The Padres split the series in St. Louis 2-2. A bit of a disappointing result, but not one that derailed the Padres trajectory. All four games played in St. Louis were played in sweltering, extremely humid conditions. This was Dylan Cease just before throwing the first pitch of the game Tuesday:
Mark Grant would claim to enjoy playing in this type of weather during the broadcast. It’s not clear whether that enjoyment would be diminished if it came at the tail end of a 14-games-in-14-days-across-3-cities stretch as it did for the Padres. It’s hard to say if this had any bearing on the outcome of the games. But it wouldn’t be shocking if it was a factor.
The Padres won game one behind a quality start from Randy Vasquez who went six innings giving up only two earned runs. Those are very good results but it was an uneasy six innings. Rich Roberts perfectly captured the essence here:
In game two the Padres managed a win despite an ineffective outing from Dylan Cease. He gave up four earned runs in 4.1 innings. More concerning than the results, his velocity and spin rates were down across the board:
He clocked a 4-seam fastball at 93.3 MPH. That’s not normal for Cease. He was able to get to good velo when he needed it, including a crucial strikeout of Luken Baker on a full count with the bases loaded:
You can see that by the second inning whatever dry spots there had been on the jersey as the game started had been soaked through. The man was melting in the dog day heat. And perhaps that’s all there was to his performance decline. Hopefully that’s all there was to it. It’s something to watch down the stretch though.
In game three Joe Musgrove made another start in which he appeared to show good stuff. He hit 95.5 MPH on his 4-seamer, a season high. His velo was up on all his pitches:
Maybe the most important indicator above is that he was allowed to go 94 pitches, a sign the team thinks he’s healthy enough for a full work load. He was not dominant, but it was an encouraging outing.
It was the offense that couldn’t quite come through in game three and four that led to the series split.
It’s really game three that deserves the most attention, and specifically the ninth inning. Because there were two observations that stand out as areas where the Padres might examine the underlying process to determine if there might be opportunity to improve.
The Sac Bunt
Game three saw the Cardinals and Padres tied 3-3 in the top half of the ninth. The Cardinals put in flamethrowing closer Ryan Helsley to try to keep the score tied. Luis Arraez led off with a double which put the potential go ahead run in scoring position with the heart of the order coming up. Jurickson Profar was up next and three pitches in a row he attempted to sacrifice bunt. On the third pitch he was able to:
Ryan Helsley barehanded the bunt attempt and briefly fumbled with it but ultimately was able to make a crisp throw to first that just got Profar. The sac bunt moved the runner (now Tyler Wade) to third base, but spent one of the Padres three remaining outs in the process. This is a very questionable tradeoff.
When asked about it after the game Mike Shildt made it clear it was Profar’s decision to bunt. AJ Cassavell wrote a very good analysis of the decision, including the fact that once Profar executed the bunt, it did increase the Padres win probability slightly (from 67% to 68%). But as Cassavell noted, the data set used to inform decisions like this does not account for the fact that Jurickson Profar is one of the teams best hitters. When you model enormous corpuses of data to derive average outcomes, your model implicitly assumes average conditions. Jurickson Profar has been well above average at the plate this season. Which is why a quote from Cassavell’s article stands out. When Profar was asked about his decision to bunt:
“You didn’t see my at-bats tonight?” Profar asked rhetorically. “I was 0-for-4.”
He seems to be implying that he did not feel like himself, and did not feel like he could be expected to produce the stellar results that he has throughout most of the season. It probably didn’t help that the one of the best closers in the game was pitching, but Profar was 2 for 2 with a walk in his three prior plate appearances versus Helsley. It doesn’t seem likely that the pitching matchup factored into Profar’s decision. More likely he just didn’t feel right. In fact Profar was 0-10 in the series up to that at bat, and would finish the series 0-14.
A player feeling he is off his game isn’t known to be a reliable performance indicator. But it’s important to note that this is a problem that cannot be definitively studied through use of the box score, because the box score does not contain the biometric data you would need to study something like this conclusively. If the box score contained reliable player mood/confidence data it would be trivial to study whether low player confidence indeed leads to poor performance. The fact that no data exists to support this is significant, but not conclusive.
Mike Shildt did not intervene and force Profar to swing away, and he came under some criticism for that. Superseding Profar’s judgement was certainly a lever Shildt could have pulled. Shildt would say:
“We give Pro the option, I trust him. And he trusts his teammates. It doesn’t always work out. But, man, I trust him completely in that at-bat in making his decision and [his] feel for the game.”
Shildt’s approach here is to shift the locus of control from central decision making to local decision making. No one on the field had a better idea of what Jurickson Profar was able to execute than Profar himself. This isn’t to say that Profar’s decision was the correct one. We didn’t love the decision to bunt. But we also don’t think this was a cut and dry, obviously good or obviously bad decision. Profar was showing trust in his teammates, and not without reason. Jake Cronenworth was up next and his performance in driving in the runner from third with less and two outs has been very efficient:
But alas, Helsley was impeccable. He both sequenced and executed perfectly to Cronenworth for a three pitch strikeout:
Manny Machado would follow and take a tough six pitch at bat but go ultimately go down swinging on a near perfect pitch:
If Machado takes that slider it’s probably called a strike. Helsley was in rare form. The runner on third was stranded.
It would be interesting to hear if Shildt gives all the players the deference he showed Profar. And if there are some players for whom the strategy would be more prescriptive, which approach would the team prefer: bunt or swing away? It’s one thing to turn the decision making over to a player like Profar, but the team shouldn’t be indifferent to what it sees as the ideal strategy. This wasn’t some unusual situation. Playoff games often come down to late and close decision making.
The Right Spot
The bottom half of the inning deserves some scrutiny as well. Robert Suarez took the mound attempting to keep the score tied 3-3 and send it into extra innings. He retired, the first two batters, but then gave up back-to-back-to-back-singles, the third of which scored the winning run in walk-off fashion for the Cardinals. What’s notable about these three singles is that they were two ground balls and one flare over the shortstop’s head. It feels like there have been a lot of these plays this year. Here are the three hits purposefully shown only as they come off the bat. What’s the first impulse when you see these:
You could probably guess that Victor Scott’s softly hit flare would fall in for a hit, but Masyn Winn and Nolan Arenado hit ground balls that off the bat looked like routine outs. Is it just bad luck? Getting BABIP’ed to death? There might be a little more to it.
Here’s Masyn Winn’s single to start the rally:
What’s interesting here is the defensive alignment as Robert Suarez throws a 101.9 MPH fastball:
You can see Bogaerts is shading up the middle at second base and Mason McCoy is playing the hitter to pull the ball at shortstop. The result is an enormous hole in the right side of the infield. The thing is, Masyn Winn has never pulled a pitch faster than 98 MPH, and he’s never put a pitch faster than 99 MPH in play. Here’s his spray chart on 99 MPH pitches:
There’s not a lot of data here. But it’s fair to wonder if a player that has never pulled a pitch faster than 98 MPH should be played to pull when the pitcher is throwing 101+. McCoy positioning up the middle would allow Bogaerts to shade to the right side and this would seem to be better coverage for ground balls off the bat of a hitter very unlikely to pull the ball. Admittedly this seems nit picky on its face, but there’s a reason to look specifically at this down the stretch, because as reader Andrew Martin noted, two weeks ago Jomboy attempted to create a metric to evaluate whether a team was good at positioning its infielders to anticipate the spray pattern of ground balls, and the Padres finished dead last in MLB.
Jomboy’s metric is simple but sensible. He takes all groundballs and infield line drives hit hard (95 MPH or above) and determines what percentage of these are converted into outs to get part of the “right spot metric”. The idea is that these are balls hit so hard that a fielder doesn’t have much time to react, and so range (the key input to Outs Above Average) doesn’t factor in as much. For an infielder to get to a ball hit this hard he must be positioned near the path of the batted ball. He must be in the “right spot”. Here’s the groundball graphic from the analysis that shows that the Padres convert hard hit groundballs into outs at the lowest percentage in major league baseball:
Courtesy: Jomboy Media
It’s entirely possible that this is all just noise, there’s no signal here, and the Padres defensive alignment choices are excellent. And we should note that the Padres have proven that doing well in this “right spot metric” is not a prerequisite to winning; they’ve been very successful despite ranking lowest in the league in this metric. And that might be an argument for inertia. To change nothing. But with the Padres place in the “right spot metric” as a backdrop, it’s completely fair to ask that they double check the math that implies a defensive alignment with an enormous hole on the right side of the infield is the best to defend against a right handed batter that has never pulled a ball faster than 98 MPH, who is facing a closer throwing 101+ MPH.
There are surely tradeoffs to any changes in defensive alignment, and it’s possible that the best alignment decisions are the ones the Padres have been making. Indeed, this cannot be evaluated by anyone outside the organization, because the decision tree informing the Padres defensive alignments is a complete black box to those outside the organization. But those within certainly know what goes into those decisions.
After Winn’s single Victor Scott followed with a flare to left that was hit 74 MPH off the bat:
There is simply nothing you can do about that. The pitch was down and away off the plate. The contact was very weak. It just went to no man’s land. There’s no argument to be made that the Padres could have defended this ball better. This is BABIP chaos.
The game winning hit was a ground ball off the bat of Nolan Arenado:
It’s hard to tell on the broadcast but it appears the defense was playing Arenado to pull with the shortstop playing deep and between second and third. Here’s the still frame showing McCoy already moving to his left as he chases the ball hit more up the middle:
It wasn’t the best pitch, it was elevated and Arenado hit it hard, and that’s part of the problem. But was playing Arenado to pull a good alignment decision? Arenado has put many balls in play on pitches 99+ MPH, and sprayed them all over the yard:
But Robert Suarez wasn’t throwing 99. His pitch to Arenado was 101.4 MPH. And Arenado has not put many balls in play at 101+ MPH:
Again, there’s just not a lot of data here, but what data there is implies that shifting the left side of the infield more up the middle would be a reasonable consideration when it’s likely Arenado is going to be putting a 101+ MPH ball in play.
As we said, the team has played well despite some evidence that a lot higher percentage of hard hit groundballs get through the infield than other teams. And the Padres infielders are individually good. If there’s an issue it might be that they don’t position as well as some teams. The evidence something is wrong here is pretty weak, it’s very possible they’ve just been in BABIP hell. But the reason to take a look is because defensive positioning is something that the team can control. If in fact, the team decided there was some signal buried within the noise, they may be able to make a process change that incrementally increases win probability. This can only be examined internally, because externally the decision making that goes into defensive alignment is opaque. It’s simply not available. But there is evidence that the team makes conscious choices about alignment frequently. They shift at least 50% of the time. There is intention here. There is some process that can be examined.
The regular season is a gauntlet that teams must survive in order to make it to the postseason, but it also has the aspect of being a laboratory to examine your own processes and how they play out in the entropy of the real world. The very best teams never stop looking for ways to get better. The Padres have at least one source of improvement that looks likely to materialize: Ha-Seong Kim, Yu Darvish, and Fernando Tatis may return to the team soon. That’s a much larger infusion of talent than any other playoff contender can expect at this point in the season. These are truly uncharted waters.
There are 26 games remaining in the season and the Padres are 76-60. It is looking like 89 wins will be needed to make the postseason. This means a 2-2 split, while disappointing, is still pacing for the postseason. And in this sense, they’re in the right spot.
This season has been one of the best to follow in the club’s history, and improbably the tension just keeps getting ratcheted up and up. They start a three game series with the Tampa Bay Rays Friday. The same team that swept the Diamondbacks just two weeks ago. Padres baseball is not for the faint of heart.
The last sentence sums it all up 🤣🫠
I hope someone in the data analytics office reads this!