The Business End

Getting The Little Things Right

The Padres went 3-3 last week. There were some highlights to be sure. The week started with the return of Fernando Tatis Jr. in a game one win against the Tigers. Game two on Wednesday was a gritty affair in which the Padres fell behind 5-0 before Jackson Merrill fast tracked a comeback:

Merrill’s 22nd home run also made him the Padres all time leader in RBI in a rookie season surpassing Benito Santiago. A two run single by Manny Machado would later tie the game 5-5 which remained tied into the bottom of the 10th when Tatis would come to the plate with two outs and Jackson Merrill representing the winning run on second:

This was Tatis’ first ever walk-off hit. Tatis, Machado, and Merrill orchestrating a dramatic come from behind win is something we hope to see regularly for a long time.

After winning the first two games against the Tigers they would scuffle in game three and lose two of three to the Giants to finish the week 3-3 overall. They’ve had worse stretches this season, including two five game losing streaks. But this week included a few moments of unusual decision making. And that’s why the level of concern was a little higher even after a week in which they still paced for the postseason.

Sequencing

In the final game against the Tigers on Thursday Robert Suarez was called on for the second game in a row. With the Padres ahead 3-0 Suarez would get two outs, but gave up a single and two walks along the way to load the bases for Parker Meadows. And this was where a strange choice was made. Meadows was facing Suarez for the second game in a row. Here’s the pitch sequence Meadows saw the night before in Wednesday’s game:

Meadows saw six pitches Wednesday including three straight four-seam fastballs at the end of the at bat, the third of which he put a good swing on but didn’t barrel up. On Thursday he faced Suarez again. Here is the entire ‘sequence’ to Meadows in his second at bat against Suarez in two days:

Between Wednesday and Thursday Meadows saw a total of nine straight four-seam fastballs from Suarez, and all six that he saw on Thursday were toward the outer-half of the plate. Basically the same pitch over and over again. The ingredients to effective pitching are a blend of stuff (velocity and pitch shape), location, and the interrelated qualities of deception and sequencing. Suarez certainly had good stuff Thursday night. But there were no attempts at sequencing different pitches. And as far as location, the pitches were all on the outer-half of the plate. And when professional hitters are able to anticipate what pitch is coming and where it’s going to be located, the effectiveness of stuff and location are diminished. What are the chances that Meadows anticipated yet another outer-half fastball by the time he’d been shown the first five? He drove the sixth consecutive fastball on the outer-half of the plate to the opposite field with elevation, exactly what you’d try to do with an outer-half fastball if you knew it was coming.

It seems like the plan against Meadows was to rely on stuff alone. And you have to wonder if that approach was intentional, or if it was an oversight. Meadows was the sixth batter of the inning, a specific game plan against him was probably not discussed before the inning since it was unlikely he would come up in the inning. Ruben Niebla had already visited the mound when Suarez missed badly with location to fall behind 1-0 to Spencer Torkelson with runners already on first and second. Presumably the focus of that visit would have been Torkelson’s at bat alone. A second mound visit would have required pulling Suarez from the game. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising if there hadn’t been a true game plan in place for how to approach Meadows, and Suarez/Diaz had fallen back on just throwing his best pitch again and again relying on his stuff to get the out.

It’s not a crazy strategy to just rely on Suarez’ stuff to get hitters out. His stuff is really good. And Meadows’ home run was interesting. It was 98.2 MPH off the bat, 2.5 MPH slower than the 100.7 MPH fastball from Suarez. That means it wasn’t perfectly squared up. And the homerun was a bit of a wall scraper, out of the park in only 9/30 MLB stadiums. But even so, you wonder if there should be a different game plan when a hitter has seen an inordinate number of the same pitch from the closer. Across a short series it’s unusual for the same hitter to get multiple looks at the opposing closer. But it’s not as unusual for a closer to have to face the same hitter multiple times in close succession in a playoff series… This is something to look at.

Flat Footed

There was a scary moment in the 6th inning of Friday’s game one against the Giants:

Jackson Merrill fouled that pitch right off his left knee cap and was on the ground for several moments. He was visited by the trainer and Mike Shildt and ultimately stayed in the game for one more inning but was replaced in center field by Tyler Wade to start the 8th. The Padres would win game one 5-1, but Merrill was out of the lineup for game two on Saturday with Wade again getting the start in center. Fernando Tatis was also out with a scheduled day off, and the depleted roster options may have had knock on effects.

Logan Webb started for the Giants and pitched into the sixth. The Padres trailed 4-3 going into the inning but singles from David Peralta and Tyler Wade put runners on first and second with one out for Mason McCoy. McCoy had sacrifice bunted Wade to third just one inning before. On the first pitch of the at bat McCoy indeed showed bunt, but drew back on a pitch that looked good enough to lay the bunt down. It should be noted that a bunt here was an especially low value move since it would only move the runners to second and third while costing the second out of the inning; a hit would still be needed to score a run. After drawing back the bunt attempt on the first pitch he took a long look at the third base coach:

It seems like the game plan here was to have McCoy show bunt to draw the infielders in and give him a better chance to punch a ball through for a hit. Maybe showing bunt helped a little? Here’s a look at the defense after McCoy showed bunt:

Matt Chapman is still playing fairly deep at third. The first baseman is slightly drawn in. The middle infielders are in typical alignment. It looks like the Giants are happy to concede a sacrifice bunt and are prioritizing keeping the double play in order. The next pitch McCoy did swing away:

Now you can argue that double plays are a bit fluky. They are. We once referred to double plays as the “error” of the offense. But they’re not entirely fluky. Mason McCoy, albeit in a limited sample size, has an astounding 60.6% ground ball rate in his at bats at the major league level. On the other side was the preeminent sinkerball pitcher in MLB in Logan Webb who induces ground balls at an equally astounding 57.4% rate. A ground ball double play was a much more likely outcome than usual because of the combination of pitcher and hitter.

The bigger issue, though, is simply that in real time it was clear this was an extremely high leverage at bat. And irrespective of double play tendency, Mason McCoy is just not a good hitter. McCoy is on the roster for his defense. This at bat had a leverage index of 3.68, a very high index due to the large swings in win probability the team would incur based on its outcome. At the time McCoy was at bat the Padres win expectancy was about 50%. After McCoy grounded into a double play the Padres win expectancy was about 30%. That’s a swing of 20% win probability in one at bat. That’s far too much responsibility to put on the bat of Mason McCoy. Donovan Solano was available to pinch hit off the bench. And in the bottom of the ninth with the Padres still trailing Solano did pinch hit for McCoy. In fact in the bottom of the ninth both Fernando Tatis and Jackson Merrill would make pinch hitting appearances as well. It would seem Mike Shildt had an abundance of superior hitters he could have deployed in the highest leverage at bat of the game. So why did McCoy hit?

Merrill’s unexpected injury put Mike Shildt’s usual defensive replacement at shortstop, Tyler Wade, in center field. McCoy’s entire presence on the roster has been to spare Xander Bogaerts from having to move back to shortstop full time, something Bogaerts has expressed hoping to avoid. But could Bogaerts play three innings at shortstop in an important game? It looks like that was not considered on Saturday.

The Padres would ultimately lose the game 6-3 after Yuki Matsui gave up a 2-run home run in the ninth. But the game was closer than the final score.

It appears that the McCoy at bat Saturday was a tipping point in the Padres strategy as on Sunday, also in the sixth inning, but in a far lower leverage situation with the Padres trailing 6-1 with a runner on first and no outs (leverage index 0.79), Donovan Solano would pinch hit for McCoy and Bogaerts would shift to shortstop for the final three innings.

Mike Shildt has innumerable demands for his attention at this time in the season, and he’s largely pressed the right buttons all year. And it feels a bit harsh to demand more. But it really seems like McCoy’s at bat Friday caught Shildt flat footed. The Padres did not give themselves the best chance to win because of an avoidable lapse. Mike Shildt deserves manager of the year consideration for the cultural overhaul that has been on display on a nightly basis. But part of a winning culture is that no one is above reproach. Not even the skipper.

Look for clarity on McCoy’s role with the team soon. Maybe Sunday’s decisions have already made that role clear.

Fundamentals

The Padres looked to take another series win Sunday with Joe Musgrove on the mound. Musgrove had retired the first 10 hitters he’d faced and appeared to have very sharp command and good stuff. Nothing about his performance to that point had seemed fluky. He faced Heliot Ramos with one out and got him to popup to the right side, which Fernando Tatis attempted to field:

You can see pretty clearly what happened. Tatis didn’t actually lose the ball in the sun right away, he tracked it until very near the moment it fell but was blinded at the last second and flinched in self preservation. This is a hard play. And in no way do we suggest it was a play Tatis should be expected to make every time. But it was a choice for Tatis to block the sun with his throwing hand rather than with his glove which is the preferred method for an outfielder in motion:

Initially he’s able to block the sun, the shadow of his hand is right across his eyes. But as the play develops you can see that he’s drifting to the spot of the catch. He’s not stationary. Moving while trying to block the sun with your throwing hand is very difficult because the natural head bob and arm sway that accompanies even light jogging makes it very hard to position your hand exactly between the sun and your eyes at all time. This is why typically outfielders are taught to block out the sun with the glove hand. It’s much easier to block the sun with the glove since the glove is a massively larger object. There’s an added degree of difficulty to trying to block with the throwing hand because at the last second you have to pivot to extending your glove hand to catch the ball, and right as Tatis makes this motion his throwing hand moves just out of the line of the sun and he’s blinded:

Here’s the zoomed in view in slow motion:

Tatis would say after the game there was nothing he could have done. That’s just baseball. And he may be right. We can’t emphasize this point enough: it may be that making the catch was impossible. None of us were on the field trying to make that catch, and some information is experiential, not able to be transmitted through verbal or visual description. There may have been nothing he could have done. But it didn’t look like it. Tatis was without sunglasses which he would say after the game was a purposeful choice he intends to stick with. But the other choice on this play was to block the sun with his throwing hand rather than the glove. Either hand or glove can be used to block the sun on a stationary catch. But the choice should account for the type of catch. A running catch is very hard to make with an outstretched hand, it’s far easier to block the sun with the glove. Which is exactly what Tatis did later in the game on a carbon copy popup:

Now this was later in the game, and the sun is of course lower in the sky which you can see by the longer shadows. And this was probably an easier catch as a result. But the fundamentals were also on display on this catch, and the same can’t be said about the first attempt.

Rattled?

Joe Musgrove had shown excellent stuff to this point in the game, the third inning in particular was a showcase. Musgrove struck out the side:

Courtesy: @PitchingNinja

You can see the super tight rotation on the sweeper that fools Marco Lucianio, and the very good velocity and arm side run on the four-seam fastball that freezes Curtis Casali, and an absolutely dotted sweeper to get Patrick Bailey for the final K. Musgrove was dealing. And that’s why what happened next was so unusual. After Tatis missed the fly ball, Musgrove immediately missed with location.

That’s a very bad miss to a very good hitter. Three batters later Musgrove would miss again and leave a sweeper hanging, center-cut:

To this point it seemed clear that Musgrove was getting punished on mistake pitches, but after Encarnacion’s homerun made it 5-0 Giants the next batter Luis Matos would do this:

That pitch was dotted. This one at least was not Musgrove’s fault. It wasn’t his day.

It’s easy to craft the narrative from the way the events unfolded that Musgrove was rattled by the misfortune. But we can’t know if that’s true, there is no biometric data in the box score about Musgrove’s degree of focus in those pitches immediately following the sun-double in right field. But Joe Musgrove can know whether that was a factor or not. A different possibility to consider is the Giants change in approach the second time through the lineup. Musgrove got 11 strikes looking the first time through the order, including five first pitch strikes looking, and threw a pitch in the strike zone to seven of the first nine batters he faced. The second time through the order the Giants made a clear adjustment. They were ambushing first pitch offerings in the zone, and that was compounded by Musgrove missing with location. They scored their first five runs across only six pitches.

Giving up six runs in an inning is catastrophic, but this wasn’t an ineffective pitcher getting shelled. Musgrove was very sharp early. There was a shift in the fourth inning. One that’s hard to understand. But it wouldn’t surprise us if Musgrove were effective in his next outing. His stuff looks back. Despite the bad results.

Grit

The Padres lost control of the game in the fourth. Until Jackson Merrill (who else) started the comeback:

This was the second opposite field home run of the week for Merrill. You couldn’t tell anything was bothering him in the field either, he made a great catch to end the Giant’s half of the ninth:

Sunday’s performance assuaged concerns about lingering effects of the bruised kneecap. And the home run was the start of another attempted comeback.

Situational Baseball

The Padres would grind away and after a two run home run by Xander Bogaerts in the 8th inning brought the score to 7-6 Giants, David Peralta would work a walk to put the tying run on board. Tyler Wade pinch ran for Peralta, with Donovan Solano (still in the game after pinch hitting for Mason McCoy in the fifth) was at the plate.

At first this looks ridiculous. Like Wade was just dancing off first base for no reason and got picked off at the worst possible moment. But you can actually see exactly why he broke when he did. Wade had seen the first four pitches of the at bat and noticed that pitcher Ryan Walker had a clear cadence, throwing within about a second of his glove coming set on his left thigh. Here are the four pitches followed by the pickoff where you can see Wade takes off just at the moment Walker had started his pitch each of the first four times:

You can say Wade got a little unlucky, Walker chose to break up his cadence on the exact pitch Wade chose to try to steal. And that’s true. But that’s a risk you take as a baserunner. And it’s a choice to take that risk. Runners intent on not getting picked off don’t get picked off. There are several ways to think about this choice. Swiping second base would have increased the probability of a run scoring in the inning from about 27% to about 41%. That’s not nothing. And the total run expectancy for the inning would also increase:

So a successful steal increases run expectancy for the inning by 0.155 runs. But conversely making an out decreases run expectancy by 0.394 runs:

So for the risk to be worth it the likelihood of successfully stealing needs to be at least 2.54 (0.394/0.155) times the likelihood getting thrown out or picked off. That means successfully stealing ~72% of the time. Maybe the only way to ensure that high of a success rate is to try to time up the pitcher in this way.

Looking at it from a run expectancy payoff matrix is one method of evaluation, another way of looking at it is examining changes in win probability. Historical data suggests that when the home team is down by one in the bottom of the eighth with one out and a runner on first there’s only a ~30% chance to win the game:

A successful steal of second might increase the odds of winning by about 5%:

But making an out on the bases drops win probability by about 12%

Here you get about the same required success rate for the steal to be strategically correct.

Although the play looked ridiculous in real time, like a never-event for a pinch runner, there was more to it than just a heedless gamble by Wade. If Wade and the team had the expectation that he could swipe the bag by timing up Ryan Walker with a success rate higher than ~72% it was not such a bad gamble. But if he was trying to take the base without at least a >72% likelihood of success then it was just bad situational baseball. What Wade’s actual chances were is too granular to comment on from the sidelines, but this is something the team can know with more certainty. And they can evaluate their decision making with that understanding.

The Business End

The Padres would lose the final game of the Giants series 7-6 and finish the week going 3-3. As of Tuesday they are 81-64, good for a game and a half lead in a furiously competitive Wild Card race. They have 17 games remaining and it’s likely that going 8-9 or better will lead to a playoff berth. And with that framing, a week going 3-3 is right on pace. But this week did feel a little different. And while some of that is simply the emotional residue of a disheartening ninth inning loss to the Tigers, there were also several instances where it seemed choices were being made that didn’t maximize the likelihood of success. Each of the instances we focused on above were marginal considerations. This is being nit-picky. But this is the part of the season to go through every process with a fine toothed comb. A time for sobriety. Because getting marginal decisions right has implications for surviving into the postseason. And once you’re in the postseason you’re out of second chances. This is the business end of the season.

Fire Alarms

After Sunday’s loss Mike Shildt’s postgame presser would be delayed by a fire alarm going off. And this is an apt metaphor. Because the thing about fire alarms is they’re almost always false alarms, but they always warrant investigation. Because when the alarm first goes off there is still opportunity to intervene. To prevent the calamity.

The Padres had a merciful day off Monday. A day for reflection. A day to prepare. A day to anticipate the moments that will surely find them, in which they have agency to make a choice to seize some extra slivers of win probability. They’re going to need every bit they can get. Perhaps they’ve evaluated everything above and determined their process was impeccable, there was no room for improvement, and things just didn’t go their way. Good analysis will sometimes lead to the conclusion that nothing could have been done better. It’s possible there may simply not be many levers they can pull to improve their performance at this stage. And that would mean there’s only one thing to do across these final 17 games: Keep the faith.