6.06.2014

Luyman's Terms #3: When Pinch Hitting for a Pitcher Might be a Bad Idea

Yesterday my father and I, along with 24,000 or so of our closest friends (and 3 girls behind us who just would not stop talking) attended a baseball game in which the San Francisco Giants defeated our Cincinnati Reds 6-1. The game was pretty much over by the fourth inning, but being the dutiful fans my father and I are, we endured the grueling heat so we could root for the Reds to make a comeback (we have the sunburns to prove it). As we sat there and watched Madison Bumgarner make fools out of the Reds hitters, there was a situation that arose from the game that simply puzzled me.

Situation: Down 6-1 with two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning, Roger Bernadina pinch hits for pitcher Mike Leake.

To most baseball fans, I would imagine this seems like a no brainer. I can already hear some of you thinking:
The pitcher has already given up 6 runs, and should be taken out of the game. His slot in the order is up to bat, now should be the perfect time to pinch hit and try to get some offence going!
That is a perfectly reasonable line of thought, and one that I would agree with probably 90% of the time. However, this situation falls into the other 10%

Let me give you some more context: Roger Bernadina has a .176/.323/.235 slashline through 63 PAs this season. Mike Leake has a .120/.120/.280 slashline though 28 PAs. While both players have woefully small sample sizes, I think we can all agree that both are hitting like a pitcher two months into the season, and only one of them should be. Given this situation, why have Bernadina pinch hit for Leake? To me it feels as if Bryan Price is shooting himself in the foot. Not only is he pinch hitting in an extremely low leverage situation, he is giving himself fewer options for when a high leverage situation might come up.

Even though Bernadina has an OBP 200 points better than Leake, he is not a significant upgrade in this particular situation. For the sake of this argument, lets say that Bernadina takes a walk and trot on down to first base. Not only is that incredibly unlikely, since Bumgarner has walked 5% of the batters he has faced this year (he didn't give up a single walk yesterday), but guess who's coming up to bat next with two outs? Mr. .261/.296/.348 Billy Hamilton. Don't get me wrong, I love Billy Hamilton. He's a treat to watch when he gets on base, and he scores a lot of the time he gets on. The problem lies in that he just doesn't get on very often. I would much rather Hamilton lead off an inning (or at least bat with no outs) than bat with two outs.

From my perspective, there seems to be a lot of merit to letting the pitcher go ahead and bat in his lineup spot, then go ahead and bring in a reliever in the next half inning anyway. At this point, the game is still winnable. There are still 3 more innings to play, and it's not impossible to score five or six runs over the span of three innings (the Giants did it that very game). Why not leave an extra bat on the bench for a possible high leverage situation? While Bernadina is not a major upgrade batting over Mike Leake, he would be a major upgrade batting over whichever pitcher relieves Leake after his hypothetical AB.

There could be a hundred different reasons why Leake didn't bat for himself in the fifth yesterday. Maybe he was sore, and either he or Price decided it was better not to risk his health for an AB that would likely mean nothing. Maybe Price really thought Bernadina was the right guy for the situation. He very well may have been right, Price knows his players a lot better than I do. My guess is, however, that Leake was pinch hit for just because that is the thing that happens when a pitcher is being pulled from the game and his lineup spot is up to bat. Perhaps this is a thing that should be looked into further.

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