Wednesday, October 02, 2019
Statcast Lab: Cain v Taylor
This is the point at which Cain got the ball.
?
Runner is about 75 feet from 3B. Taylor Sprint Speed is 29 ft/s, meaning he needs 75/29 = 2.6 seconds
Cain will have to make an almost 200 foot throw. He has a somewhat below average arm at 85 mph. Here's where we need to leave the world of mph and enter the world of feet / sec. 85mph is 125 ft/s. That's at release. The ball will slow down in flight. Roughly speaking, it'll lose 10% every 60 feet.
In this case, we'd do 200/60 = 3.33, and 0.9^3.33 = 70%. So at arrival, the speed of the ball is 70% of 125 ft/s or 88 ft/s. So the average speed of the ball in flight is about 106 ft/s. And so, a 200 foot throw will get there in about 200/106 = 1.9 seconds. (It's not this straightforward, but it's close enough.)
The exchange time (pickup to release) for a throw is about 0.5 to 0.75 seconds, which means that the ball would have reached the VICINITY of 3B in 2.4 to 2.65 seconds. It would have been close if the throw was on target. Which of course, it might not be.
How successful would Cain have been? Probably 60% if the throw is on target. And maybe it's on target 70% of the time? So, about 40% of the time he gets the runner maybe?
In the meantime, it would allow the batter to reach second base as the tying run. But, there were two outs! Making the third out at thirdbase is a cardinal sin for baserunners. Which makes it very appealing for the defense.
Let's work some MORE numbers.
Bottom of the 8th, 2 outs, down by 2 runs. Our choices are:
- runners on 1B and 3B (our baseline)
or
- runner on 2B and 3B
- end of inning
So, our baseline is a win expectancy for the Nationals of 15.8%.
- If Cain went for it and missed, then the win expectancy is 19.2%.
- If Cain got the out, then the win expectancy for the Nats is 7.1%.
In other words, the tradeoff is that the Nats gets +3.4% if Cain doesn't hit the target in time, or the Nats are -8.7% if Cain gets Taylor to end the inning.
All Cain has to do is make the play 28% of the time. That is:
- 28% of the time, the Nats lose 8.7%
- 72% of the time, the Nats gain 3.4%
And that's breakeven.
Remember, we guessed that Cain would have gotten Taylor about 40% of the time, and he only needed to get him 30% of the time.
Cain should have gone to third.