08/19 St. Louis (Suppan) @ CUBS (Zambrano) 12:20 CDT, FOX TV

[Andy]

And with Phil Nevin, there was probably a significantly less than 10-12 percent chance that he was hitting into a double play there.

[CubColtPacer]

Baseballs greatest fans have officially gone ballistic over taking Duncan out and are gathering their torches and pitchforks to go after Tony "I'm a Genius" La Russa.

 

I believe they call him worse names than Dusty gets here.

 

Which site?

 

GatewayRedbirds?

 

And if so, where is there game thread located?

 

Hah, it's on Gateway Redbirds.

 

I just read that thread. I guess the real problem is that Tony La Russa made a move that, in the end, didn't work out. They're getting on Tony for not being able to predict the future.

 

Actually, they should get on Tony. Statistically, a DP occurs a little over 10% of the time. Walking a hitter in order to set up a DP is almost always a bad move.

 

Vance, I think they were referencing Tony's decision to take Duncan out in the 9th and pinch hit Encarnacion-that got those Cardinal fans up and yelling at Tony apparently.

 

Also, I think that the walk to set up the DP would be a little different statistically if a team only needs 1 run to win-which makes the walk meaningless if you can trust the pitcher to not walk anyone else. Personally, I don't think they made the right move-because Nevin hits a lot of fly balls-but at the same time, for one thing if he does hit in on the ground he is a prime DP candidate, and even more important than that is the fact that he had struck out 13 times out of 28 at bats in August. While Cedeno has struck out a decent amount, he has been better at making contact in August, and if he makes contact the game is probably over. Tony probably used those recent numbers to think he had a pretty good shot of either striking Nevin out or getting him to ground into a DP-it was a gamble, but a decent gamble.

 

He had about a 10-12% chance it work. It was a poor gamble any way you look at it.

 

How do you know he was looking for the DP though? It was just as likely that he thought that he had a better chance to strike Nevin out than to strike Cedeno out. If he pitches to Cedeno, Cedeno still only has a 10 to 12 percent chance of hitting into the DP (and probably less than that just like Nevin (because of Nevin's lack of ground balls) because of Cedeno's speed)-what does putting him on and pitching to Nevin really change? It's a gamble to pitch to Cedeno-and it's a gamble to pitch to Nevin, and the run is likely to score either way.

[Bull]

is that 10-12% situation based?

 

In other words, does the frequency increase with a runner on first? I would think it would.