I Love John Farrell, But Where Was Koji?

This blog has, regrettably, been silent for many, many months, despite a staggering number of topics I could (and may well still) write quite a bit about. A $250M dollar trade, the unsurprising and well deserved firing of our former manager, an injury plagued but generally successful Patriots season and the infuriating playoff loss which ultimately ended it, a controversial new rule regarding helmet-to-helmet collisions, a rare player-for-manager trade which I hated at the time (a league average starting shortstop for a manager? are you kidding me?), a new Red Sox season full of pleasant surprises, and a couple of deadline deals would seem to be plenty, and when added to the media circus and eventual, horrible truth that rising star Aaron Hernandez had straight-up murdered someone it seems surprising I have written nothing on these topics for almost an entire year. 

What wakes this blog from its eleven month slumber? A relatively meaningless pitching change, of course!

Some context, for those uninformed about the final moments of this game: 

It is the bottom of the ninth, game tied at 2-2, Red sox on the road and facing the San Francisco Giants. Left-handed reliever Franklin Morales is on the mound, with the 6th, 7th, and 8th hitters due up for San Francisco. This is a high leverage situation (leverage index of 2.14 at the start of the inning), but with Craig Breslow and Junichi Tazawa already spent and Farrell reluctant to use his closer in a tie game on the road against the weaker part of their batting order, Morales seems to have been a reasonable call. He struck out Shortstop Brandon Crawford, gave up a single to the left fielder Roger Kieschnick, but got third baseman Joaquin Arias to fly out to Jacoby Ellsbury in center field. This proved to be the final out of the game, as he promptly walked pinch hitter Andres Torres and drilled center fielder Hector Sanchez with a pitch to load the bases for former Red Sock and current second baseman Marco Scutaro, a disciplined hitter if ever there was one. 

Farrell decided (very reasonably, I would say) that Morales should probably not be allowed to face Scutaro, considering that he was probably tired and that the right handed second baseman held the platoon advantage. 

Farrell also decided that the best option to face him was newly recalled right hander Bryant Villareal, a live arm with plenty of potential but, to this point, potentially disastrous control issues. 

It would be wrong to say that the resulting four pitch walkoff walk is "irrelevant." If Scutaro grounded out to second I probably would not bother to write about it, and this blog would continue its pathetic silence. On the other hand, the walk was a bad and predictable outcome from what I see as a very, very bad decision. 

Farrell said after the game that the decision was between Villareal and Brandon Workman, who had pitched the day before and is probably not a dramatically better pitcher in the first place. What Farrell should have done was leave both of them for extra innings and gone to his closer, Koji Uehara.  

His reasoning for not doing this is quite unsurprising but, if I may be so blunt, stupid. He said that if the Red Sox took the lead then Koji would be out there to close out the game, and he did not think he should be expected to pitch more than an inning if they took the lead. Additionally, the pitcher's spot was due up 4th in the inning, although with both David Ortiz and Jarrod Saltalamacchia available to play first base and catcher, respectively, a double switch would not have been especially difficult to pull off. 

The most obvious flaw in this thinking is that the Red Sox were in no way certain to take the lead in the next inning or so. They were not even certain to get another chance, and as Villarreal's 3-0 pitch missed outside for the game ending ball four the Boston bats were quite helpless. In fact, what happened to that one batter was as critical as an entire hypothetical inning, and for this one batter, there was no uncertainty whatsoever that he would go up there to hit. 

That spot was one of the most high leverage situations possible in a baseball game. The leverage index at that point was 6.4, almost six and a half times as crucial as an average situation. As an extremely relevant comparison, the most crucial possible situation for Uehara to be put into to start an inning (if the red sox scored exactly one run) would be 3.6, nearly half that of this one at bat. 

Said even more simply, The Red Sox had a 35.1% chance of ultimately winning the game. If Scutaro got out the game would be back to dead even at the top of the 10th, with each team having an equal 50-50 shot at ultimately winning the game (+14.9% for the Red Sox). If Scutaro reaches in any way, or there is a wild pitch, passed ball, or even a balk, the game is over and the Giants win (-35.1% for Boston). One single at bat, with the swing between the two basic results worth half of an entire win. That +14.9% Win Probability Added would be his 9th highest total all season all on it's own, and many of his better totals were in two innings of work. If the Villarreal had retired Scutaro and Boston scored a single run in the top of the 10th, a scoreless inning from Uehara would have been worth about +21% WPA. This nice, but the odds that the Red Sox take a one run lead next inning are well under 50% at this point in the game, Uehara could be brought back out for another inning barring an epic, 10+ pitch at bat by Scutaro and the difference between Uehara's pinpoint control and Villarreal's utter lack thereof is far smaller in a fresh inning where a walk or two would not instantly lose the game than it would be with the bases jammed and the score tied in the bottom of the ninth. 

Again, I really like John Farrell, and am happy to have him over Mike Aviles. But I really, really, really hated this call. 

Logical Fallacies are Bullshit, Moron

This was a piece I came up with and wrote out as a joke while attempting to decide on a topic for an argument paper. While it is clearly not of sufficient quality to use in class, I think it fits well here

I like well reasoned and sensible debates. The discussing an idea is good for your brain, it makes you think. It’s fun, too, whether you prefer a quiet back and forth or an elevated shouting match, you can have a an awesome time debating. But it seems to me that these days, they just don’t happen like they used to. You can hardly go down the street and ask someone about the president’s health care policy without the stuck up “educated” twits calling everything you say a “logical fallacy” and laughing you out of the room. What the heck is that all about? These people go to their classes and learn “how to argue,” but really all they know is a bunch of technical stupid stuff. “Logical fallacies” are just made up crap designed to eliminate good discussion, and “teaching” of them needs to be abolished.

I know what I am talking about here. I have been wandering the world for years and years, engaging in constant debates and exchanges of ideas, and not one time has a “logical fallacy” being brought up improved the discussion. Not once. I mean, who cares about that? I can make my point whatever you upperclass loonies want to say about it. What do you know? nothing, thats what. You can have a fair and accurate exchange of ideas, or you can be a jerk and mindlessly ridicule everything I say without a thought to it’s meaning. And nobody likes that second guy.

You know who would have appreciated your “logical fallacy” crap? Hitler, that’s who! Who do you think you are, a red-blooded American or a stinking commie weasel? Do you want this country to collapse into an uncontrollable chaos, with nobody knowing anything but how to call you stupid? Good luck with an intellectual exchange of ideas then! And forget about being a strong country, too. Just look at those stupid French intellectuals, folding like cardboard in the face of even the slightest adversity, each and every single time they try to go to war with someone who has an ounce of sense and the ability to actually discuss ideas, not presentation! America is going nowhere but down if we keep this up.

In fact, I have proof of this. When I started hearing that language from my kids, I made them stop that crap right then and there, and gave their teacher a stern talking to! He tried to fool me with more of the fancy “fallacy” speech, but I let him know for sure what we did not accept that kind of crap around here, and what do you know? Once they were free from these pillars of Fascism, their colds went away, and our puppy finally stopped making a mess of the furniture. Does this “Logical fallacy” stuff really cause illness and misbehaving pets? of course it does! Even mentioning it here makes me sick to my stomach, but I fight on for the greater good. I don’t want to live in a world where everything is tied up in the presentation of key topics, not the values of what is presented. If we cannot advance beyond technicalities, what hope is there for true progress? Such thought is truly the root cause of our economic issues, and will turn the world we live in into another bigger, nastier, and stupider Soviet Union. You, reader, are a sensible individual. Join me, and support the cause. We need to stop this, and stop it now. Join the movement, and save our minds, our lives, and our country.