Bad Jerry Manuel Decision #75

First off, congrats to Jerry for reaching this milestone so quickly.

Let's set up the situation:

Game tied in the 7th
Chad Durbin on in relief
Durbin gives up a line drive hit, then proceeds to walk David Wright on 5 pitches
Fernando Tatis up

So it's no outs in the 7th of a tie game, men on 1st and second, and a struggling reliever. Tatis up, Church on Deck, Santos in the hole.

What would you do? What did Jerry do?

Jerry gives up an out by sacrificing Tatis. The same Tatis that hasn't had a sacrifice in 7 years. He "avoids the double play" by doing this and gets Ryan Church up in a sac fly situation.

But wait, Charlie Manuel has been in the game a few years, so of course he walks Ryan Church.

Jerry just took the bat out of Tatis and Church's hands, gave up an out, and lost the strategic advantage.

Don't believe me? Let's look at the scoring probability table taken from data over a 3-year period:

Base/Out   0      1      2
Empty    .293   .173   .077
1st      .437   .283   .136
2nd      .632   .406   .223
3rd      .864   .662   .263
1st/2nd  .641   .426   .231
1st/3rd  .876   .655   .285
2nd/3rd  .856   .695   .276
Loaded   .872   .670   .325

With men on first and second and no outs, the scoring probability is .641. When you give up an out and bunt them over you improve the scoring probability to .695. So with a successful sacrifice you've improved your scoring chance by .054. Then, because of the subsequent walk to Church to load the bases, it's again reduced to .670.

All told, the bunt and intentional walk gave the Mets a .029 advantage.

So in that situation, you ask a guy who hasn't sacrificed in 7 years to bunt to give up and out and improve your scoring chances by a whopping .029. And that doesn't take into account the value of the out itself in the grand scheme of the game.

With only 9 outs remaining each is worth a minimum of .111 run potentials. So in essence you had a .641 already, and removed .111 for a net loss of .082....and that is assuming a successful sac bunt.

And remember, this is just the pure math--doesn't take into account who is pitching and who is hitting. Moreover, he took the bat out of veteran major league hitters hands to allow the Phillies to get to Omir Santos.

Now I like Santos a lot, but why lose your strategic advantage? At that point in the game there were 9 outs left, why give one of them up?

Why are we playing for one run in the 7th? In the 9th, of course, but the 7th?

The worst part of this is that Jerry has had the Mets sac bunt a ton all year--they are second in baseball to the Reds--for comparison the Mets have 36 Sac Bunts to 2 for the Red Sox and 22 for the Dodgers. The move has generally not worked; in fact, it's taken the Mets out of many rally's and shortened games for the opposition.

Yes, I realize the Mets play in the NL, but when you look at the Sac Bunts, you see 6 for Castillo, 4 for Cora, 3 for Murphy, 2 for Pagan, and one each for Schneider, Tatis and Church.

Position players have sac bunted 18 times of the Mets 36 total--half.

Again, the Red Sox have two (one each by Pedroia and Ellsbury).

An out is the most precious thing in baseball, you don't give one up in the 7th in that situation against a struggling reliever with a guy that can't bunt.

The logic is bad, the math is bad, and the Mets were a blown call by the ump away from having zero result there (he absolutely interfered with the catcher).

Serenity now.