2015 ROYALS: Game 3—Royals 2, Astros 4

The starting pitchers for Game 3 of the ALDS are Dallas Keuchel (20-8 with a 2.48 ERA—he’s going to win the Cy Young) and Fightin’ Eddie Volquez (13-9 with a 3.55 ERA—he’s going to win our hearts) and with that pitching matchup you might think the Royals should just concede, take a day off and go sight-seeing in Houston, but for 4 and 1/3 innings, Eddie holds his own and the Royals are actually ahead 1-0 going into the fifth inning.

And the Royals are ahead because in a 10-pitch at-bat Lorenzo Cain hits a Dallas Keuchel slider 423 feet and the MLB website also informs us that the ball left Lorenzo’s bat with a launch angle of 30 degrees which might be interesting except nobody in their right minds—with the possible exception of the dorks who get in arguments over which version of WAR is best (there are three)—gives a flying fuck about launch angles.

How does knowing the launch angle improve your understanding of the game if you’re watching the game?

If you’re actually watching the game (which is highly recommended) you can see it was a line drive or grounder or fly ball or a Texas Leaguer—apparently they hit a lot of flares in Texas—and the addition of the precise launch angle doesn’t add that much information.

I once asked former Royals hitting coach Kevin Seitzer the ideal launch angle and since I can’t find the story where I quoted him, we’re going to have to settle for a vague memory and my vague memory of the ideal launch angle was something in the high 20s like 28 degrees.

But one inning after Lorenzo Cain drove in one run by hitting a ball with a 30 degree launch angle, Astros catcher Juan Castro drove in two runs by hitting a ball with a launch angle of -6. (Any number with a minus sign in front is a grounder and Castro’s 2-RBI single traveled 18 feet before hitting the ground. On the other hand, it was going 100.3 MPH so it kept on going into centerfield. But I could see that it was smoked and whether it was going 99.7 MPH or 100.3 doesn’t change my perception.)

Launch angle and exit velocity and distance traveled are helpful if you’re not watching the game, but how does that information improve your viewing experience if you are?

So why show it on TV?

The media, in general, love analytics because it’s effortless (the numbers are generated for us) and we can quote launch angle and exit velocity and route efficiency and sound like experts. We’re not very critical of analytics because who wants to read about that crap so we just present them to our readers and viewers like Moses carved them into a stone scorecard.

We don’t understand WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and if you don’t believe me just ask a reporter to recite the formula without looking it up—it’s a very long formula and its advocates can’t agree on how to calculate it—and nobody knows what an “easily available replacement player” is and a Royals front office dude once said he wished he knew where to find them because the Royals would like to sign some.

Also…

If you read the entire WAR formula, at the end it says WAR “works best as an approximation” so what all these people are quoting is a fucking guesstimate which I can get from any coach without all the bullshit and he’ll probably tell me a funny baseball story at the same time.

The MLB site also informs me that after Castro’s single, Houston’s win probability is 71.5% and who needs to know that in a middle of game?

Gamblers.

So Pete Rose couldn’t get into the Hall of Fame because he gambled and now MLB is having three-ways with Draft Kings and FanDuel.

OK, so where were we before you unwittingly encouraged this unnecessary rant?

Right, after the Castro single the Astros are up 2-1 and in the 6^th inning will tack on an “insurance” run and now we’ll take a look at why that’s a Big Deal.

A Brief Digression on Insurance Runs

When you’re up by just one run, every batter can tie the game so you might pitch carefully, but when you’re up by two runs you can be super aggressive because the batter can hit the ball 500 feet with an exit-velocity of 212-MPH and knock over the scoreboard and break a car’s windshield in the parking lot and…

YOU’RE STILL WINNING.

And with a two-run lead you don’t need to worry as much about a runner, you want to concentrate on the guy at the plate—he’s the one who can hurt you—and don’t need to worry about a sac bunt because they won’t play for one down by two or bring the infield in with a runner on third or any of the other 101 things you need to consider with a one-run lead.

Insurance runs are a big deal and change the way a game is played.

So when the Astros tack on another run (and tack-on runs are huge) in the 6^th inning and 7^th innings the hill the Royals are trying to climb gets quite a bit steeper.

And Now, Some Armchair Managing

Fans love to second guess managers which mostly amounts to waiting to see how a managing move works out and then complaining about any move that doesn’t. As part of our continuing baseball education let’s look at one move Ned Yost made in Game 3 and what might have gone into his decision.

In the sixth inning Edinson Volquez gives up another run—it’s now 3-1—and Luis Valbuena is due up with a two outs and runner in scoring position.

Eddie’s thrown 87 pitches and Ned wants left-handed Danny Duffy to face left-handed Luis Valbuena. (There’s a reason left-handed hitters have a hard time hitting left-handed pitchers, but it would take a three-page explanation so we won’t get into why right now, just trust me: they do.)

Duffy has never faced Valbuena; the other lefty in the Royals bullpen—Franklin Morales—has pitched to Valbuena five times and gotten him out five times; which, if you check the numbers, is just about as good as you can do. (On the other hand, if four of those outs were screaming line drives, I’ll stand corrected.)

Those matchup numbers don’t make much difference because the Astros pinch hit for Valbuena; switch-hitting Marwin Gonzalez is sent to the plate instead.

If Ned thought the that’s the move the Astros would counter with, Marwin hits Danny at a .375 clip and is 0-for-1 off Morales. But if Ned brings in Morales maybe the Astros make a different counter move. (We are talking incredibly small sample sizes here, so keep that in mind.) This season Marwin has hit lefties better than righties, so toss that in your metrics Cuisinart as well.

Marwin swings at a high fastball from Danny, pops it up, inning over.

But the decision-making isn’t over.

Ned sends Danny Duffy back out for the seventh inning and right-handed Chris Carter homers on the first pitch he sees. Now it’s 4-1 and that will become a much bigger deal after Alex Gordon homers in the ninth.

OK, so why send lefty Danny back out for the seventh to face a right-handed hitter with 24 home runs?

This is Sunday, the Royals had a day off yesterday and if they win at least one game in Houston will get another day off on Tuesday, so theoretically all their relievers are rested and available and using one of them on Sunday won’t prevent them from pitching on Monday and Wednesday.

(If you’re starting to get confused, good. But hang on it gets more complicated.)

So Herrera, Madson and Davis should be available, it’s not the regular season; you don’t have to save your best relievers for the right situation. It’s October; every game is the right situation. And if you don’t win now you’re going to get a lot of days off.

Meanwhile…

Chris Carter was having a good day. He hit a line drive to left field in his first at bat, but then made the mistake of running on Alex Gordon’s arm and was cut down. In his second at bat Carter hit another line drive to left; this time down into the corner for a double.

So with Carter hot and the entire Royals bullpen available, Danny Duffy went back out to pitch to him. Look at Baseball Reference and you see Carter has faced Duffy 10 times, walked three times and has two hits:

Both home runs.

Carter is 0-for-4 off Luke Hochevar, 0-for-3 off Ryan Madson and 0-for-4 off Kelvin Herrera; all pitchers who seem to be available. Hochevar eventually replaces Duffy in that seventh inning, but only after Carter homered.

Now let’s throw in another factor: if Danny can get past the right-handed Carter (and you have to make this decision before you know he won’t) Danny could then face the left-handed Jason Castro, assuming you wouldn’t rather leave that job to your other lefty, Franklin Morales.

And once you start digging into matchup numbers from the Royals bullpen and the Astros bench, your head starts spinning.

So let’s keep it simple:

If Ryan Madson and Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis are your seventh, eighth and ninth-inning guys and they’re rested, why have Danny Duffy face Chris Carter? His home run made the score 4-1 and gave the Astros a cushion in the ninth inning.

In the regular season you don’t throw those guys in a game you’re losing—why waste good pitches in a lost cause—but this is the playoffs, there are plenty of days off and the end is in sight.

One final thing to think about:

I did all this top-notch managerial thinking while sitting on my couch at home (there might have been an Irish coffee involved) and there are always things the rest of us don’t know.

Like the night Ned had Luke Hochevar throw an unusual number of pitches and I was wondering why Ned kept sending Luke back out there and then found out they’d gotten a call that Luke’s wife was in labor and they were going to lose Luke for a week anyway. So why not have Luke throw a shitload of pitches and save the rest of the bullpen that night before he heads to the hospital to watch his wife pant and sweat and call him an asshole for getting her pregnant?

Sending Danny out for the 7^th was just one of the hundreds of decisions Ned had to make that day and once you start digging into it—“If I do this, they’ll do that and then I’ll have to do this other thing”—you feel like using your mind to bend spoons would be simple by comparison. I once asked Ned how far ahead he was managing during a ballgame and he said two or three innings.

The lesson here—assuming we choose to learn it and most people don’t—is this is way more complicated than we like to think and there will always be things we don’t know.

So keep that in mind before you boo a manager.

Have an Irish coffee instead, I can highly recommend them.

The Astros Bullpen

If there’s any bright spot to Game 3’s loss—and the Astros bullpen is about to become an issue—Luke Gregerson comes in to close the game and scuffles.

The first batter he sees in the ninth inning—Alex Gordon—homers. Then Alex Rios hits a deep drive to left center that’s caught. Alcides Escobar singles and Ben Zobrist hits a sharp groundball. The game ends when Gregerson strikes out Lorenzo Cain, but he does it with a hanging slider that Lorenzo somehow misses.

The more looks a team gets at relievers the better their chances of hitting them and maybe that’s why Ned didn’t use his Big Three, but he’s in Houston and I’m on my couch drinking Irish coffees so I can’t ask him.

Next Up:

Another wild ride with Yordano Ventura and one of the greatest comebacks in Royals history.