Man I’d probably do my best to not check the scoreboard if I was at a musical event like that.

Gimme Gimme some lovin’!!!

yeah, to be fair, he didn’t really pitch badly, other than the pitch Feliz hit for the single which was nowhere near where it was supposed to be.

doesn’t make using him there a good decision though. Jerry does not understand the concept of leverage.

I was not privy to said circumstances tonight, but generally speaking, you are among friends here, lol.

You were cursing an awful lot; maybe pump the brakes a bit on that. Making a lot of noise will get you noticed, but usually not in a good way.

many of us here are pretty quick to jump on folks who pull the “I can’t believe I root for this team” line. I got most of what you were saying in the gamethread but a lot of it seemed to be a bit over the top. Tough loss, I know it but, like I say a whole lot, shit happens. Things could be so much worse right now. Definitely don’t let some of the reactions you got tonight from myself and others keep you away from here and offering good commentary on the Mets.

Either way works for me, but Jerry seems to think that Wright is undisciplined enough that he would change his approach if put in the “cleanup” spot.

High OBP, steals, fewer homeruns.

The problem is, him and Beltran are also the only ones capable of driving in runs, too.

I wouldn’t say putting in Green was the necessarily better move but, in that situation, you want to keep the ball in the infield or get a strikeout. In fact, Green did well enough, except for the defense around him, and it was Parnell who gave up the go-ahead homerun the next inning.

I never would have guessed without looking but Green has 7.7 K/9 this season, which is actually better than Parnell’s 7.5.

Okay, here goes.

I think I agree with Eric, but I also think that of all the tough bullpen decisions blunders of late, this one is the trickiest.

First things first, the most important point here: this was a situation that demanded Frankie. Bases loaded, three run lead, seventh inning, no outs. That’s about as high leverage a situation as you’ll find before the 8th inning. Forgetting quality of opposition, strictly in terms of game situation, it may in fact be the highest possible leverage you’ll find before the 8th inning, and if not, its right up there in the top few possible situations. The WPA permutations* are so extreme here. There’s so much potential leverage to be salvaged and so much potential leverage to be relinquished. Even with the inverse correlation between outs remaining and leverage, its fairly unlikely you’ll have another pitching situation of such high leverage later on, especially if you can limit the damage. Any single PA can have such a variety of impacts, and you have to get through three of them. But if you manage it, and especially if you manage to protect a multiple run lead, you still have a reasonable chance of keeping the final innings relatively pressure free. If you’re saving your best reliever here, what do you gain? If a lesser reliever succeeds and keeps the Phils at least two runs back, then you have Frankie, but don’t particularly need him. If the lesser reliever fails, and you wind up with a one run lead, in a tie, or even behind, now you’ve missed an opportunity to try and avoid a more volatile 8th/9th inning situation by spending Frankie in the seventh.

Contrast this with a game that’s 4-3 in the seventh with bases loaded and no outs. In this situation, you’ve already conceded a WPA edge by loading the bases with no outs. The damage is done, best case scenario is more high leverage pitching in the 8th and 9th in a tie game. I’d feel more comfortable trying to get a little creative with matchups in this scenario. The gamble of saving your better relievers here has a much higher payoff. You have zero chance of protecting a multiple run lead, not having one to begin with, and little chance of protecting a lead at all. Taking a risk in one of your lesser arms yields a significantly larger advantage in the following innings if it somehow works out. And even if you spend Frankie or Parnell here and they limit the damage, now best case, you’re in a tie game with one of you’re two best relievers spent and heading to the 8th inning. Far from an ideal situation in itself.

I certainly agree with you, Sam, that the gap between Parnell and Green, especially given the opposition in this situation, is smaller than we might think. In the hypothetical situation above, I actually think for this reason, Green would be preferable to Parnell. But what happened today is a unique situation where I believe any kind of marginal advantage is worth exploiting. If it was more about managing multiple innings that were all expected to be high leverage, I’d say Green was a more reasonable option. But that wasn’t really the case here. The best case scenario was much more positive and not necessarily very high leverage. The worst case scenario, a much higher negative WPA shift.

The problem with all this discussion is that if he heard it, Jerry would just awkwardly chuckle to cover up his complete and utter bafflement. He’s like, 10 levels shallower than this in terms of tactical thought process. And as I said, of all the little tricky bullpen situations we’ve discussed lately, this one is really the most difficult. I believe Jerry is something much closer to the following thought process:

1. J.J. Putz was a closer
2. We must not to offend J.J.‘s delicate sensibilities adrenaline glands
3. J.J. shall never work an inning before the 8th.
4. Oh no! J.J.’s hurt crappy hurt
5. Parnell is next on the pecking order.
6. Parnell shall never work an inning before the 8th.
7. What was #1 again?
8. Nevermind

At this point, its kind of hard to tell if Jerry is just peculiarly inconsistent or so transparent that birds are starting to crash into him.

*Related tangent: Has anyone ever developed a WPA situation calculator, sort of in the model of a poker odds calculator? Something user friendly, where you could plug in various game situations and generate the WPA outcomes. You can even just assume that all players are league average and it’d be a really interesting tool. It seems like a fairly large undertaking, but the degree of permutations might not be much higher than a poker calculator that can handle as few as two and as many as nine hands. You’d need to program for nine innings, four bases, and score situations. Most of the actual calculations are already done, its just a matter of collecting them. You could probably even tack on league average platoon splits just for fun.

If such a thing has never been developed, I would love to find people willing to help work on such a thing. I’m admittedly no kompooter master, but I’m comfortable enough with learning what I need to, especially if I have something this interesting to motivate me. A tool like this could prove to be quite insightful, and if not, it’d still be fun to play with.

He was really, really, really…really safe.

but that’s not the point, because if he was trying to get the out at first he still would’ve approached the ball the same way.

That’s repetitive. It’s like saying flawless-perfect.

the play that Pelfrey scored on – I think it was Castillo, he was definitely out at first.

are deceptive at best. The track record indicates the difference is less significant. Stokes and Green are two guys who have gotten a lot of attention around these parts for completely opposite reasons. Its almost to the point where, at least individually, I almost ignore them both. I don’t think either one has accurately revealed their talent level in their tenure as a Met quite yet.

Flaw in the system

But I agree with you in principle, in that if I were given the choice between one or the other, in most situations I’d choose Stokes. But obviously, this is not Jerry’s plan. So if we’re going to go this far in talking about the correct move, might as well go all the way and just say Frankie or at the very least Parnell should have been used. In this situation, Green might have actually been a better choice. You don’t just need outs, you need strikeouts or groundballs, and Green has been better at both of those.