The 2020 World Series

[Frayed Knot]

So La-La Land finally won for real, eh?

[whippoorwill]

Is this over yet?

[Edgy MD]

I don't think it's as true to describe the instances of when Snell "made it to the sixth," as it is to describe those as when "he was only allowed to make it to the sixth."



His fifth inning ERA was fine. His sixth-inning numbers were bad, but again, we're looking at 11 plate appearances.



The issue to me is a manager and organization getting so trapped in their own ideology that they work against their own interests, even as they know they are doing so.

[metsmarathon]

yeah, in my opinion, any time you bring in a reliever, you're rolling the dice on whether or not he has it that day, and the most ready thing you have to compare that risk against is how well your current pitcher is performing.

[batmagadanleadoff]

If the Rays had won last night, tonight's game would've been canceled because of Turner's positive covid test. And now with the season over, we might not get to find out if other Dodgers or Rays caught covid.

[Frayed Knot]

And now with the season over, we might not get to find out if other Dodgers or Rays caught covid.

I think if Blake Snell "got the 'rona" we'd probably hear about it.

[smg58]

Edgy MD wrote: I don't think it's as true to describe the instances of when Snell "made it to the sixth," as it is to describe those as when "he was only allowed to make it to the sixth." His fifth inning ERA was fine. His sixth-inning numbers were bad, but again, we're looking at 11 plate appearances. The issue to me is a manager and organization getting so trapped in their own ideology that they work against their own interests, even as they know they are doing so.

Well you can certainly make the argument that Snell has been babied more than was prudent all along. And even when he won the Cy Young Award two years ago, he averaged less than six innings a start. And maybe that's the real issue here. We have teams telling their starters "your velocity is down a notch compared to the first inning, the batters have all had two good looks at you, it's time for you to take a seat" when perhaps they should be saying "your velocity is down a notch compared to the first inning, the batters have all had two good looks at you, it's time for you to learn how to pitch."

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah, there's a difference between using analytics and being a slave to them.

The stats show that Snell's effectively is diminished once the third time around the batting order starts but:

a) as SMG and others point out, that's based on not just a fairly small sample size but in many ways on an intentionally small one

that tendency, even to the extent that you consider it "true", doesn't necessarily describe last night's version of Snell.



I suspect that there have been few games where he's entered the 6th allowing just one hit while notching nine K's on just 69 pitches. It's really been the pitch count that has most often

tripped him up so when that lineup is coming around for the third time he's often at or closing in on the century mark already. Eight times this (reg) season he pitched five or more innings

-- and "five or more" means 5.0, 5.1, or 5.2 as he never saw the 7th inning even once in 11 starts -- and in only two of those did he have a (just barely) lower than average number of pitches

[70 thru 5.0; 73 in 5.1]. Everything else was over the 15 p/IP threshold including three times up over 100 which means he had essentially done seven innings of work just to get to a 6th inning

which he was never allowed to finish.

Last night he was masterful but that didn't seem to be taken into consideration when the decision was made to remove. That decision was likely made well ahead of time and no one was willing

or able to change course on the fly or even slightly alter it. Then throw in the fact that his replacement, Nick Anderson, had been good most of the year but not this week and they pretty much

got what they bargained for.



All that said, the pitching change only goes so far when your offense scores once on the 4th pitch of the game then takes the rest of the night off. In the 1st inning they had a run in, two on, and

still just one out but didn't score, then got two more on in the 2nd and left them there. After that, the TBR offense consisted of a two-out single in the 5th and a two-out single in the 7th.

iow, the Rays, in a game where they had the dominant starter, were ironically beaten by a team playing a bullpen game. The 'closer', Urias, wound up going the longest (2.1) of any of LAD's

seven pitchers.

[Edgy MD]

Had the game gone any further, Cash was getting ready to pinch-hit Simpson for Strawberry. WHOAH!!

[Fman99]

Whole thing overshadowed by the fact that Justin Turner is a big dumb mook. So there's that, at least.