In-Game Strategy

What the DH Killed Off

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Old-School In-Game Baseball Strategy

I had a similar event take place in the last two Diamond Mind games I played.  Both involved managerial strategy, and both involved having to make decisions that you simply don’t see in the modern game of baseball.

The question is when the appropriate time is to take out the pitcher.  This isn’t really much of a question these days, since it’s so rare for starting pitchers to make it to the 7th inning or beyond.  However, when you’re playing with teams in earlier, more pitching-friendly eras, these problems come up fairly frequently.

It’s kind of interesting that both of these scenarios would come up on opening day.  I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to see a lot more of this as we move along.

Dick Fowler

Dick Fowler came up to bat here in the bottom of the 7thinning of a tight game.  The Athletics were trailing, 3-2, with nobody on base and only one out.

The question here is whether it’s worth it to sacrifice the pitcher for the uncertain chance that a pinch hitter could get on base and help extend the inning.  Fowler was already 1 for 2 in the game, which was certainly an argument for leaving him in.  Without a pre-defined modern bullpen with its array of setup men and innings specialists, going to the bullpen this early really takes a risk with it.

It took me a few minutes to finally come to a decision.  Among other things, I had to figure out how many pitches Fowler had thrown.  This isn’t as easy to find in Diamond Mind as it should be; I finally found what I was looking for in the boxscore, of all places:

Now, if you’re a purist, you’ll note that there is absolutely no way that a real manager in 1949 would care that Fowler had only thrown 98 pitches by this point.  The correct call would likely have involved balancing how his arm felt with the faith that you had (or didn’t have) in your bullpen.  It’s kind of hard to model that in game.

Fowler wasn’t pitching especially well, as you can see from this boxscore snippet.  6 walks in 7 innings is not particularly effective by anybody’s definition.  Only allowing 4 hits isn’t bad, but we were losing, after all.  There is also a good argument to make for going for offense while at home.

In the end, I decided to leave Fowler in, figuring that the Athletics bullpen would probably give up more runs if we took him out.  He didn’t get a hit, but the Athletics did tie the game.

Was that the right call?  Would you have done something different?

Virgil Trucks

Almost the exact same situation took place in my next game.  Virgil Trucks was the pitcher this time.

As you can see, we were in the throes of a particularly tight contest – a 3-3 game in the bottom of the 8th.  The Tigers had a runner on first with two men out.  Trucks is a real nothing of a hitter – the sort of pitcher that convinced the American League to finally take up the Designated Hitter back in 1973.

I paused again to consult the boxscore:

This time around the decision was a bit easier to make.  Trucks had pitched a bit more effectively than Fowler, though the 10 base hits isn’t exactly something to be proud of.  He had just come off a really rough top of the 7th inning in which his wildness allowed the White Sox to come back to tie the game.

I’m not a huge proponent of looking only at pitch count, though I do know that it’s important in Diamond Mind.  150 pitches is quite a bit, though – in real life the manager would probably have suspected that he was out of gas.

And so I sent in a pinch hitter.

In the end, Detroit didn’t score, and the game wound up going to extra innings.

The same questions apply here.  Was that the right call?  Would you have left him in?  Should we have tried to push Trucks to pitch a complete game?

Strategy

Along with all the criticism that the modern “three true outcome” version of baseball has elicited, we should note that a lot of traditional strategy is completely missing in today’s game.

Neither of these situations would have even come up these days, regardless of the league.  There’s no need to weigh the pros and cons of taking out the pitcher for a bit of offensive juice if the pitcher’s not hitting.  And besides, even with no designated hitter you’d likely be looking at one of a string of relievers coming up to hit, rather than one of the best pitchers on your team.

I suppose that modern bullpen tactics are more “correct” from a gamification point of view.  Specialization usually results in improved efficiency, after all.  And yet, I really feel that we’re missing out on something special when choices like this are taken away.  Without managerial decision making, a risky roll of the dice is replaced by push-button management, complete with ready-made decisions and extremely predictable outcomes.

Maybe more people would watch if situations like this would come back.