More On Last Night’s Win

Since last night’s game, I’ve read or heard the term ‘turning point’ dozens of times. Mostly, people are hoping it turns out to be one, but let’s see if they can win a couple in a row or three of five or so.

There were a few moments that didn’t make it into last night’s recap.

In the eighth inning, with two outs (both Louis Varland strikeouts) and two on, Yandy Díaz hit a ground ball straight at Ernie Clement that should have been an easy 4-3 double play. But Vladimir Guerrero ranged way over and picked up the ball in front of Ernie. Vlad used to do those things far too often, but I hadn’t seen it for a while. Of course, when he got the ball, Vlad had no one at first to throw to. For some reason, the first baseman wasn’t there.

Vlad did have a shot at getting Taylor Walls,, who rounded third, like he was supposed to, because either the 4-3 groundout would have been the third out, or there would have been an error and he would have a shot at scoring. The idea that it would have been fielded by the first baseman would have never crossed his mind. Anyway, had Vlad thrown the ball right away, we would have been out of the inning, but he paused, and that cost him.

The unfortunate thing is, even though it was clearly an error, the official scorer can’t call it an error because…..Well, I don’t really know why. Because it was too big a mistake to be called an error. Baseball is stupid.

In a perfect world, Varland would have covered first. When the ball goes by the pitcher on his left, the pitcher is always to start towards first. Generally, they can read the play while moving and stop if they don’t need to cover the bag, but you always head that way.

Thankfully, next man up, Jake Fraley, popped out to end the inning, so no harm, no foul.

But, in the world where we are told that batters shouldn’t try to do too much, this was a case of a fielder trying to do too much.

There was some questioning about Varland coming into the game in the eighth. “He’s the closer.” One of the best things that’s happened in baseball is that teams are no longer saving their closers for a save that may or may not come. They’ve figured out (and it took them a long time) that winning the game is more important than save stats.

You would have thought the moment that would end was the 2016 Wild Card game when Edwin Encarnacion homered off Ubaldo Jiménez, while the Orioles’ closer Zach Britton sat watching in the pen because it wasn’t a save situation. I remember saying something on Twitter about how dumb it was to lose without Britton pitching, and someone answered with, ‘But he wouldn’t get the save.‘

Buck Showalter became a punch line.

The Athletic has a story on changing usage of it at the end of April.

“Teams are just matching up,” Shelton (Derek Shelton Twins’ manager) said. “They’re using guys in higher-leverage situations earlier in the game. What teams are learning is that you may not get to the ninth.”

Relievers themselves are buying into the new way of handling the later innings. Whereas relievers once seemed to yearn for defined roles — often by inning as seventh-, eighth- or ninth-inning guys — relievers now see their “roles” differently. Instead of being told when they’re likely to be used, they’re told who they are likely to face.

He goes on to say that ‘Teams are learning, you may not get to the ninth.“

Pitchers used to say they liked defined roles. I used to say, ‘Yeah, closers like defined roles because they got paid more if they got a lot of saves.’ The rest of the bullpen? I don’t know, I figure they wouldn’t have minded getting the odd save.

Now teams are trying to match up, and the pitchers know more about who they are likely to face than what inning they will be used.

I do worry that this change will mean some guys get overused. One reason they saved closers for save situations is to prevent managers from overusing their best arms. Varland has pitched in two games in a row a few times and three games in a row a couple of times. Mark Eichhorn threw 157.0 relief innings in 1986 and 127.2 in 1987. I used to say that if you have a get-out-of-an-inning-free card, you are going to use it a lot.

Beyond that, it was nice to see Jesús Sánchez get a couple of hits. And at the top of the order, while only getting one hit, the top four had eight walks.

The choice of having Lenyn Sosa hit for Tyler Heineman was interesting. I would have rather had Brandon Valenzuela hit in that spot, if only so we didn’t have to use two players for the one move.

This happened too yesterday