Game 6 of World Series Tuesday night was a quick study on how data analytics has impacted the game of baseball. The results suggest there needs to be balance between the old- and new-school approaches to the game.
Blake Snell, the ace pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, had been brilliant through five innings of Game 6 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mixing his wide repertoire of pitches (fastball, slider, change-up, and curveball), he kept the Dodgers off balance and stifled. Starting the bottom of the sixth, Snell got a quick popout to Center field by the leadoff hitter A.J. Pollock on Snell’s 70th pitch of the evening and his line looked like this — 1 hit, no runs, no walks, and 9 strikeouts through one out in the sixth inning.
“5 1/3, 2 hits, no walks, 9 strikeouts. I mean just blowing the Dodgers away,” San Francisco Giants television analyst Mike Krukow said on KNBR Thursday. “[Snell] didn’t look like this anytime during the season or during the playoffs. And he was just manhandling them, blowing them away.”
Then Austin Barnes, the No. 9 hitter in the Dodgers’ lineup, stepped to the plate. On a 1-1 count, Barnes hit a soft liner to center for a single for the Dodgers first hit since third-inning leadoff single by Chris Taylor. Tampa manager Kevin Cash emerged from the Rays’ dugout, went to the mound and asked for the ball from Snell. Snell was visibly angry and mouthed a couple expletives — and then reluctantly handed the ball to his manager.
On the television broadcast, FOX Sports announcer Joe Buck relayed a story from Cash.
“These guys (Rays pitchers) need short memories and thick skin because this is how we do it,” Buck said Cash told him.
But Cash’s move to his bullpen to replace Snell is where the analytics and feel for the game of baseball diverged.
Snell, at this point in the game, had thrown 73 pitches. The top of the Dodgers’ batting order — Mookie Betts, Cory Seager, and Justin Turner — were collectively 0 for 6 with six strikeouts for the game. The Dodgers had been baffled all night and the single from Barnes was not hit hard.
That stat line is part of analytics, too.
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Cash went to Nick Anderson who was brilliant during the regular season (16.1 IP, 26 strikeouts, 6 saves and a 0.55 ERA) but had struggled in the playoffs, having surrendered 8 earned run with 9 strikeouts and 4 walks in 14 1/3 innings.
Cash stuck to his script of using a bullpen that had enabled the Rays to win numerous one-run games during the season to go 40-20 en route to first place in the American League East.
FOX Sports color commentator, Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, said, “You had a rhythm pitcher in rhythm in Snell and there was nothing to change that unless you take him out and bring in another pitcher that has the same rhythm and obviously this was not the case with Anderson.”
Smoltz proved prophetic as Mookie Betts greeted Anderson with a double into the left-field corner on a 2-0 fastball from Anderson which sent Barnes to third.
Going with a plan that had worked so nicely during the season and during the playoffs — for the most part — was sound, but not in this situation. Analytics won out over intuition and it cost the Rays.
Cash is thought of highly as a manager. Many players are on record as being favorable toward their manager. They say he is a “player’s manager,” can relate to his players, and makes in-game decisions that they accept and can respect.
Until Tuesday night.
“Snell was commanding the game. There is not one stat, not one spreadsheet that can support the decision that can take that man out of the ballgame,” Krukow said during the KNBR interview.
If Cash had kept Snell in the game, it could have been a huge victory for baseball. Instead, he will be questioned for arguably one of the biggest blunders in World Series history.
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