A Baseball Appetizer

Some stuff to think about until the Royals play tonight…

Like a lot of you I’m watching as many playoff games as possible and here are a few of the things I’ve noticed so far.

Things you’ll probably see again and the reason I started doing this in the first place was because baseball is way more interesting when you have a clue what you’re watching and players and coaches explained stuff to me and now I’m trying to pass along that information and we’ll start with…

Openers

In Game 1 of their Division Series against the Guardians, the Detroit Tigers used an “opener” and he “shit the bed” which is an actual baseball term for pitching poorly so feel free to use it next time you have your in-laws, a pack of Girl Scouts and a Catholic priest over to watch a ballgame.

Tyler Holton, who rarely pitches more than three innings, started the game for the Tigers and gave up four runs in the bottom of the first inning and after that the Tigers never threatened, which is OK by me because their manager is A.J. Hinch who was also managing the Houston Astros when THEY WERE CHEATING and Hinch got suspended for a year and it tells you a lot about baseball in general and the Detroit Tigers in particular when they immediately hire a guy who has a history of going along with the program.  

(Hinch says he didn’t start or approve of the plan to cheat, but didn’t do much to stop it which I believe is the same excuse a lot of German citizens were offering after WW2.)

And now that I’ve compared the Houston Astros to the Nazis…

Teams sometimes use a reliever as an “opener” because if he faces the opposition’s best three hitters to open a game then the “starter” might not see those hitters three times that day and the best explanation I’ve heard for it is this: starters are like marathoners (they throw lots of different pitches, face the lineup multiple times, have to pace themselves and often get off to a slow start and have high first-inning ERAs) and relievers are like sprinters (they throw fewer pitches and put the pedal to the metal from the first pitch).

So let the opener get you off to a good start and then the starter comes in and faces the bottom of the order.

But as I’ve already said multiple times and seem destined to repeat, pitchers don’t have the same stuff every night and intentionally using more of them increases the chance that one of them will pitch poorly and that’s what Tyler Holton did.  

Infield In

In certain situations with a runner on third base and less than two outs, a team might bring their infield in (closer to home plate) hoping they can field a grounder and throw out a runner trying to score, but bringing them closer to the plate cuts down on their side-to-side range and the Royals scored a run against the Yankees when a semi-routine grounder got past New York’s drawn-in infield.

On-field reporter (and, man, they shouldn’t have reporters in the dugouts during playoff games because coaches and players have more important things to do than answer inane questions) J.P. Morosi (who seems to grin a disturbing amount of time no matter the subject) talked about Yankees manager Aaron Boone being more aggressive about bringing the infield in, but in-the-booth-where-he-belongs announcer Ron Darling corrected him and said he heard that philosophy came from the Yankees analytics department, not Boone.

These days a bunch of teams treat their managers like Baseball Hand Puppets and if you won’t go along with that, odds are pretty good you won’t be a manager.

(The Texas Rangers are one exception and GM Chris Young — more on him shortly — assured manager Bruce Bochy he’d get to make his own decisions.)

Outfield Depth

During Game 1 of the Wild Card series against Baltimore, a pop fly landed in front of the Royals right fielder and Ben McDonald – a former pitcher and current announcer – said it was better to have a ball land in front of you than behind you, which made me think of the Royals outfield philosophy when I was still covering them.

At that time the Royals thought bad outfielders played deep because it’s easier to come in on a ball than go back and if you play deep in a park the size of Kauffman you can get dinked and doinked to death by flares and weak pop-ups and we blame that on the pitcher and not the outfielders too timid to play shallow.

Baseball guru and winner of Best Head of Hair in the Big Leagues for six years running, Rusty Kuntz, said the Royals positioned themselves for a good pitch, not a bad one.

If the ball fell in front of an outfielder the pitcher made a good pitch and should be rewarded, but if a ball was hit over an outfielder’s head that was on the pitcher.

Everything in baseball is based on percentages and a lot more balls are going to fall in front than behind, so you might want to position yourself for the most likely thing you’ll have to defend and live with it when someone beats the odds and smokes one. 

The Contact Play

We’ve already seen this several times in the playoffs and a “contact play” is used with a runner on third base and one out; if the hitter makes contact the runner heads for home.

If the ball is hit directly at someone and the runner gets thrown out, you live with it.

With runners on first and third you have to put on a contact play because the alternative is standing on third base and possibly watching the opposition turn a double play, so you want to make the defense choose between getting the runner at home or trying to turn two.

Looks awful when it doesn’t work, looks like great aggressive base running when it does, but it’s not a dumb play.  

Pitching Duels and Road ERAs

Lucky for me I knew quite a few ballplayers before I ever started covering the Royals and asked them what they liked and didn’t like about reporters and one of the best pieces of advice I was given by a ballplayer turned coach was:

“Remember, it’s conversations not interviews.”

In an interview the reporter tends to have a list of questions and way too many of them don’t listen to the answers and go right to their next question no matter what the ballplayer says even if he admits to being a serial killer in the off-season.

In a conversation you listen to the answer to your first question and then pursue anything interesting no matter where it leads and I’m thinking of this right now because I once went over to ask Wade Davis and Chris Young (the guy who became the Rangers GM) to ask a question which I no longer remember and then they started talking about road ERAs and why the visiting starting pitcher has it worse:

The home starter knows exactly when he’ll start throwing – it says it right there on the tickets – so he can time his pregame warm up to end at the exact right time, but the visiting starter doesn’t know for sure when he’ll pitch and if an “opener” like Tyler Holton has a long inning the visiting pitcher is sitting in the dugout cooling off and when he finally gets to the mound he might “shit the bed” too.

Wade and Chris then talked about how opposing pitchers hurt or help each and when a pitcher is having quick innings and stays in rhythm he’s helping the opposition pitcher do the same.

Which helps explain pitching duels — and we’ve already seen a few of them in the playoffs — or why one pitcher will have a long inning and give up runs and then the next half inning the other pitcher gives them right back.

So then I asked them if they ever watched the Royals have a long rally and score runs in bunches, but thought “OK, that’s enough” and they both looked kind of sheepish and said some version of:

“Well you always appreciate the runs, but at some point you kinda feel like I need to get back out there.”

OK, that’s it for today and I hope some of this helps make the games more entertaining and I once read that an owner of the New York Yankees (back when they were beating the crap out of everybody and going to the World Series every year) was asked his idea of an entertaining ballgame and he said: “When we score 10 runs in the first inning and then slowly pull away.”

And I’m guessing most of us wouldn’t mind watching the Royals do the same thing tonight.