Tampa Bay 5, Red Sox 4
If you’re going to pay a reliever big money to be your closer/relief ace, it is in your best interests to use him in high leverage situations. Bottom of the 9th, tie game–that’s a high leverage situation, as a single run allowed ends the game. In fact, innings don’t get more high leverage than that. In that situation, you have to bring in Keith Foulke, even if he has been a bit shaky in the early going.
Instead, when the Red Sox found themselves in that situation last night after battling back from a two run defecit to tie the game in the top of the 9th, Terry Francona went to Alan Embree. 1 pitch later, the game was over.
There are a whole bunch of problems with using Embree. First, he doesn’t seem to be throwing as hard as he used to, which doesn’t help his already flat fastball. Second, he’s a lefty. He was scheduled to face the lefty Alex Sanchez, but Sanchez is awful and you don’t need to bring in a lefty to face him, especially since you know that Lou Pinella will pull Sanchez and go with his best pinch hitter available, the righty Eduardo Perez. Even worse, Sanchez’s 3-year splits against lefties are better than his numbers versus righties. Topping it off, the likely pinch hitter Eduardo Perez kills lefties.
3 Year Splits
Sanchez vs. Lefties
.320/.340/.382/.722Sanchez vs. Righties
.289/.327/.362/.689Perez vs. Lefties
.302/.401/.613/1.014Perez vs. Righties
.207/.274/.333/.607
So, Embree is the worst of both worlds. If you really want to save Foulke so that he can pitch multiple extra innings, the smart move would have been to go to Timlin for Sanchez. Pinella probably still pinch hits with Perez. Timlin versus Perez is a matchup that greatly favors the Sox. You can then come back with Embree against Carl Crawford, and then bring in Foulke to face Julio Lugo.
3 Year Splits in Projected Matchups
Perez vs. Righties (Timlin)
.207/.274/.333/.607Crawford vs. Lefties (Embree)
.265/.302/.345/.647Lugo vs. Righties (Foulke)
.271/.332/.403/.735For giggles:
Lugo vs. Lefties (Embree)
.270/.333/.389/.722
That gives you three matchups where the Sox get the platoon advantage, and while it is an inefficient use of resources (2 good relievers for 1 out each), if you’re going to try to win ballgames, sometimes that’s what you need to do. Instead, the Sox used the worst possible matchup and it resulted in a moonshot and a Devil Rays victory.
April 23rd, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Thanks. I was pissed Tito didn’t bring in Foulke, but had no numerical basis for being so.
April 25th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
Tito is not what you’d call deft at the strategery. Sox fans are usually pretty quick on the trigger when it comes to blaming the manager, but in this case the L is on him.
The manager has two basic functions as I see it.
1. Put your personnel in the positions where they are most likely to succeed.
2. Cultivate and maintain some semblance of clubhouse harmony.
Like Grady before him, Tito seems to excel at the second item but is inconsistent on the first.