Kerb Hohl wrote:No, you should always look at numbers. If 2 lefties are coming up, I'd put Will Smith or Duke in. It's 2014.
I'm not "looking for reasons." Look at our last 8th inning guy. Right now, he's sporting a Mike Rizzo OPS against righties. That's right, the collection of righties that faced Will Smith have Rizzo's .890 OPS.
This race could come down to 1 or 2 games. Saying, "ah, **** it, numbers don't matter for closers or 8th inning guys" is **** stupid, even if Broxton is decent against LH hitters. How many games did Will Smith blow for us in the 8th?
Going with your, "why burn a reliever" theory...in the 7th inning, we likely have to waste our lefties, unless we always go with Jeffress.
This is one of the least-threatening "8th inning guys" Ron has had. He's employed Kameron Loe, who lefties feasted on, and Will Smith this year.
This stuff matters. Again, maybe Broxton is OK against lefties for now, but it tells us that Ron still isn't fully comfortable with modern baseball.
Broxton is someone i have no problem at all facing lefties and just pitching full innings.
When guys do have pretty dramatic splits though as say Will Smith does, then yea, depending on the situation, he shouldn't be facing quality righthanded batters. This is where a manager has to be smart. They can't be spending a long season constantly putting in and taking out relief pitchers based on righty/lefty matchups, but certain situations in close games and involving certain pitchers vs certain hitters, a manager is foolish to ignore really obvious splits.
Smith started the year doing well vs all batters, but Roenicke was much to slow to react to righthanded hitters jacking around Smith. He's done this in the past being overly stubborn when locking certain pitchers into being his 7th or 8th inning guy, even if the splits were to large to ignore.
Roenicke is hard to figure out in some ways. He was in early on using data for big shifts on the infield before pretty much every team started doing it, yet in other ways he can seem to rigid in the face of glaring stats which say to act differently. Melvin also seems kinda that way. I listen to him at times and he obviously understands data beyond the basics of say RBI/ERA/BA etc, but he also seems only roughly half way in on sabermetrics. My guess is he uses some advanced metrics, but as new stuff keeps coming out each year, he doesn't come close to keeping up with it as the younger and more stat centric GM's do who have been studying stats from even before the day they got into baseball.