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Should the Royals' 3B coach have sent Gordon home last night on the penultimate play of the game?


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  1. 1. Should the Royals' 3B coach have sent Gordon home in the 9th

    • yes
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    • no
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Well?

 

I was thinking about this last night and while it was happening, I kind of wondered if they shouldn't have tried it.

 

On the one hand, the Giants were fumbling the ball around out there and looked rattled. And the matchup of Bumgartner vs Perez was not in the Royals' favor....there was probably less than a 20% chance of a hit (or error or other outcome that would have gotten the run home).

 

On the other hand, Gordon was clearly gassed when he got to third and if the Giants would have recovered and made a play they would have made 99 times out of a 100 in the 5th inning in June, he would have been out by a considerable margin.

 

I'm just glad it didn't come down to a replay as to whether Posey blocked the plate on the throw home, considering how ridiculously that had been called during the regular season...they might have called him safe on a technicality, and that would have been a travesty (and considering why the rule was implemented—due to a play where Posey was barreled over and injured—the height of irony.)

 

I voted (or will vote) that they should have, hindsight being 20-20.

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A rule is to not make the last out at home. However, the situation was unique. You had Madison on the mound and hits were few. I would have sent him. A perfect throw would have nailed him. A throw cut off or up the third or first base lines 6' off of home plate would have scored him.
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The Brewers - Carlos Gomez, specifically - would have run home without hesitation.

 

And they would have most probably been thrown out by a mile..... :facepalm:

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/send-alex-gordon/

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And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

Extraordinary for sure. It would have been better than how it actually ended - a weak pop-up in foul territory.

 

There are a lot of worse ways to lose the World Series. Balk, error, wild pitch, pickoff......fan interference....

 

How would you like to be the fan who reaches out and interferes with the Giants outfielder, thereby making the Last Out in GAME 7? Steve Bartman would be so proud......:LOL:

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The other side of the story:

 

Yet as Juan Perez chased after Blanco's error and Gordon put his head down and ran, here was Jirschele with several factors to weigh, not the least being with Bumgarner on the mound, even a faint shot at scoring is better than no shot against a pitcher re-defining postseason excellence.

With the Royals, their fans, and millions of amateur third base coaches with the same two-word exhortation on their lips – "Send him!" – he was the one charged with making a sober, pragmatic decision.

And so, as Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford gathered Perez's throw cleanly in shallow left field, and Gordon steamed toward third, Jirschele opted for prudence over aggression.

"If we have a chance to score him and feel it will take a perfect throw to get him, I'll send him," Jirschele said. "I just felt there was no chance."

He put up the stop sign.

 

"He made a good call holding me up," Gordon said. "With a good hitter like Salvy up, we liked our chances. I'm not as fast as (teammate Jarrod) Dyson – that's what I've been saying the whole time – and if I was I probably would've scored."

For the Giants, it was a matter of maintaining focus. Perez bobbled the ball once when he tried picking it up – "If he bobbled it again, I would have sent him," says Jirschele – but made a strong throw to Crawford.

 

For Jirschele, it was all about the catch. Once he saw Crawford gather the ball cleanly, there was only one option.

"To me, he turns and makes a throw within 10 feet of home plate, he's out by 15, 20 feet," Jirschele said. "Even though there's two outs, if he's gonna be out by a mile, I'm not going to give them that last out. We still have a chance."

Even the Royals who thought they saw something that wasn't there had to admit as much.

"That's also a tough way to lose a game," Guthrie said, "getting thrown out at home plate on a triple."

Said Cain of the Giants: "They got to it, and got it in really fast."

So Gordon stayed put, Perez popped out, and the Royals watched a Giants celebration unfold.

At least they didn't make the party start one out too soon.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/10/30/world-series-game-7-royals-giants-alex-gordon/18162497/

 

Selfishly, as a fan and a spectator, I say go for it. As a coach...I would have held him. I'm pretty certain of that.

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Absolutely not. If Gordon had really turned on the juice as he rounded first and was aggressively rounding third, maybe you go for it. But after Crawford cleanly got the ball, I put the chance of Gordon scoring from where he was at about 5%. It would have taken an extremely bad throw or a flat out error by Posey, but both are excellent defensive players. If both do their job, Gordon's out by a mile.

 

Perez had some success against Bumgarner this series (a homer and a hit), and even a passed ball, wild pitch, or broken bat single would've tied the game.

 

If the 3B coach sent him, he would have been killed in the media and by the fans for making such a boneheaded decision.

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeig...nd-alex-gordon/

 

Seeing as there is no way in hell that Gordon had a 30% chance to score, I assume he is arguing that it was right to hold him at third.

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I'm pretty sure the third base coach was not weighing in all the factors while he's making that split second decision. He wasn't telling himself, "Well lets see, Bumgarner's on the mound and he's a beast, although this is the second hit we've got off him, they already bobbled the ball twice in the outfield and the cutoff throw was atrocious so perhaps they'll make another mistake - And Let's see, The humidity level is 68% so that may slow the throw down by 8/10's of a second. Now Posey ran to the mound to celebrate because he thought Blanco was going to catch it, so will he get back in time to set himself up? Now that the blocking the plate rule has changed maybe, just maybe he'll be called for obstruction. Hmmmmmmm so many decisions to make in 1 second. :sarcastic: Edited by alphseeker
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Nope.

 

Crawford, (who has one heck of a throwing arm), had already fielded the relay with the ball in his hand and was turning toward the plate, ready to throw, when Gordon was reaching 3rd.

 

Alex looked totally exhausted by the time he got to 3rd, which surprised me. He's not a base stealer, but he's known for being a smooth baserunner once he gets up to speed. I think the extra-long season had gotten to him by that point.

 

I think Jirschele made the right decision.

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeig...nd-alex-gordon/

 

Seeing as there is no way in hell that Gordon had a 30% chance to score, I assume he is arguing that it was right to hold him at third.

His point is the opposite.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

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Nope.

 

Crawford, (who has one heck of a throwing arm), had already fielded the relay with the ball in his hand and was turning toward the plate, ready to throw, when Gordon was reaching 3rd.

 

Alex looked totally exhausted by the time he got to 3rd, which surprised me. He's not a base stealer, but he's known for being a smooth baserunner once he gets up to speed. I think the extra-long season had gotten to him by that point.

 

I think Jirschele made the right decision.

He made the correct decision, and they lost. Which could mean it was the wrong decision.
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Nope.

 

Crawford, (who has one heck of a throwing arm), had already fielded the relay with the ball in his hand and was turning toward the plate, ready to throw, when Gordon was reaching 3rd.

 

Alex looked totally exhausted by the time he got to 3rd, which surprised me. He's not a base stealer, but he's known for being a smooth baserunner once he gets up to speed. I think the extra-long season had gotten to him by that point.

 

I think Jirschele made the right decision.

He made the correct decision, and they lost. Which could mean it was the wrong decision.

 

Its easy to second guess a decision after the fact,

 

The Royals were lucky it even came down to this play.

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Nope.

 

Crawford, (who has one heck of a throwing arm), had already fielded the relay with the ball in his hand and was turning toward the plate, ready to throw, when Gordon was reaching 3rd.

 

Alex looked totally exhausted by the time he got to 3rd, which surprised me. He's not a base stealer, but he's known for being a smooth baserunner once he gets up to speed. I think the extra-long season had gotten to him by that point.

 

I think Jirschele made the right decision.

He made the correct decision, and they lost. Which could mean it was the wrong decision.

 

Its easy to second guess a decision after the fact,

 

The Royals were lucky it even came down to this play.

 

You can do everything right and still lose.

You can do almost everything wrong and still win.

 

That is the brilliance of sports. Anything can happen....and it usually does happen.

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeig...nd-alex-gordon/

 

Seeing as there is no way in hell that Gordon had a 30% chance to score, I assume he is arguing that it was right to hold him at third.

His point is the opposite.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

You misunderstand me. The author makes the conditional statement that if he had a 30% chance, he should have gone. My point is that since that condition wasnt close to being met, he must be arguing that he shouldn't have gone home.

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeig...nd-alex-gordon/

 

Seeing as there is no way in hell that Gordon had a 30% chance to score, I assume he is arguing that it was right to hold him at third.

His point is the opposite.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

You misunderstand me. The author makes the conditional statement that if he had a 30% chance, he should have gone. My point is that since that condition wasnt close to being met, he must be arguing that he shouldn't have gone home.

 

I'm glad I didn't post the headline. It was (presumably not written by Silver) "Send Alex Gordon". But Silver didn't take a position on how likely it was that he would score, just that the odds of him making it could be less than 50 percent (and in fact anything greater than the assessment of the probability of the alternative would be) and it still would have been a good move, given the position that the Royals were in. This seems obvious to me, but I guess not.

 

This reminds me of a NE-Ind game a few years ago when the Colts had Manning. Toward the end of the game the NE defense was sucking wind, and Belichick had a 4th and 1 at about his own 29. Belichick went for it and was excoriated for doing so, but it was absolutely the right move. The Pats could have run out the clock with a first down and their odds of making it were greater than 50%, whereas the difference in the chance that Manning could have led the Colts to a TD from 70 yards vs 30 yards was nowhere near that.

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Nate Silver weighs in, using probabilities of course, making a similar argument to mine, but getting paid for it.

 

It would have been close. Alex Gordon might have scored, particularly if he’d been in the mindset to do so all along. Or maybe not. I’m sure there will be Zapruder-film-type breakdowns, and I’ll look forward to seeing them. It would have been one hell of a moment: Gordon, 220 pounds, who looks like he could have been a strong safety at the University of Nebraska, bearing down on Buster Posey, the catcher whose season-ending injury in 2011 helped inspire baseball’s home-plate collisions rule.

 

 

Game 7 will leave us with that sense of what might have been. Partly because it involved the Kansas City Royals, who were making their first World Series appearance since 1985. But mostly I’m referring to that penultimate play: When Gordon hit what was officially scored as a single and wound up on third base because of defensive miscues by San Francisco Giants outfielders Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez. It seemed to take an eternity — it was actually just 13 seconds — but I was surprised that Gordon wasn’t rounding third base by the time the TV cameras returned to the infield.

 

Here’s what I know: Gordon should have tried to score even if he was a heavy underdog to make it. It would have been the right move if he was safe even 30 percent of the time.

 

Between 1969 and 1992 — I’m using this period because it better approximates baseball’s current run-scoring environment than the offensive bubble of the 1990s and aughts — a runner scored from third base with two outs about 27 percent of the time, according to the tables at Tangotiger.com. We should probably round that down a bit in this example. The Royals had Salvador Perez at the plate — a league-average hitter — and the light-hitting Mike Moustakas due up after that.

 

More importantly, they were facing Madison Bumgarner. That Bumgarner had been so dominant in the World Series is not as relevant as you might think. There’s extremely little evidence for a “hot hand” in pitching: In-game performance tells you next to nothing about how the pitcher will fare in future at-bats. Instead, you should look toward longer-term averages. Still, I feel comfortable asserting that Bumgarner was an above-average pitcher at that moment: Certainly not the first guy you’d want to have on the mound if you were the opponent. So let’s round that 27 percent down to 25 percent.

 

So, Gordon should have tried to score if he had even a 25 percent chance of being safe?

 

It’s just a touch more complicated than that. With the Royals down 3-2, Gordon represented the tying run rather than the winning run. If he’s thrown out at home, the game’s over; it forecloses on the possibility of Perez scoring as the winning run, like with a walk-off homer. What was the probability of that? Perez homered in about 3 percent of his plate appearances this season, but he could also have scored in other ways — by doubling, for example, and then scoring on a base hit by Moustakas. We can turn to Tangotiger’s tables again, which suggest that a league-average batter has about a 6 percent chance (I’m rounding down slightly) of eventually scoring from home with two outs.

 

So, after Gordon holds at third, he has a 25 percent chance of scoring. Six percent of the time, Perez (or pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson?) also scores, and the Royals win outright. The other 19 percent of the time, Gordon is the only Royal to score in the ninth and the game goes to extra innings. If we assume the Royals are even money to prevail in an extra-inning game, their chances of winning at that point are:

 

6% + (19% * 50%)

 

That works out to 15.5 percent. Not coincidentally, this matches FanGraphs’ in-game win probability for the Royals (after Gordon held at third) almost exactly.

 

What if Gordon rounds third and tries to score? If he’s successful even 30 percent of the time, the Royals’ win probability is at least 15 percent — a 30 percent chance of Gordon scoring, multiplied by a 50 percent chance of the Royals winning in extra innings. But it’s slightly higher than that. The 30 percent of the time that Gordon scores, Perez still has his 6 percent chance of scoring the winning run in the ninth. That brings the Royals’ overall win probability up to about 16 percent.

 

We’re splitting hairs. The point is that if even Gordon had been a 2-to-1 underdog to score, he should have tried.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

It would have made for one of the best plays in baseball history. We’re talking about the tying run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series: Even a sacrifice fly can be thrilling under those circumstances. But this would have been in a league with Bill Mazeroski and Kirk Gibson and Bill Buckner: under serious consideration for the greatest play of all-time. (The play already had a little Buckner in it, with Blanco’s and Perez’s misplays in the outfield.)

 

Unlike any of those moments, it would have involved an incredibly gutsy decision. It’s an extraordinary play if Gordon scores. It’s an extraordinary play if there’s a collision at home plate — and baseball needs to decide whether to invoke the “Buster Posey Rule.”

 

And if Gordon were thrown out, it would have been the most extraordinary way to lose a game in the history of baseball.

 

http://fivethirtyeig...nd-alex-gordon/

 

Seeing as there is no way in hell that Gordon had a 30% chance to score, I assume he is arguing that it was right to hold him at third.

His point is the opposite.

 

These decisions can be counterintuitive. Sometimes a strategy that’s successful less than 50 percent of the time — like splitting eights in blackjack — is still the right move because the alternative is even worse. In this case, the alternative involved trying to score against Bumgarner with your catcher at the plate and two outs, and then having to prevail in extra innings.

 

You misunderstand me. The author makes the conditional statement that if he had a 30% chance, he should have gone. My point is that since that condition wasnt close to being met, he must be arguing that he shouldn't have gone home.

 

I'm glad I didn't post the headline. It was (presumably not written by Silver) "Send Alex Gordon". But Silver didn't take a position on how likely it was that he would score, just that the odds of him making it could be less than 50 percent (and in fact anything greater than the assessment of the probability of the alternative would be) and it still would have been a good move, given the position that the Royals were in. This seems obvious to me, but I guess not.

 

This reminds me of a NE-Ind game a few years ago when the Colts had Manning. Toward the end of the game the NE defense was sucking wind, and Belichick had a 4th and 1 at about his own 29. Belichick went for it and was excoriated for doing so, but it was absolutely the right move. The Pats could have run out the clock with a first down and their odds of making it were greater than 50%, whereas the difference in the chance that Manning could have led the Colts to a TD from 70 yards vs 30 yards was nowhere near that.

 

I'm not sure why I'm being misunderstood here. It is extremely obvious to me that even if the probability of scoring were less than 50%, it could still be the right move. It is just as obvious that the chances could be 30% and it still would have been right to send him. What seems similarly obvious to me is that his chance of scoring if he had been waved on was nowhere near 30%.

 

Because Silver rests his case on sending Gordon home on the 30% number, and because there's not a chance in hell that the probability of success was even close to that level, I made a joke that Silver must be arguing that he shouldn't have been waved home. His whole argument rests on an assumption which is absurd on its face.

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