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I respect Albert’s ability to do what he does, but the situation yesterday seemed to me to be a set-up. First, Ross could easily have left Stroman in for the eighth. He was having no trouble putting Cards hitters down, one after another. But, Ross decided to change pitchers, and, point number two, he brought in a southpaw, practically guaranteeing that Pujols would be used as a pinchhitter. Third, Edmon did what Edmon does, hitting a double with one out. point number three, with Pujols announced as the pinchhitter, Ross went to the mound and spoke briefly to the pitcher. Their conversation might have included the obvious, “I want you to walk Pujols to set up a double play”, or “We were going to just call for a free pass, but we didn’t want to upset the fans, so, pitch around him, okay?”, or, possibly, “Give the fans what they want to see, let him take a shot at it. We aren’t going anywhere this year, obviously, and fans in the seats to watch Pujols chase 700 is good for everyone…”
Two chest high fast balls, the second went into the left field stands. If that, overall, wasn’t a set up for albert, I’m 8 feet high with bunny ears.
Just elated and very excited to see him barrel that ball. This is an extraordinarily exciting season for a number of reasons.
since1948…Why not? I’m not certain I’d term it a “set-up”, but It’s entirely plausible that Ross simply told his pitcher to challenge the great slugger and go after an out. That’s called competing. Nothing at all wrong with that. That’s what we all pay to see and yesterday we all got way more than our money’s worth. It was genuinely, “The Show.”
It was probably a mistake to go with a lefty pitcher to start the inning, with Nootbaar up 3rd and Pujols on the bench. With speedy Edman on second and lefty Donovan on deck, it was definitely a mistake not to IBB Albert down to first and set up a force at 3rd or a potential DP.
I think the likely thing that happened next is it was decided to try to get Albert in the hole swinging at pitches out of the zone trying to inch closer to 700. Obviously, that was not executed and blew up in their face.
That decision to have Hughes try to finesse Pujols in that high leverage situation was, IMHO, the greatest mistake of all. Hughes is a rookie pitcher and only later in the season transitioned from low leverage middle relief to late inning-7th/8th inning guy assignments. Prior to this year he had only a handful of innings pitching in upper MiLB levels. Against that dearth of experience in high leverage situations stood the great Pujols. Given all that, it took neither a Bartman intervention nor a set up to sink the Chubs with a rocket over the pen.
Pujols is proving the flaw of WAR. Bwar hás him at 1.4 nas fwar at 1.2. He hás been responsible for dar more wins than that.
It takes more than one guy to create a win. One guy might get the big hit, but without other guys pitching, hitting and playing defense that situation does not come up.
It takes more than one guy to create a win. One guy might get the big hit, but without other guys pitching, hitting and playing defense that situation does not come up.
Yep. I think WPA (Win Probability Added) would better reflect what CC is talking about. Something like hitting a 3-run HR late in a game that instantly raises a team’s probability of winning from 20% to 80% shows up big in WPA.
Yeah, you make a good point Euro. WAR is more about a player’s relative contribution to a win compared to an average player – the “above replacement” part. It’s a way to quantify how much above (or below) an average player a particular guy is.
It is also a cumulative number. If you don’t play much, you won’t be contributing much to wins. Since Albert has not played full time, his WAR is not real high.
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