How big a sacrifice???

Awwww. Well the winning streak stalls at 11 games. I'm not too upset though. It was a good run. And I was a bit nervous about Lee Dae Jin being the pitcher. However, they lost to my second favourite team and the big blow as well as the save were scored by my two pals on the team, Garcia and Atkins respectively. So it coulda been worse.

And tonight they're back to their winning ways with Guttormson. I think the more impressive stat is only 4 losses in their last 24 games! That's gonna get you up the rankings. And, by Jove, look where they are! First place. Awesome! I couldn't be happier with their play.

Well.... I wouldn't go that far. I've harped on this before but tonight in the 6th inning the first batter, Lee Hyun Gon got a single. With a guy on first and no out what is Jo Bum Hyun's knee-jerk reaction? Of course - sacrifice bunt. Even though the score was 6-2 for Kia at the time. That's right even with a four run lead and 12 outs left in the game, Jo decided to hand one of those outs over to the Samsung Lions. The final score was 9-2 so in hindsight it was obviously the wrong thing to do but that won't phase Jo. He'll do it again tomorrow. He does it once or twice a game. Like clockwork.

What I want to do is try to explain why this strategy is so bad. I'm going to get into more detail and leave absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind that it's a losing strategy. But I'm afraid THIS won't phase Jo either. There are reasons for that that we'll get into later. But for now look at this.

Anyone know what that is? It's what they call an "expected run matrix." Stats have been kept in baseball for eons and these numbers are backed up by so many stats in so many games that they won't likely change a 10th of a percent in the next hundred years, no matter what happens in the game. They are as close to scientific numbers as you can get in baseball. Hard, fast, facts. And what they say is the percentages of getting a run with no outs and a guy on first are 0.8968. When you make a perfect sacrifice bunt, give up an out and move the guy over to second the percentages of scoring DROP to 0.6911. That's not just a little drop. If you figure these numbers as baseball averages it's like taking 210 points off a guy's average. That's a huge drop!

These, remember, are just probability that the guy will score. These numbers don't take into account all the OTHER things that can happen that instantly make the sacrifice bunt a waste. For instance, (and this happens a LOT to the Tigers), if the guy after the bunter walks, the sac. bunt is nullified because the guy on first would have been forced to second on the walk anyway. Same thing if he gets hit by a pitch or gets any kind of hit that doesn't advance the runner from second to third.

Also if the next batter hits a homerun or a triple the bunt was a waste because even without it the guy on first would have scored. You could even include a double in some cases.

But all these are speculative so are not considered reason enough for people to believe the bunt isn't effective. We can't say for certain if the person who sacrificed would have achieved the same success. That's the argument.

Okay then let's look at some of the possible reasons for sac. bunting. The big fear is that with a guy on first your chances of the next guy hitting into a double play go up. Well of course they go up infinitely since you can't hit into a double play with NObody on base. You may laugh but this IS the reasoning that makes the sac. bunt so attractive to some coaches. Painfully obvious though it is.

Again they've kept stats and although I don't have them handy, here's an oversimplified version of what I'm talking about and I have no reason to doubt that the results would be very similar over a larger sample. Even including the double play possibility, letting the batter hit had a 2.5 times greater run value than the sac. bunt.

But to understand why it's so much better, let's look at the details. Let's THINK about it instead of assuming that the people who use it have done the thinking for us. ANY coach, in fact anyone who knows anything about baseball would rather have an extra out than an extra base. A monkey could do that reasoning. An extra base can get you a maximum of one extra run and the stars all have to be correctly alligned for that to happen. An extra out can bring 12 more guys to the plate and score you a DOZEN extra runs. A sacrifice bunt trades an extra base for an out. This is why it's called a "sacrifice" bunt. It's a BIG sacrifice!

What else is sacrificed. Not just the out. There are easily 10 similar or better things that could happen to a batter who is swinging away to get him on base or advance the runner on first that are infinitely less likely to happen to the successful sac. bunter. 1. a hit 2. a walk 3. hit by pitch 4. wild pitch 5. passed ball 6. stolen base 7. strikeout + stolen base when catcher misses the ball 8. pitcher balk 9. hit and run 10. any error by the fielding team 11. you can foul off 25 pitches and tire out the pitcher 12. an out advancing the runner. Okay there's an even dozen.

There are bad things that can happen to a hitter like a strikeout, hitting into a double play or getting out without advancing the runner but these things can and DO happen to the sacrifice bunter too.

And one final thing a lot of people don't think about: if a batter's average is .300 that just means he has a 30% chance of getting a hit. His chances of hitting or having something better happen than a sacrifice bunt go up significantly when you consider none of those things on the list of 12 figure into a players batting average. So telling a guy with a .300 average like Kim Weon Seop to sacrifice bunt is taking away at least a 40% chance, (probably closer to 50%), that something will happen equal to or better than a sac. bunt and throwing it away on about a 10% chance that the sac. bunt will work.

This is so obviously bad strategy that you might think, (like me), that there is NEVER a good time to do it. And you'd be right. But some people think that in certain situations late in the game when you are down by a run and you only need ONE run, or when a low average hitter is up like a pitcher, it's smart. Here in Asia they don't need any of that. When the first batter gets on it's a surprise if the next guy DOESN'T bunt. And, yes, that is just plain bad strategy. But there are some reasons why it happens.

I think possibly the best way to stop Jo Bum Hyun from doing it might be to tell him that it's a very Japanese thing to do. They do it even more in Japan. It drives foreign baseball fans crazy. But Japanese fans sometimes even CHEER for it! Like many things in Japan it has to do with "face" I'm told. You see to get a player into "scoring position", (second base), even if it's bad strategy, it saves the manager face with fans ensuring them that he tried to give them a better chance of scoring. Even though empirically he vastly lowered the player's chance of scoring. The facts are inconsequential in matters of face.

I have a feeling that in Korea, where I have found over the years that appearance is in many areas FAR more important than reality, it's similar. In fact there's a Gilette commercial played between innings when you watch the games that has a Korean guy who can't be more than 14 years old scraping shaving cream off his face that has never had, and in all likelihood never WILL have whiskers. But it sure looks like a smooth shave!

Maybe the coaches think the fans don't know it's a stupid strategy and WANT them to sacrifice bunt. I haven't heard anyone but myself booing the sac bunt at Kia Tigers games. So there might be something there.

Or maybe it's just another part of the huge mythology of Asia. There is so much crap happening here that is based solely on faith and inexplicably a lot of foreigners' faith is stronger than the Asians. One extreme example would be the many North Koreans who believe that Kim Jong Il got god-like results his first time on the golf course. Including 5 holes-in-one! Now I don't expect a lot of people outside North Korea believe that but there are loads of people who trust in Asian myths for the mere reason that so many Asians BELIEVE they are true.

I'm not going to give too many examples but if you come here you will see them. I once believed the Asians had superior education systems. That was, in baseball parlance, WAY out in left field. And Asians believe the way to beat the larger, faster, more powerful western baseball players is to play "smallball." This is supposedly a more strategic, thinking man's game. But as we can see, there's no substance at all to THIS part of it.

But I suppose it's one thing we'll have to get used to even though it hurts the team. It doesn't matter that much to me as long as the Tigers keep on winning. But it sure is frustrating to watch!

Anyway, keep it up Tigers. Win despite the smallball myth. Go Cats go!

Back From Vacation - Kia FIRST PLACE!!!

I'm not one to toot my own horn but... TOOT TOOT TOOT! Let me draw your attention to the bottom of my first post here where I wrote that the Tigers will go on a long winning streak and move into first place. Lo and behold it happened. They are as hot as a firecracker right now! AND in first place. Too bad this all happened while I was in Thailand and Cambodia. :(

I am watching the game today on my computer. I had some stuff to do today, being my first day back from vacation, so couldn't go to the stadium. Kim Sang Hyun just got his second homer of the game. He's now leading the league in RBI's too. And if I may draw your attention to my previous statement that he'll be the M.V.P. this year, allow me to indulge once more: TOOT TOOT! :)

I also saw a few other things that were sights for sore eyes: Lee Yong Gyu is back in the leadoff hitter position. GREAT to see him back! I saw Yoon Suk Min's picture on the Tiger website and he got a victory the other day. VERY nice to see. And I'm not sure if Kia finally got rid of that dead weight coach Jo but I've seen a few camera views of some new guy wearing a Tiger uni. An older guy. Coaching age. Is Jo sick, on temporary leave or did the owners finally shitcan him? I sure hope it's the latter! And that would CERTAINLY explain their recent success. Because, if I can draw your attention to a few other entries in which I explained how a team that doesn't like its coach behaves and suggested the Tigers might just BE one of those teams, ahem, TOOT TOOT TOOOOT! :D

I'm gonna watch the rest of this game. Surprise, surprise, the Tigers are winning! And I'm gonna eat some mashed potatoes and Shake n' Bake chicken. I brought some of that back from Thailand.

I am VERY happy to see the Tigers where they belong. Hope they can continue this great play all the way to V-10!!! GO CATS GO!!!