In Sport 7 of the ALCS on Monday night time, John Schneider’s Blue Jays pulled off a dramatic comeback within the backside of the seventh inning that despatched them to their first World Collection in 32 years. The heroics got here courtesy of George Springer, who hit a go-ahead three-run residence run. However first, Schneider himself made an enormous choice within the high of the inning. With two outs and nobody on base, Cal Raleigh stepped up. Two innings earlier, he had smashed a solo shot to provide Seattle a 3-1 lead. Schneider wasn’t keen on going through him; he put up 4 fingers and known as for the intentional stroll.
Deliberately strolling somebody with the bases empty is a press release of sturdy truth: We completely can’t permit this individual to hit a house run. To be truthful, that’s positively how Schneider felt in that second; a house run would have been backbreaking for his group’s probabilities. Raleigh hit 60 of them within the common season, so he’s clearly a fairly cheap man to worry if you’re particularly afraid of homers. However Josh Naylor, due up subsequent, is an efficient hitter, too. And baserunners are unhealthy usually. What did the maths say about this transfer?
I threw projections for Raleigh, Naylor, and pitcher Kevin Gausman into my matchup mannequin to search out out. Splits are much less of a difficulty right here than regular as a result of Raleigh is a switch-hitter, Naylor is a lefty, and Gausman is a righty with sturdy reverse splits in his profession. In different phrases, it was an affordable matchup for just about all people. My mannequin says that Raleigh would hit a house run off of Gausman simply over 6% of the time. That’s a ton! League common for lefties going through righties is a mere 3.4%. It spit out comparable projections for different outcomes – 4.4% likelihood of a double, 23% likelihood of a fly out, and so forth – and by summing all of them up and figuring out the win likelihood, I get a 20.5% likelihood of the Blue Jays profitable the sport with Raleigh coming to the plate in opposition to Gausman. These homers are the large draw back; the remainder of Raleigh’s vary of outcomes options loads of strikeouts, and his projected OBP is round .290. This matches with Raleigh’s basic sport; he may get you, but when he doesn’t, you’ve gotten a good shot of placing him out. He’s a increase/bust participant, in different phrases.
Raleigh didn’t get to bat, after all, so I additionally ran a second simulation of Naylor in opposition to Gausman. Naylor is way much less of an influence hitter than Raleigh (so is sort of everybody), however he does challenge for the next on-base proportion. Moreover, he bought to bat with a runner on first base, which makes all of his hits extra threatening. A single for Raleigh, with nobody on base, has primarily no worth. A single for Naylor places a runner in scoring place, a a lot larger deal. In math phrases, a Raleigh single would have value the Blue Jays round half a proportion level of win expectancy relative to “impartial.” A Naylor single (or stroll) could be value extra like 1.5 proportion factors. Likewise, all of Naylor’s constructive outcomes would grow to be higher with a runner on base to juice them up, whereas his outs wouldn’t get any worse.
Stack all of his projected outcomes collectively (I challenge Naylor for a .311 OBP in opposition to Gausman, who is de facto good in opposition to lefties), and the mannequin says that when Naylor confronted Gausman with a runner on base, the Blue Jays projected to win solely 20.2% of the time. That’s narrowly worse than the 20.5% likelihood they’d in opposition to Raleigh, however actually, it’s inside the margin of error given what number of approximations have for use to populate my mannequin. The official FanGraphs conclusion: Schneider most likely shouldn’t have walked Raleigh there, but it surely was shut sufficient that I might be uncomfortable saying it was a nasty choice. It actually didn’t assist Toronto’s probabilities of profitable, although. Credit score goes to Gausman — who walked Naylor however then retired Jorge Polanco to flee the jam — and Springer that all of it labored out.