 3-4 record is largely because of Kimbrel. I’m not a big believer in the 1-run luck theory, especially now that we have the BS ghost runner. 

With apologies for interrupting, sort of, why do you call the automatic runner a "ghost runner"? A ghost is somebody you can't see or touch; you just act as if he's there. Those aren't qualities of the automatic runner. 

Growing up with no organized baseball (other than in school, from fifth grade on), I became very familiar with the term "ghost runner." We usually couldn't get enough kids to have anywhere nine guys on a side, and we'd play with just five on five or six on six, probably even fewer than that, especially if one or two kids had to leave early and we wanted to keep playing. The team in the field would not have enough players for a full defense. One of the ways we dealt with that was to move the (imaginary) foul line so center field was a boundary and a hitter could hit a fair ball only to his choice of LF/CF or CF/RF ("call your field"). Another was to have players from the offense fill out the defense, especially pitching ("pitch to your own man"),  catching ("catch up"), or playing first base (or third base for a lefty batter). It also was prudent to have a guy who wasn't batting stand near the edge of the adjoining dense woods to see where a foul ball or bad throw went since losing a ball that rolled into the woods often meant ending the game or using a battered backup. On another field where I sometimes played there was no backstop and a kid from the team that was batting stood behind the catcher ("backer upper") to prevent the ball from getting away and possibly rolling down a hill and into a creek.

If a baserunner had to leave his base to do something else that kept the game going, we pretended that he was still on that base, and he was deemed to advance along with the runner behind him. We called that runner an "imaginary man" or "imaginary runner" or "ghost runner" or "pretend man," as in "basis loaded with a ghost runner on third, two outs." Those names made perfect sense since we couldn't see or touch the runner (or hear or smell or taste him, for that matter). The kids in an adjoining neighborhood where I sometimes played similarly short-handed games used those names. My cousins who lived a thousand miles or so away used seemed to use "ghost runner" exclusively in those situations, as I recall. I can't figure out how that term became applied to the automatic runner instituted by MLB, but it doesn't make any sense to me. 

[spiritof66]

8 hours ago, dystopia said:

That 3-4 record is largely because of Kimbrel. I’m not a big believer in the 1-run luck theory, especially now that we have the BS ghost runner. 

With apologies for interrupting, sort of, why do you call the automatic runner a "ghost runner"? A ghost is somebody you can't see or touch; you just act as if he's there. Those aren't qualities of the automatic runner. 

Growing up with no organized baseball (other than in school, from fifth grade on), I became very familiar with the term "ghost runner." We usually couldn't get enough kids to have anywhere nine guys on a side, and we'd play with just five on five or six on six, probably even fewer than that, especially if one or two kids had to leave early and we wanted to keep playing. The team in the field would not have enough players for a full defense. One of the ways we dealt with that was to move the (imaginary) foul line so center field was a boundary and a hitter could hit a fair ball only to his choice of LF/CF or CF/RF ("call your field"). Another was to have players from the offense fill out the defense, especially pitching ("pitch to your own man"),  catching ("catch up"), or playing first base (or third base for a lefty batter). It also was prudent to have a guy who wasn't batting stand near the edge of the adjoining dense woods to see where a foul ball or bad throw went since losing a ball that rolled into the woods often meant ending the game or using a battered backup. On another field where I sometimes played there was no backstop and a kid from the team that was batting stood behind the catcher ("backer upper") to prevent the ball from getting away and possibly rolling down a hill and into a creek.

If a baserunner had to leave his base to do something else that kept the game going, we pretended that he was still on that base, and he was deemed to advance along with the runner behind him. We called that runner an "imaginary man" or "imaginary runner" or "ghost runner" or "pretend man," as in "basis loaded with a ghost runner on third, two outs." Those names made perfect sense since we couldn't see or touch the runner (or hear or smell or taste him, for that matter). The kids in an adjoining neighborhood where I sometimes played similarly short-handed games used those names. My cousins who lived a thousand miles or so away used seemed to use "ghost runner" exclusively in those situations, as I recall. I can't figure out how that term became applied to the automatic runner instituted by MLB, but it doesn't make any sense to me. 

[dystopia]

1 hour ago, spiritof66 said:

With apologies for interrupting, sort of, why do you call the automatic runner a "ghost runner"? A ghost is somebody you can't see or touch; you just act as if he's there. Those aren't qualities of the automatic runner. 

 

It just seems to be the popular term for it. I didn't make it up.

[Morgan423]

6 hours ago, thegardner said:

Yes, but the ghost runner is a big advantage for the home team.

Believe it or not, the ghost runner is counter-intuitively more beneficial for the away team.

Prior to the rule-flip, win expectancy percentage-wise, the home team benefited from a slightly weighted coin flip, about 52-48.  Under the ghost runner, it's been close to the same 52-48 weighted coin flip, but it has favored the away team instead. 

[Frobby]

27 minutes ago, dystopia said:

It just seems to be the popular term for it. I didn't make it up.

I nave heard the term “zombie runner” used occasionally.  That probably makes more sense, since the runner on 2B is the batter who “died” the previous inning.  

[Morgan423]

1 hour ago, spiritof66 said:

I can't figure out how that term became applied to the automatic runner instituted by MLB, but it doesn't make any sense to me. 

Probably because he didn't get there through a normal at bat.  He just materialized on second, like an apparition appearing in the light of the full moon, in a haunted cemetery.

Or he walked over from the dugout.  Whichever.