In last night’s fantastic Giants/D’Backs game, Arizona was basically handed the game thanks to a less-than-stellar performance from both Giants ace Madison Bumgarner and the Giants infield defense. However, while the Giants were able to make up their defensive mistakes with some prolific offense, the D’Backs made a couple of mistakes that they couldn’t bounce back from. For reference, here is the play log from the game, care of the fine folks at Fangraphs.
2nd Inning, 0-0, 0 Outs, Mark Trumbo at 1st, Miguel Montero batting: Bumgarner had really been struggling at this point, already throwing 27 pitches through 1+ innings. After Trumbo got on with a single, Montero got ahead of Bumgarner 2-1 and bounced a ball through the right side. Trumbo, not exactly known for his speed, decides to go for third as the ball gets to Hunter Pence. Armed with one of the best arms in baseball, Pence fields and fires in one motion, absolutely icing Trumbo at third base, as the big offseason acquisition breaks the cardinal rule of not committing the first out of the inning at third.
Trumbo went first to third seven times last year (Hat tip to fellow TOC writer and former Trumbo supporter/Angels fan Garrett Wilson) but knowing Pence’s arm, Trumbo would have been better served to stay put at second with nobody down. WPA didn’t think it was that big of a deal (-3.5% due to it being the second inning) but WPA is somewhat in a vacuum. Considering Bumgarner’s struggles early on, Trumbo being careful on the base paths could have led to a big second inning for Arizona and made the Giants go into their below-average bullpen much earlier than they actually did.
9th Inning, 9-8 Giants, 0 Outs, Chris Owings at 1st, Gerardo Parra batting: In The Book, sacrifice bunts are systematically broken down as a bad play due to giving up a certainty (one of your precious 27 outs) for moving a runner 90 feet closer to home plate, where he might stay there for the remainder of the inning anyways.
In 2013, Kirk Gibson called for only 50 sacrifice hits, the second fewest in the National League, where the sacrifice is obviously highly lauded (The Astros led the American League with 46). After Montero homered to lead off the 9th, Owings bunted his way on thanks to a Pablo Sandoval blunder, bringing the go-ahead run to the plate. Thanks to those two plays, the D’Backs turned their win expectancy from 8.3% to 32.1% against closer Sergio Romo, who struggled to find his stuff much like his teammates.
With Parra coming to the plate as the 8-hole hitter, Gibson called for the sacrifice bunt, moving Owings to second base. The move dropped Arizona’s win expectancy 5%, and while not as big as the plays Montero (+10.5%) and Owings (+13.3%) made earlier, making an intentional decision to lower your team’s chances of winning the game is not smart no matter how you try to twist it (Owings has good speed and can score on a single, Parra is a good bunter, etc.). Sure enough, pinch hitter Eric Chavez struck out swinging before A.J. Pollock popped out to short.
At 0-3 in an already tough division, the small decisions are going to have a big effect on what the D’Backs can do in the NL West. While it’s still early, a loss in March is the same as a loss in September. Gibson has been said to be on the hot seat this year, and decisions like the one he made in the ninth aren’t going to help the seat get any cooler.
