Heard one of the real baseball analytics geeks say third base is one of the areas teams have completely wrong. 3rd base Coaches have a 90%+ success rate on sends. The Analytical approach would suggest you should be in the 60% range and score a whole lot more runs.

They say getting thrown out at home with less than 2 outs is viewed as way too bad by baseball people.

When you factor in most throws are off line and the catcher has to catch it and make the tag, you should be a lot more aggressive. And the odds of getting a runner home from 3rd via the bat is not as high a sending the runner in a lot more of the cases.

Just something we haven't realy discussed this year.

Wasn't really speaking to that play but the concept in general.

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3rd base Coaches have a 90%+ success rate on sends. The Analytical approach would suggest you should be in the 60% range and score a whole lot more runs.

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Wait, what is the argument here? Why is 60% some kind of ideal success rate? I mean, sure, logically, if you sent a ton more runners, than they would score more runs. But you'd have to increase that by a ****load to get down from 90% to 60% (and why is that percentage ideal) while still producing more runs.

It would also seem to ignore really important factors, like where the hit ball landed and is being thrown in from, and how fast the individual runner is.

Definitely the right decision to hold Brantly; however, in general I agree that 3B coaches should send runners more often. If you look at the throws from the OF, in general they usually aren't good.

60% was some number they came up with based on studying plays? I don't know if it's the right one. But the concept is similar to the stolen base no longer being used much or the idea of going for it more on 4th down in football. For all these decesions there is a mathematical sweet spot and the point is baseball is way off in that particular instance.

Pettis is very aggressive in sending runners. So the point of OP doesn't really apply too Astros.

I don't know about the 60% number, but I can certainly see the logic behind being more aggressive in today's game of "launch angle" swings.

It seems that the art of getting a productive out and moving runners over has really been lost. It would be interesting to see if the numbers reflect a decrease in sac flies or ground ball outs that generate rbi.

Agnzona said:

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He is but his out at home numbers are very small still I would guess. Would really like to see the data.

Sucks we essentially lost this game to lack of hustle from veterans.

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troll?

Sports teams that get paid to play are usually risk-averse in nearly every regard. They are basically large cap companies that play not to lose.

If you're a 3rd base coach in MLB do you get fired by keeping your guy safe on third, not making an out and possibly scoring a run later? Or more likely to get fired because you sent a runner that got thrown out more than half the time.

Big Al 1992 said:

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If you're a 3rd base coach in MLB do you get fired by keeping your guy safe on third, not making an out and possibly scoring a run later? Or more likely to get fired because you sent a runner that got thrown out more than half the time.

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You are on the right track. That's why more analytics is needed. If making a lot of outs is actually better everyone including fans needs to know that.

I understand that astros fans are upset today, and I'm a proponent of hustling as much as anyone but watching that game yesterday I didn't at all get the feeling that Brantley and Springer didn't hustle.

Brantley has had a ton of injuries over his career and just isn't that fast of a runner. Among leftfielders this year with at least 10 competitive runs he ranks 68th out of 78 in sprint speed. The only Astros he's faster than are Chirinos and Maldonado. And as noted, would have been thrown out at home.

With Springer, he hopped twice, I don't deny that but it seemed like he took off sprinting immediately afterwards. I don't have the expectation that big league players are going to play the game like little leaguers do and immediately sprint out of the box on every ball in play. Springer didn't waltz and end up with a single, and as he mentions he saw Tucker idiotically standing on 2nd base and wasn't sure if Pettis was going to send him for sure.

And maybe most of all, I hate the idiotic notion that Altuve would have hit this exact same flyball if Springer was on 3rd. You can't what if these kind of situations. They likely sequence the pitches differently if a flyball can tie the game. Maybe that leads to an Altuve hit, maybe it doesn't, but you can't take the results of Altuve's at bat with a runner on second and apply them to a hypothetical situation with a runner on 3rd.

And if we're really going into hypotheticals, Eaton could have and maybe should have caught the ball rendering all of the above a moot point.

Watch it again. Springer hops, then jogs, then realizes he should be on 3rd, but wasted too much time.

He should have been passing 110ft by the time the ball was missed. Nowhere near Tucker, but sliding into 3rd as Tucker scored.

If the ball was caught. Springer on the path doesn't matter.

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It could definitely be argued that baserunning cost them game 1.

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You could, but it's much easier to blame Bregman having the worst AB of his life in the 9th inning to a guy throwing 1 pitch.

Body By Fisher said:

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3rd base Coaches have a 90%+ success rate on sends. The Analytical approach would suggest you should be in the 60% range and score a whole lot more runs.

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Wait, what is the argument here? Why is 60% some kind of ideal success rate? I mean, sure, logically, if you sent a ton more runners, than they would score more runs. But you'd have to increase that by a ****load to get down from 90% to 60% (and why is that percentage ideal) while still producing more runs.

It would also seem to ignore really important factors, like where the hit ball landed and is being thrown in from, and how fast the individual runner is.

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The "ideal success rate" would be very simple to calculate You just need the data on how often a runner on third base scores. Holding a runner at third on a play simply preserves that third base situation at the expense of the chance of scoring that run immediately.

If the percentages say a runner on third base scores 60% of the time, then third base coaches should be sending a runner that has more than a 60% chance to score, because doing that increases the odds of scoring. If the data also shows runners that are sent from third are scoring 90% of the time, then its clear just from math that you aren't being aggressive enough.

The implication would also follow, that number of outs would be critical since it highly impacts the odds of a runner finishing a play on third later scoring. It seems to me that with two outs, ideally you would be sending runners even if they were more likely to be thrown out than make it, because the next hitter is going to make an out, what more than 60% of the time?