It’s interesting to consider the confluence of factors that led to an unforgettable win in the Bronx Monday night. Amid horrid weather conditions, an equally horrid call from home plate Umpire Adrian Johnson in the 3rd inning rippled through the rest of the game until a flash point in the 8th enraged Mike Shildt who stormed from the dugout letting free a bellicose side we’ve rarely seen from the skipper .
You can trace the 8th inning conflagration to the first at bat of the game when Fernando Tatis Jr got a series of very well executed pitches from Yankees starter Carlos Rodon that culminated in a strikeout on a nearly perfect 3-2 slider that caught the low/outside edge of the zone:
This was a good call on an extremely close pitch.
In the 2nd inning the Yankees would continue to get strike calls on the lower edge of the zone, first to Xander Bogaerts:
Then to Luis Campusano on a pitch that was clearly outside the zone low for a very tough called third strike:
Oscar Gonzalez would receive a first pitch called strike on the lower zone next:
Rodon was getting ahead of hitters by taking advantage of the consistent strike calls on the lower edge, and staying down with location forcing swings in the lower part of the zone. Other than the very low call to Campusano these were all strikes.
Tatis was the recipient of another nearly perfect slider in the 3rd that caught the lower edge of the zone:
Thus far Adrian Johnson had been consistently generous with the lower edge of the strike zone, including calling out Campusano on a pitch well below the lower edge of the zone. And that’s why a pivotal missed call in the 3rd got Mike Shildt’s attention:
That’s a perfect pitch from Nick Pivetta but he was squeezed in the same part of the zone Johnson had been consistently generous to the Yankees all night. And it put a runner on base who should’ve been out. The free pass set up the most predictable outcome possible:
Trent Grisham’s revenge home run put the Yankees up 2-0.
In the 4th Campusano again was the recipient of a strike call on the lower edge:
Then in the 5th Oscar Gonzalez once again watched a strike on the very lower edge:
In the bottom of the 5th Pivetta again got squeezed on a call on the lower edge of the zone:
To this point Johnson had made one egregious call striking out Campusano in the 2nd on a ball, but all of the other pitches above were in the strike zone, yet 100% of these pitches were called strikes for the Yankees, while both of Pivetta’s pitches were called balls. This sounds like the umpire is biased. But there’s probably a simple explanation. Austin Wells is the catcher for the Yankees and is literally in the 100th percentile for pitch framing among MLB catchers:
Wells had stolen one strike outside the zone, and ensured Rodon got called strikes for each of the pitches that had touched the edge of the zone. On the Padres side of things two pitches that caught the edge of the zone were called balls. Here’s the stolen strike again:
You can see Wells’ technique in action. In one blindingly fast motion he crisply receives the pitch while bringing the glove into the strike zone. And here is the pivotal missed strike call to Jorbit Vivas:
Elias Diaz really doesn’t do anything wrong here, it’s a missed call, but you can see by comparison how much slower his motion to receive the pitch and bring the glove up is. Again, this is not bad technique, it’s just not the transcendent technique that Austin Wells was using all night to tip the scales for the Yankees.
In the top of the 6th with the Yankees leading 3-0 Tatis came up for the third time and got a low strike called. It was another perfectly located pitch from Rodon, but at this point the inconsistency in enforcing the lower edge of the zone had become fairly glaring and Mike Shildt was getting heated (watch til end):
The Padres still trailed 3-0 in the 8th inning when, with one out, Tyler Wade battled from a 2-2 count to work a walk. Brandon Lockridge followed, and fought back from an O-2 count to just put the ball in play:
Suddenly, after a very one-sided game in which nothing was going the Padres way, Tatis came up representing the tying run. With the count 1-1 Devin Williams went back to the lower edge of the zone that had been there for the Yankees all night and got another call:
Johnson immediately turned and shouted at an irate Shildt after the strike call, jawing for several seconds mid at-bat. Williams did the natural thing and followed up with a changeup that looked to be headed to the same location, but dropped a couple inches lower and Tatis swung over the top. Before returning to the dugout Tatis stopped to whisper something to Adrian Johnson, and as he turned and walked away Johnson tossed him from the game. This was the final straw for Shildt:
Much of the commentary after the game included statements that Shildt and Tatis should not have been jawing with the umpire because the pitch did in fact catch the edge of the zone. That misses the entire point. They were upset because of the consistently inconsistent enforcement of the lower edge of the strike zone, which had been entirely one-sided to this point. Again, Johnson may not have been biased, he may have been influenced by Wells’ framing all night1. But irrespective of the reason, if you’ve ever tried to have an approach at the plate when you’re unsure of where the umpire will call strikes, you know how difficult hitting becomes. The same thing goes on the pitching side. The protest was about the consistency, not whether the pitches to Tatis had been in the zone. And Shildt became livid when Tatis was thrown from the game while walking back to the dugout after saying something to Johnson privately without showing him up.
There’s an art to the manager meltdown. It’s often as political as it is emotional. And there can be no question at all that Shildt’s invective had an effect.
Luis Arraez was up next and worked a walk. Arraez is a delightful personality not prone combative outbursts. But perhaps he’s a little cheeky when it suits the team:
That really looked like he was asking for confirmation that a pitch way off the plate was going to in fact be called a ball.
This loaded the bases with 2 outs for Manny Machado. The Yankees brought in Luke Weaver who had not allowed a run to score all season. With the count 1-1 Weaver challenged Machado with a four-seamer on the inner half:
That hit had an exit velocity of 114.8 MPH, the hardest Machado has hit a ball this season. His bat speed reached 83.7 MPH, faster than any swing Aaron Judge took all night. Machado has found a little more juice in high drama moments in the past.
The double plated two runs but the Padres still trailed 3-2 with runners on second and third for Xander Bogaerts. This was a quintessential ‘situational baseball’ at bat. One in which huge swings in win probability would occur no matter the outcome. Although the Padres were the team with the momentum, the fact that it was very late in the game and the Yankees were still ahead by one meant the Padres were serious underdogs.
Visiting teams trailing by one run with two outs in the 8th and runners on 2nd and 3rd have historically only gone on to win the game only 26.1% of the time. If the hitter in this situation strikes out (gets REK’d) the rally ends and that win probability falls to 10.7%, a drop of -15.4%. But if the hitter gets a single to drive in the two runners in scoring position, the win probability jumps to 73.7%, an increase of 47.6%. And as we discussed yesterday, this is the quintessential situation in which simply putting the ball in play carries an outsized expected value, because any ball in play (BIP) has about a 30% chance to go for a hit or reach on error. So the payoff matrix for Bogaerts putting a ball in play and avoiding getting REK’d looks like this:
xWPA of BIP = (30% * 47.6%) + (70% * -10.7%) = +6.79%
The one thing a hitter can’t do in this situation is get REK’d2. We wrote about how Bogaerts had been struggling with his approach at the plate during the Rays series, including not appearing to be ready to hit in a big at bat. But he was ready and locked in when Weaver threw the first pitch of the at bat:
This wasn’t a normal comeback. The conditions Monday night, for a number of reasons, were as adverse as it gets. You can hear on the field mics how pumped Machado is as he turns back to the dugout after scoring. You can also hear an enormous roar from the crowd when Bogaerts laced the single into left. There were a lot of Padres fans at this game.
Jeremiah Estrada came on in the bottom of the 8th to protect the 4-3 lead with rain once again falling in sheets. All game long players on both sides had been having trouble getting a grip on the ball due to the rain. Which is why it was fascinating to see Estrada go to his splitter four times in the inning, including this ridiculous offering which struck out Ben Rice and baffled the Yankees announcers:
Courtesy: @MLB
Robert Suarez was brought in for the save in the ninth. And it was very interesting to see the first strike call he got:
Suarez would strike out Volpe which brought Austin Wells to the plate. Wells, who had been framing pitches so well that Adrian Johnson had been struggling to be consistent in his enforcement of the lower edge of the strike zone between teams, saw this first pitch:
The Padres finally had the lower edge of the zone to work with. Maybe that was just luck. Everything was random all night, Johnson just guessing behind the plate, and randomness caused him to give the Padres calls in the bottom of the zone in the 9th. Or maybe it started with Shildt flinging aside his glasses like a surly Clark Kent and letting loose his alter ego:
Courtesy @TooMuchMortons_
Suarez would get Wells to fly out for the second out. The Yankees brought in Jasson Dominguez to make one last stand. Suarez got ahead in the count 1-2, and as he’s shown numerous times this season Suarez is not just up there throwing fastball after fastball anymore. Despite the downpour he was able to get a good grip on a devastating changeup that Dominguez swung through for the final out of the game:
The manager’s role in the modern game has been downplayed, and some believe the manager is simply not a difference maker. Spreadsheet essentialists might point out that there is no quantifiable data to support the idea that personality and shows of emotion affect games. And that’s true. But that’s a reflection of the ineffable effects being hard to quantify, not evidence they don’t exist. Of course emotion-laden events like Shildt’s bellicose turn have effects on the game. Excitement, confidence, anxiety, all have real effects at a physiologic level altering cortisol, dopamine, and adrenaline levels. Reaction time, motor control, and focus are all affected. And the idea that because they cannot be quantified, they cannot be relevant, is outdated. Nothing is monocausal, the players still had to get the job done on the field. But they had help from Mike Shildt along the way. He blew his top, and the effects were palpable. Game changing. This was that elusive, mythological entity. This was a manager win.
A quick aside: Pitch framing is not illegal but also not a part of the formal game. It sits in a strange place between being a skill and being an exploit. It absolutely influences winning. Russell Martin famously was so good at pitch framing there are some analysts that argue he has a case for the hall of fame. So in this sense pitch framing is a skill. But it’s the skill of influencing the umpire. And while you want to exalt players who help their teams win, you wouldn’t exalt a soccer player that was exceptionally good at flopping to draw penalties. Or at least you wouldn’t build his hall of fame case around that ‘skill’
One note: Padres switch from Diaz to Maldonado in the 7th. It looks from the low strikes Estrada and Suarez got that Maldonado does a much better job of framing low pitches than Diaz.
According to Umpire Scorecards, Johnson did a pretty excellent job, but Campy got jobbed twice.