Irrelevant

Intangibles

Tuesday’s game was another entry for Ryan Cohen’s ever growing list. There was a very obvious play of the game in the bottom of the eighth inning. But there was a sliding doors event the half-inning before that allowed that moment to be what it was. And its magnificence is missed in the box score.

Sliding Doors

Tanner Scott was brought in to pitch the top of the eighth with the game tied 3-3. He had a rare rough outing, loading the bases on three singles. With the lefty Scott on the mound the Twins would pinch hit for left handed Matt Wallner with the right handed Christian Vazquez. What happened next was remarkable:

Tony Gwynn Jr’s “Oh!” exclamation as the ball arrives to third base was everyone watching the play’s reaction. When Profar runs down Vazquez’ hit he’s aware both that he won’t have a play at the plate, and that the runner from first will automatically try to take third on a play where the expectation is a throw to home. The typical left fielder will field this ball, slow his momentum, and plant his feet for a throw to the infield. And Profar understands that doing so would extinguish the possibility of making the play he had in mind. So he didn’t make the throw a left fielder would make. He made the throw a shortstop would make. Immediate. Off balance. Across his body. You can see on the outfield replay angle how extraordinary this throw is:

This was the confluence of instincts, experience, and athleticism. Baseball IQ. Almost impossible to quantify. Intangible. Tanner Scott would retire Willi Castro on the very next pitch for out number three. And just like that the rally was over. The Twins big inning didn’t happen.

Quantification

Profar’s play in left field will be in the box score as an outfield assist. That’s a positive stat. But it’s also ordinary, and that play was not ordinary. That play very likely killed a rally that otherwise wasn’t over. You can try to quantify the contribution of the play; it moved the base/out state from second and third and one out, a state with a run expectancy of 1.40 runs and a 67.96% chance of scoring at least one more run, to a base/out state of runner on second and two outs, a run expectancy of 0.33 runs and only a 22.63% chance of scoring at least one more run. That’s part of it. It saved at least one expected run. But it’s not the whole picture. Because part of the difficulty of making that play is having the awareness that an opportunity is there, and the audacity to try for it. Most left fielders wouldn’t have seen the opportunity let alone been able to execute. Because it wasn’t a left fielder’s play.

Jurickson Profar is a shortstop. He has been playing in the outfield for years now. But his formative years as a baseball player and indeed those years in which he broke into the big leagues as the number one prospect in baseball came as a shortstop. And the athleticism and instincts of a shortstop remain. What seems to be on display here is that there are emergent properties to having an outfield made up of shortstops. There are certain plays they can make. Atypical plays to be sure. Of uncertain frequency. But of very clear importance. A lifetime of playing shortstop contributed in some unquantifiable way to Profar actualizing that play.

Situational Awareness

In the bottom of the eighth with the Padres now trailing 5-3 Donovan Solano and Luis Arraez would lead off with back-to-back singles. This brought Jurickson Profar to the plate as the potential go ahead run, a situation in which he’s provided fireworks over and over again this season. Which is why what he did on the first pitch was so surprising:

He showed bunt. Here’s why he thought to:

The corner infielders were playing him very deep, aligned to maximize the chance of keeping a hard hit ball on the infield. And there was a much better chance of being able to bunt for a base hit as a result. Profar opted not to bunt (probably a wise decision). But his feint had a big effect on the defensive alignment. Look at the adjustment the corner infielders made before the next pitch:

Both corner infielders moved right up to the infield grass. Moving the corner infielders in made it incrementally more difficult for the Twins to prevent a hit from getting through. Profar didn’t miss that the situation had changed. After showing bunt, manipulating the infield into an alignment more favorable to swinging away, Profar did just that:

The decision to show a bunt is invisible in the box score. It’s just a ball outside. But it had an effect on the game. Profar’s manipulation of the defense into an alignment less capable of keeping a line drive on the infield didn’t end up mattering because the line drive Profar hit ended up over the fence in left. But it could have mattered. By how much is hard to quantify. But Profar saw an opportunity to snatch a sliver of win probability with something he could control and did it. It was intangible, but it was there. Do this enough over the course of a season and you’ll scratch out some extra wins.

Chirping

As the broadcast went on after the home run there was a cut to Profar back in the dugout in a curious moment:

Courtesy: @SamNeher24

It’s hard to say for sure, but it looks like Christian Vazquez was bellyaching over Profar’s home run celebration. You can understand why Vazquez might be on tilt. Profar played the reverse UNO card on Vazquez’ bases loaded single, and it paradoxically killed the Twins rally. That tarnished Vazquez’ moment of glory. A half inning later Profar’s three run bomb erased everything Vazquez’ bases loaded single had accomplished. That’s a bitter pill. Profar does seem to get under opponents skin. It’s hard to know which way that cuts. It’s intangible. But it’s a real effect. It’s part of Profar the player.

Profar’s home run was decisive, the Padres would go on to win 7-5.

Irrelevant

We ascribe winning in baseball to what we can quantify. And we’ve been able to quantify quite a bit. And we optimize around what we can measure. There’s a byproduct of that approach that is not intentional, but is inevitable. We can’t help but discount what we can’t measure. We ascribe little value to the intangible qualities of a player: unique past experience, audacity in big moments, baseball IQ, motivational irascibility, etc. But if we want to make the best decisions with the information available to us we must understand that not every source of value is tangible, quantifiable. It’s a mistake to treat these considerations as irrelevant.