Kimmi

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, I am your biggest fan.

These people might not be having a beer with you on the porch, but I can promise you that these people have jobs in the front offices of every MLB team. Why? Because their stuff works.

I think you would be surprised at how much respect numbers people have for the human element.

I would agree with you that there are certain factors, like Pedro being gassed, that aren't taken into account here. Even with that, the chances one way or the other aren't as significant as some people think. I also agree that it defies common sense because of the 'after the fact' thing. Once the outcome is known, the win expectancy can change significantly.

No one is saying that a manager necessarily makes that many decisions in one game. They are saying that each decision (before the actual outcome) has such little impact that a manager would have to make that many bad decisions in one game to be responsible for the loss.

Believe me, I have never been one to underestimate the importance of the human element. Neither do most of the stat geeks. I completely agree that there are many things that stats cannot capture. That said, I still don't believe that a manager's decision has as much impact over the course of a season that most people believe it does. I have never been one to blame a game, much less an entire series on one 'bad' move made by the manager. There is far too much that goes on in any one game to assign a loss to a manager because, for instance, he put Abad into the game instead of leaving Barnes in. I am also very sure that had Farrell left Barnes in and he gave up the HR (which is not an unlikely scenario because Cano is pretty good), there would be plenty of people criticizing Farrell for not using Abad.

Then Farrell was a genius in last night's game? I agree with you that if a move doesn't work, it is up for debate whether an alternate move would have worked. It's nothing more than second guessing, and it doesn't mean that the original move was necessarily wrong.

It is based off of win expectancy. The reasons why using win expectancy makes sense are: 1. A manager really has no control over a player's performance once the player is on the field. In other words, a manager could make the absolute right move and the player just doesn't execute. 2. No one knows what would have happened if a different move had been made. So if Farrell had pulled Price after he gave up the HR, the BP might have blown the game anyway. The reason why this idea seems so absurd is because once Abad gave up the 3 run HR, the win expectancy changed drastically. So yes, that 'event' had a huge impact on the game. But before starting that inning, the difference between any decision that Farrell might have made was probably a 1-2% change in win expectancy. The rest is hindsight and second guessing.

Have to agree Moon, I think that was a pretty big game.

It's funny how Farrell gets so much blame for a loss, but he gets very little credit when all of his moves work out brilliantly.

It's not just the number of pitches that need to be considered, but also the getting up and sitting down and getting back up again. How often to closers pitch in 3 different innings in the same game?

There are no doubt many decisions to be made every game. They all impact a game, but not as much as one would think. Here is what Mitchel Lichtman has to say on the topic: Before you go ballistic when a manager makes a strategic error (you think) and his team loses presumably "because" of it........ It takes around 50 to 200 bad manager decisions (bullpen, pinch hitter, IBB, bunt, etc.) before he costs his team ONE win. Here is an article that does a good job of explaining the impact of each managerial decision: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/10/21/9574081/the-impact-of-managerial-mistakes And the summary of that article if you don't want to read the whole thing: Again, I could keep going, but I hope the point is clear. When this game was happening, these felt like three pivotal decision points, where the game had the potential to be lost or won based in part on mistakes made by the manager. That's technically true, but as these three cases show, it's in very small part. Managerial tactics matter, but not much.

I appreciate these quotes. Basically, they are saying that managing the players and the clubhouse are more important than the in game decisions, which has always been my opinion.

Saying that Farrell's moves didn't work is one thing. That's kind of obvious. Saying that Farrell's moves were wrong because the team lost is something entirely different, and incorrect. That would be like saying that it was wrong to have Papi in the line up every game the team lost. Just because a move does not work does not mean it was the wrong move. And just because a move works does not mean that it was the right move.

Weaver had it more or less right. Momentum has no predictive value.

Our 10 losses since the All Star break have been by a total of 16 runs. That makes for an extremely frustrating stretch, but as I keep saying, it's a better sign for the team than if they were getting beat by larger margins.

Bill Chuck ‏@BillyBall The @RedSox are 58-48 - the same as in 1967 Miracle Season, in 1990 Div Champ season, and in the "Break the Curse" Season of 2004

Enough of this losing crap. It's time for our offense to regain its dominance. Let's go!

Bummer. I remember doing that when I'm not on summer vacation.

That is the most whack logic I've seen in a long time.

To me, our lineup just feels so different when we have 2 of our regulars out. I understand the need for resting players. Hanley's wrist injury is coming at an inopportune time, especially if he can't play against the Dodgers and Papi has to play first base. We need to win tonight's game, then take 2 of 3 from the Dodgers. If we can accomplish that, I will consider this road trip a 'success'.

We have 9 games left with the Os and 6 games left with the Jays, so we just need to stay within striking distance. Unfortunately, we have losing records against both of them.

Good call, but you jinxed him.

On this road trip, our offense is averaging 3 runs/game. OTOH, our pitching has an ERA of 2.88. Go figure. Another fine pitching performance gone to waste.

We resuscitated the Tigers also. We have a knack for doing that.