“No manager in the league brings their closer in on the road in the ninth [in a tie game],” – Oli Marmol
On April 18, the Cardinals found themselves in a tied game, on the road, against the New York Mets. The inning was the ninth (the bottom, of course). Ryan Helsley was available but remained firmly implanted in the Cardinal bullpen. A lessor pitcher (Fernandez) took the mound and a few moments later, Francisco Lindor created an unexpected wave of dissension through Cardinal Nation. Not only because he unceremoniously ended the game with a walk-off HR, but he opened up the inevitable firestorm of “why?” and “why not?” questions that centered around the proper use of a closer.
Now to be pedantic, we’ll dispute the asserted fact that no other manager in the league uses their closer in that situation. As if to rub Oli’s nose in his assertion, just a few days later, Brewer’s manager Pat Murphy used his closer, in the ninth, in a tie game, on the road. Right there in Busch Stadium, right out in front of Oli. Take that! Now, of course, the gods being defied quickly resulted in justice served in its only form – cold and measured. Alas, the Brewer’s closer suffered the same fate as the Cardinals non-closer, a ninth-inning walk-off HR. The gods dunked Marmol and Murphy at the same moment in time! Baseball is indeed a humbling game.
Oli, not to be outdone, re-ignited controversy a few days after the Mets fiasco by choosing not to use over-used bullpen stalwart Phil Maton in a 1-1 tie game with the Braves, in which JoJo Romero was sent in and surrendered the ultimate game-winning runs in the bottom of the 8th inning (with an assist from familiar foil Ryan Fernandez), while Maton and Helsley played Crazy 8’s or whatever high leverage relievers do to pass time during tied games on the road.
Naturally, his explanation followed the threads of the earlier instance. Unknowingly, Oli was doubling down on an argument Murphy would publicly refute days later. You save your high leverage guys until you get a lead (on the road). This is a concept that got plenty of discussion on the boards, and it is clear that not everyone is on board with said approach. So, let’s dissect it and see what we can learn.
Starting with the Mets game. The reason you don’t want to use your closer is based on a couple of factors:
- Your win expectancy in tied game, 9th inning, on the road, is below 50%, so the odds are stacked against you. To be precise, at the start of the bottom of the 9th, the Cardinals win expectancy was 37%, basically 1 in 3. To be clear, when Brendan Donovan homered to lead off the top of the 9th, that homer made the game a 50-50 proposition. However, by the time Walker, Saggese and Pages struck out, the game had gone from a 50-50 proposition to a likely Met win.
- The closer can’t actually help you win. He can’t overcome the 3 Ks. The offense has to score. All a closer can do is make your odds less bad, meaning that even if he runs a clean 9th, the Cardinals odds of winning are no better than 50-50.
- If you burn your closer in the ninth inning of a tie game, and you get to extras and your offense does score (in other words, a lot has to go right), you now have no closer when you take this newly acquired lead to the bottom of the 10th and a runner is on second base to start the inning. The odds of this ending well are … not good. In fact, they are worse than your odds of the lesser reliever getting through the 9th (where he starts with no runners on).
- Because of the below 50-50 odds of winning at the outset of this journey, the smarter play is to use your lower leverage guys and hope they get you to extras, hope your offense scores and then use your closer bullet to bring home a win. Otherwise, live to fight another day.
- If you play it the other way, there are 3 possible outcomes. One, the closer gives the game away anyway (as Megill did when Murphy used his closer against the Managerial Code of Conduct), or two, the closer carries the game to extras, the offense scores and a lesser reliever brings home the win, or three, the offense scores (or doesn’t) and the lesser reliever is unable to contain the home team (explaining why they are the lesser reliever). In two of the three scenarios, the outcome still hinges on the lesser reliever and the argument goes, you might as well get that out of the way before burning the closer. In the third scenario, using the lesser reliever earlier would merely be the same bad result as the closer giving the game away. So, in reality, the manager is totally dependent on the lesser reliever either way.
Now, carry that logic on to the Braves game. In the same vein, when you are in the eighth inning of a tie game, you end up at the same place as the explanation for why you would not use Maton over Romero (instead of Helsley over Fernandez). Ignoring the lefty-righty match-ups for a moment, you can simply apply the same logic in the 8th as was applied in the 9th. First, at the start of the bottom of the 8th, the Cardinals win expectancy was 40%, well less than 50-50. So, you use the lesser reliever for the 8th, hoping to get a tie game to the ninth. If you used Maton in the 8th, you would be faced with who pitches the 9th if the game remains tied. Clearly Helsley pitches if the Cardinals get a lead. But you won’t want Helsley pitching if it remains tied (for reasons stated above), Maton is out, Leahy was already used, so who? Romero. So, the game hinges on Romero either way. By using Romero in the 8th, you increase his odds of success by fitting him with the preferable matchups (two lefties and a switch) and you save Maton for the top of the Braves order in the 9th. That is the better bet. I’m not saying it’s a winning bet, but it has better odds.
Also, on the idea of using lesser relievers earlier, in this case you provide your offense a shot to come back if said lessor reliever fails in the 8th, whereas a 9th inning failure is a walk-off loss. As run out in the scenario, the game hinged on the lower order reliever anyway. He failed. It happens. In this case, in the context of a long season, you’d rather have him fail before using Maton or Helsley, than after. You only get to use those top guys so many times in a long season before they wear down.
One argument against this approach bears some watching. In relatively small samples of data, visiting teams are winning extra-inning games at a just over 50% clip since the Commissioner’s runner was added. This is a new wrinkle. This could be small sample size or a new signal. The data is small enough yet where it won’t affect overall win expectancy numbers for tied in the ninth, road game scenarios developed on years of history, but there is some potential that the odds of the visiting team winning have shifted about 50-50 with this ghost runner rule. That might cause a re-think of the managerial approach. But of course, change in baseball occurs at a glacial pace. But the fundamental question remains. Do you want to burn your best reliever on 50-50 odds where he can’t control. or focus his premium stuff on games where the odds are better and the outcome is in his control (pitching with a lead in the last inning).
One of the things about baseball is the opportunity to second-guess the Manager, which primarily comes with his use of the relievers. What is super difficult is to be objective – we assess his decisions after we know the outcomes. Of course, we know he shouldn’t have used Romero against those 3 hitters! And he shouldn’t have thrown Fernandez against Lindor! How could anything else occur but a walk-off??? Unfortunately for Oli, he doesn’t get to know the outcome when he gets to decide (ahead of time). All he can really do is play the odds and balance the near-term needs of the game at hand against long-term over-use issues of the players involved.
While I think his public portrayal of what every manager in baseball would do was a bit off (as demonstrated days later), I think a fair assessment is he made the standard call in both cases and lost. Indicative not of poor management, but of poor bullpen construction (ie. not enough talent).
Thoughts?