Thursday, January 29, 2015
Substitution Rules, updated
About two years ago, I offered an idea on revamping the substitution rules.? I cleaned it up a little, and posted it on Fangraphs. There were a couple of good comments there. Here were my responses:
***
You add about .12 runs each time the PH takes over from the pitcher.
If a pitcher normally bat 2.5 times per game, but let’s say with this new rule he might bat 1 time per game, that’ll increase runs (in the NL parks) by 1.5 x .12 = 0.18 runs per game.
***
Right, that’s why I figure you’d still see the batter at the plate once a game. If they are up by 3+ runs, pitcher might still bat, etc.
***
Excellent question. The rule as I’ve stated would indeed allow for that, since this would just be a defensive sub.
Obviously, you wouldn’t see that in practice with a starting pitcher, but I can certainly see that with a relief pitcher. Say for example you bring in your regular setup guy in the top of the 8th, and he gets the first two hitters out.
Then you bring in your LOOGY to face Ortiz. He gets Ortiz out. End of inning. At the end of the inning, the manager has to choose which of the two pitchers to knock out of the game. He’ll knock out the LOOGY.
At all times though, it’s always a choice of the last two players. In the above example, when the setup guy replaced the starting pitcher, it was those two guys that the manager would have had to make a choice. Once the LOOGY came in, it became between the LOOGY and the setup guy.
The danger for the manager is if the LOOGY lets Ortiz get on base, and there’s a RHH now at the plate. The manager would then replace the LOOGY with yet another reliever, thereby automatically knocking the original setup guy out of the game.
Having said all that: if you want to exempt the pitcher-as-fielder from this rule, I’d be ok with that. I’d prefer not having an exemption, but I also wouldn’t want this rule to become a focal point of strategy every time a pitcher gets relieved.
***
That is a good point, thanks for thinking it through.
We could do two things: 1. I posted at the bottom in these comments that we could exempt the pitcher-as-fielder from the sub rule. So, once a pitcher is swapped out for a reliever (as a defensive sub), then he’s out.
2. Allow the “option c” only once per player. Suddenly, you couldn’t PH for the pitcher each time he came to bat and allow the pitcher to remain in the game. You could only do it once. This is the same for any player on the field or at bat. You couldn’t always protect say Adam Dunn in LF or John MacDonald at bat. They get just one freebie per game of being replaced without being knocked out.
Just a couple of ideas so that the rule itself doesn’t become too central to the strategy.
This would mean therefore that a pitcher, who normally comes to bat 2.5 times per game, will come to bat 1.5 times per game.
This puts pressure on the manager to decide when he gets the freebie of PH for the pitcher, while letting the pitcher remain in the game.
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 152 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers