A couple of days ago I posted about the Nationals' decision to walk Jimmy Rollins to get to Placido Polanco while loading the bases in the process. The comments are quiet mixed in terms of support or disdain for the move.

I thought I'd go ahead and research this a bit more, using Win Expectancy calculations.

Let's start by looking at that Phillies-Nationals game. (click for box score)

It turns out that the decision by Riggleman was pretty much irrelevant. I don't mean that Polanco's slam made it irrelevant, but rather that the Nationals had a poor chance of winning no matter what they did. When Rollins came to the plate, the Nats were already losing 7-1 with 2 runners on base and the WE for the Phillies was something like 98.5%. (Note the box score shows a rounded number of 99%.) Once Rollins walked, the odds went to about 99.0%. Polanco's HR pushed it to something like 99.9%. No matter how you look at it, the Nats had a really poor chance of winning that game. I still don't agree with Riggleman's decision because there were 2 outs in the inning and it seems to me that trying to get Rollins out with first base open is easier than trying to get Polanco out with the bases loaded. (Although, watch as I somewhat contradict myself by looking at 2009 NL batting splits. The batting average with -23 and 123 is pretty similar. Maybe Riggleman thought for whatever reason that he could get a better matchup with Polanco and simply had a better shot of getting him out.)

So let's look at another game from the list in my original post. In a game last year, Nyjer Morgan was walked in the top of the 6th with the game tied at 3. That's a very different situation from the Phils-Nats game. The Pirates had tied the game earlier in the inning and Morgan actually came to bat with runners on first and third. After two balls, Jaramillo stole second base, opening up first. Bud Black decided to have Morgan put on intentionally with two more balls. Undoubtedly, that was the right decision by Black. Once the count gets to 2-0, I'm sure you'd rather load the bases and get a fresh count on the next batter than to continue to pitch at a 2-0 count with runners on -23. (In fact, knowing what we know now, that was a bad time for Jaramillo to steal just because it took Morgan out of a favorable batting count. But Jaramillo ran when the count was just 1-0 and maybe it was a hit and run--who knows.)

Check out another game involving the Pirates from last year. John Russell elected to intentionally walk Stephen Drew with the -23 situation and it actually didn't change the WE at all...I wonder if Russell knew that? With no change in the WE (the Diamondbacks were at 72% chance of winning both before and after the walk) it was clearly a good choice if he felt the matchup against Romero was better for getting a double play. It didn't work out for the Pirates, but I can't argue with Russell's decision.

In this Twins-Rangers game, the intentional walk was another case of a batter stealing second when the count on the batter went to 2-0, so the batter got put on intentionally.

I've only looked at a handful of these games, but it seems than I need to admit I was wrong. So far we've seen:

• the team was already hopelessly behind, the walk didn't change it, so it was a matchup decision
• the game was close but the walk didn't change the WE, so it was a matchup decision
• a baserunner advancing and unfavorable count forced the manager's hand

So, I spoke to soon when I questioned this move. Clearly there are times when it makes a lot of sense.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 8:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.