As the Brewers wrap up a series against the Cardinals and Tony LaRussa's peculiar lineup strategy, I thought it might be worth thinking about what would make certain lineups advantageous. LaRussa has been hitting the pitcher in the 8th spot, with a position player hitting behind him in the 9th slot, for several years now. Why?
Strategy
9 July 2009
6 July 2009
I got into a discussion with Sean yesterday about the post I made a couple of weeks ago concerning when a runner has officially taken possession of a base. We consulted the rule book (online at baseball-almanac.com, a great site) and found no specific details about the situation. (Though, admittedly, I did not carefully pore over every bit of it research-style, since we were simply having an entertaining discussion.) While shifting through various alternative scenarios to try to tease out the answer, this fun one came up:
Posted by Eric Hatleback | No comments yet
3 July 2009
This game typifies why the open base need not always be filled. Particularly with the winning run on third base, you are asking quite a lot of your pitcher to confine him to the box created by bases loaded. The Brewers should have gone after Soto--a player coming in cold off the bench--with runners on second and third and 2 outs. Instead, they blatantly pitched around him for 3 pitches, then intentionally put him on with the fourth pitch to set the stage for the walk-off walk.
Posted by Eric Hatleback | No comments yet
