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First of all, congratulations to the Dodgers, they finally secured the coveted championship trophy and officially reaped the rewards of victory over the last five years of hard work and operation. However, everyone who has watched Game 6 of the World Series this year should be wondering: Who is Rays head coach Kevin Cash?
Throughout the season, Kevin Cash relied on making good use of light to set up the bullpen, using a variety of pitchers to confuse his opponents, and he made it to the World Series all the way. Although there were bugs at times in between, Shining still went through various levels through critical moments from Randy Arozarena and other players.
But today’s replacement for Snell’s schedule in Game 6 has also become a turning point in the game and even the series. But seriously, is he wrong?
Let’s not think about the results, let’s think about the situation at the time. First of all, Snell is putting on one of the brightest performances of his career, completely dominating the Dodge line in the first five games and only shooting 73 goals. By our traditional concept, Cash has no reason to change. As the English saying goes, if something is good, why fix it?
But from another point of view, Snell’s position at the start of the fifth inning began to sweeten, especially the first two hitters of the sixth inning, the ball change almost fell to the red position, which will make the coaching staff suspect a little bit. .
Second, based on Snell’s career data in the table below, his performance in the third round is truly unsatisfactory, and next is Mookie Betts, the former MVP’s first suit. Is Snell taking a chance? Although Betts’ left-handed performance is poor this year (56 wRC + vs 181 wRC +), this year’s small sample is not worthy of reference compared to the total race (133: 136), and not enough to prove that Snell can match. Betts is right.
| Rounds | IP | K% | BED AND BREAKFAST% | FIP | xFIP | AVG | OBP | SLG | WOBA |
| one | 238.2 | 33.6% | 9.5% | 2.48 | 3.17 | 0.205 | 0.280 | 0.312 | 0.263 |
| two | 213.2 | 25.5% | 10.5% | 4.2 | 3.94 | 0.234 | 0.316 | 0.396 | 0.309 |
| 3 | 101.1 | 22.0% | 10.6% | 4.48 | 4.41 | 0.247 | 0.329 | 0.413 | 0.321 |
| 4 | 2.1 | 25.0% | 12.5% | 2.73 | 3.43 | 0 | 0.125 | 0 | 0.086 |
From a data point of view, Cash is not bad, but is it enough to show that Cash should change at that point? What’s more, we have to consider that nowadays pitchers can’t change after a shot, so no matter what correct shot hits Betts, he has to keep facing Corey Seager who’s feeling hot. Therefore, critics of the ball, including Keith Law’s radical data faction, also believe that rather than letting Snell walk straight off the court, he is better kept on the court to face Betts and Seager and then substitute for him. But if you look at the data above, the Snell replacement is not as inexcusable as many people think. Also, the light ball group, including Cash himself, are data-believers, so this kind of programming isn’t too demanding.
If you insist on blaming Cash, it should be that the person you replaced is more troublesome. Nick Anderson is arguably a great weapon in the shiny bullpen. Relying on the combination of speedball and skating, he becomes a living chess to end the crisis. Over the past two seasons, Anderson has thrown a total of 37.2 rounds for Guangming, yielding a 1.43 defense rate, 1.51 FIP, 1.99 xFIP, 16.0 K / 9 value, 1.2 BB / 9 value and contributing 2.0 WAR overall. But like many bullpen pitchers, his pitching quality is declining as he uses more – I’ll show you some graphs here.
This is Anderson’s speedball average ball speed trend chart throughout the season, including the playoffs. (Unit: miles)
This is the lateral displacement of your speedball (the more negative, the greater the displacement. Unit: inches)
This is the distribution map of your regular straight ball
This is the distribution of your direct shots in the playoffs
Combined, we can see that his straight ball swing rate is gradually deteriorating.
An obvious situation is that Anderson’s condition is not only inferior to the regular season, but even worse. Even if the quality of the ball deteriorates, even the control of the ball is getting worse. In the past, the high-angle fastball was used to swing, but the result was increasingly sweeter. And this is Cash’s most criticized point at present, that is, relying too much on Anderson playing the role of fire extinguisher, but ignoring the fact that his condition is getting worse, and this is not only visible to the naked eye, even the data shows Anderson. Has shown fatigue. So the question at this point is no longer whether Snell should be replaced, but who should I put in.
