I'm watching yesterdays Red Sox game on MLB.tv, which means that I'm hearing the Toronto television feed. It's the bottom on the 5th, and Beckett has just loaded the bases with two out. It seems like Francona was giving Beckett one last chance to finish the inning and put himself in line for a win if the Sox could score in the 6th. It did not work.

In comes Manny Delcarmen. The announcers (the Blue Jay announcers) mention that this seems like an odd thing to do since the next batter is Frank Thomas, Blue Jay power hitting DH, seems to have Delcarmen's number lately. He bats about .333 against MDC and had smacked a t RBI double off him earlier in the series. So, at this point, I'm saying to myself, "Why is he using Delcarmen?" That was about the only statement I had time for because the first pitch went over the Center field wall for a grand slam.

I'm a fan of Sabermetrics. I'll admit it, I'm a geek. One of the things that I like about the Red Sox is that they are a team that pays attention to stats. But now I'm looking at the third game in a row where Tito has ignored the mathematical probabilities and it has proven to be a bad thing.

We're finally going home tomorrow for the Fenway season opener. Mathematically speaking, how likely is it that the 0 - 6 Detroit Tigers will be 0 - 9 by Friday?

Labels: baseball, Blue Jays, Francona, Red Sox, statistics

This entry was posted on Monday, April 07, 2008 at 4/07/2008 10:50:00 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.