Joe Sheehan: "If a team scores eight runs to go up 8-0, is the next half-inning governed by "pitching to the score" or "shutdown inning"?"
Actually, what I'd like to see is some SDCN (never mind, you don't want to know) run the numbers for what happens in the inning before a pitcher's team scores, and try to get away with peddling it to radio and TV broadcasters as an important ability. You would need some good jargon; if the inning after one's team scores is a shutdown inning, what is the inning before that? An empty plate inning? I can't think of a good one, but I do think that pitchers who do well in those innings have excellent anticipatory skills; they're one step ahead. I promise: pitchers with better results in those innings (shutup innings?) do better than other pitchers, and their teams win more games. So it must be important!
(Last year I pretty much just listened to the regular Giants radio team all through October. Not that they can't be sabermetrically challenged at times; Jon Miller is fairly obsessed with results with runners in scoring position. But still, a whole lot better than most network guys).
Friday, October 11, 2013
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For some reason, that nostalgic call to "SDCN" made me think of this tweet from Kurt Sutter of Sons of Anarchy, complaining as usual about people who criticize his work: "had a terrifying nightmare last night: i gained 50 lbs, moved back in with parents in maine, wrote a tv blog and worked in a school library."
ReplyDeleteSDCN, for those who were wondering like me.
ReplyDeleteHey, speaking of "what's important": last night's Tigers/Red Sox game was about as entertaining as any 1-0 playoff game has any business being. Though I watched it, it was the kind of classic I could imagine listening to on radio, 75 years ago, thoroughly engrossed.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet...if you count the Tampa/Texas one-game playoff as a "round", last night was also the first of a seven-game series in the fourth of five playoff rounds in 2013. Which represents a subtle cost arising from the bloated baseball playoff structure: last night should have been the standout game of the 2013 playoffs, but when they are so many games, nothing really stands out.