Cleveland Indians Lose, 4-2: The Folly of Tribe's Baserunning Strategies
Nothing lasts forever.
The Cleveland Indians got on the board first in Tuesday night’s loss against the Red Sox on Ezequiel Carrera’s second-inning RBI single, but Boston responded with two runs apiece in the third and seventh innings to take the lead. Travis Buck’s ninth-inning home run wasn’t enough for a comeback as the Tribe fell, 4-2.
In the wake of last night’s game, it’s worth revisiting Manny Acta and the Indians’ baserunning strategy.
Acta’s managerial brilliance stems from his understanding of modern sabermetric concepts—i.e., sacrifice bunts are usually bad ideas and on-base percentage should be a key factor in lineup construction. Talking about stealing bases in a 2007 interview with the Washington Times (back when he was with the Nationals), he said:
“We will run selectively…I am not going to be running all over the place just because 25,000 people in the stands are saying I am aggressive while people are getting thrown out on the bases. Not everybody will have a green light here. The guys who are going to run are the guys who are going to prove to me that they will be successful most of the time trying to steal a base.”
It’s a philosophy that would have been nice to see the Tribe implement Tuesday, when the Indians recklessly squandered outs on the basepaths.
Cleveland baserunners made three steal attempts over the course of the game. The first, Michael Brantley’s swipe of second in the first inning, worked brilliantly—Jason Varitek didn’t even throw. The second, Shin-Soo Choo’s gambit in the third, was unsuccessful, but at least it was a reasonable call.
But Acta contradicted both his words and common sense in the fourth inning when, with one out and Orlando Cabrera at the plate, Travis Buck inexplicably broke for second. He was out easily and any chance the Tribe had of tying the game that inning was lost.
Of course, the salient question here is: why the heck was Buck running? He has decent wheels, I suppose, but he’s certainly not a guy I would describe as “speedy.” What happened to “not everybody will have a green light”?
The most stealing-friendly statisticians will tell you that going for the extra base is worth it only if the runner has at least a two-thirds chance of making it (some say the success rate has to be as high as 80%). Did Acta really think that Buck had that good of a chance? Especially considering that, after he’d called for two two-out steals earlier in the game, Varitek probably wasn’t surprised.
Even including Brantley’s successful swipe, the Indians’ steal attempts cost the Indians .075 WPA—or, 7.5% of a win. Make mistakes like that every night, and over a full season you’ll lose more than 12 wins.
This misguided aggression showed itself in first-to-third situations, too. Carrera’s RBI single in the second also ended up to be an inning-ender as Orlando Cabrera was thrown out at third base by a mile for the third out. Who knows how long the rally would have lasted if not for that?
Then, in the eighth inning, Cabrera was on first again with two outs when Matt LaPorta eked out an infield hit as third baseman Kevin Youkilis couldn’t field the ball cleanly. Cabrera didn’t hesitate in rounding second, and as he headed for third it looked like an easy out.
Cabrera ended up getting in safely as Youkilis continued to flub the ball—it was amazing. The crowd exploded and the scoreboard read: “What if?” But it remained an incredibly bad decision. If the normally slick-gloved Youkilis had caught up with the ball a couple seconds faster, Cabrera is gone and the inning is over.
I hate to be this guy, and I won’t pretend I didn’t jump out of my seat when Cabrera slid in safe, but the careless “an aggressive mistake isn’t a mistake” attitude that seemed to have taken ahold of the Indians last night is a big step in the wrong direction.
Manny Acta is running this team, not Ozzie Guillen. But last night, you wouldn’t have known it.
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