2021 Cardinals MLB Game 150 thread – Tuesday, Sept. 21 at Brewers

That was a gutsy call by Shildt to put the winning run on second but I guess he wanted to take his chances with the pinch hitter instead of Yelich. Hey it worked. That is all that matters.

He may also have looked at what was looming in the bullpen…Kim, McFarland, the two Millers and Waddell probably available for us, and Milwaukee had Hader, Williams, Strickland, etc probably available.

Still, it worked so Shildt looks like a genius. Whew.

Hate to ask again but is there a graphic available to show ump accuracy for last night?

Mr P,

Below are two charts (one per team for all pitchers) that show all called strikes and balls so you can grade Mr Nelson.

First for the Cards pitchers: From what I can see, Cards pitchers were gifted one called strike where the dot is completely outside the zone (that was Garcia in the 8th, ironically when he walked Vogelbach). I don’t see any pitches the Cards were squeezed on where the pitch was totally in the zone yet called a ball. I see maybe one or two pitches on the lines of the rectangular zone which were called balls. I assume balls that touch the rectangular box should, in theory, be strikes.

For the Brewers pitchers: It appears to me there were 8 pitches that were completely out of the rectangle that were gifted as called strikes. I don’t see any pitches the Brewers were squeezed on where the pitch was totally in the zone yet called a ball. I see three pitches on the lines of the rectangular zone which were called balls. Again, I assume those balls should be strikes.

I’ve read that calls for high and low pitches on these graphics are less accurate than inside or outside. That’s due to the top and bottom of the zone varying from batter to batter. Not sure how good the adjustments are for that.

Also, it you want to pull these graphs yourself, play around with the tools at baseballsavant.mlb.com and use their illustrator. You can pull any game of the year. There are filters that let you pull by team, specific player, pitchers or hitters, fastball, curve ball, pitch result, etc.

There’s a fascinating piece on Woodford’s development written by Blake Newberry at Viva El Birdos. If Woodford can improve his curveball the way he did his slider, he’ll be around for a long time.

That’s a sensible way of looking at it. I guess what makes it gutsy is that, if the Cardinals would have lost the game in the 9th because of putting the winning run in scoring position, Shildt would have been criticized to no end.