The Greek God of Walks has been a boon for the Red Sox. Scott Stewart gets a well-deserved demotion by the Indians. The Mets could be in decent shape if they can get all hands on deck. John Mabry makes it back to the bigs with Cardinals. Alexis Rios gets a taste of the majors with the Blue Jays. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
Excellent columns on sacrificing. One question though. In the situation where the team is looking for just one run, and there is a runner on 2nd with no outs. If I were the opposing manager, and the other team succesfully sacrificed the runner to third, depending on the next batters, I might give batter two an intentional walk and hope for a double play to get out of the inning. Does this response by the opposing manager change the effectiveness of the strategy?
–J.P.
You make an excellent point. Running the numbers assuming that a GIDP is possible after a sacrifice of the man to third, the breakeven levels now read:
AVG: .306
OBP: .384
SLG: .516
(Instead of the .351/.436/.619 line from the article.) Obviously this reduces the number of players who should be sacrificing from “everyone except Bonds” to simply the vast majority. I will definitely include this correction in future adjustments to the equations. Thanks for pointing out the shortfall.