Lee says to Washington, "No I Will Not Start On Short Rest"

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A CRAZY CRABBERS EXCLUSIVE:

Ron Washington said at his press conference that the Texas Rangers would not ask Cliff Lee to pitch on short rest in this world series is a lie, they already did and he said he would not.

A source inside AT&T Park said that the Rangers manager did in fact approach his star pitcher about pitching on short rest only to be turned down. It all happened in the tunnel on the way to the club house after a Rangers gut wrenching loss to the the Giants on Thursday night.

From what the source told me the conversation was pretty heated and the Rangers "rent a player/Postseason ace" told his coach that he will not pitch on short rest. He was very adamant about it.

Cliff Lee has never pitched on short rest in his career. After his very human like performance maybe pitching on short rest would be a blessing in disguise for the Giants having smacked him around a little bit. It is likely that he would not pitch that bad again if he saw the Giants in the post season once or twice more.

But if he indeed does not pitch on short rest, I will take the rest of the Ranger rotation any day of the week; except Tuesdays because as everyone knows that is the worst day of the week.

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The NL rules aren't fair, Ranger fan comments from the Dallas Morning News

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I have already written about my disdain for the DH rule used by the American League, well it looks like there are fans in Texas who have the same problem with not using it and have taken to crying about it.

Here is a comment from yesterday after the Game 1 loss:

And WHY are the Rangers having "Vlad" problems?...because of the STUPID RULES that  favor the NL! Stop and think about it. The Rangers have to change up EVERYTHING they did in the regular season to play by a different set of rules than they normally do. The Giant's actually BENEFIT from the DH in the AL park!!! You name another sport that decides it's championship by TWO DIFFERENT sets of rules! You can't. And I don't care what ANYONE says...playing NL rules for an AL team is a HUGE disadvantage....NL teams playing with the DH is a BONUS!!! Idiot owners....

Well Rangers fans you now have your wish, the game is headed to Texas where there will be a DH. I fully antcipate that the Rangers will come back strong in the next 2 and most likely 3 games. I just couldn't help myself for taking this cheap shot.

Here is a message board bashing the lack of DH for your enjoyment.

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A tale of two Managers

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One of the story lines that has been lost in the Giants offensive explosion is the two vastly different ways that Bruce Bochy and Ron Washington have handled their two bullpens.

Bochy has not been gun shy to use his biggest arms, even if it isn't the typical situation that you would see them during the regular season. He has managed the game with aggression going for the jugular making sure to keep Texas from coming back to life like so many horror movie villains.

Washington has done the opposite. In the bottom of the 8th inning of game 1 with his team down 4 runs he turned to the bottom of the bullpen guy Mark Lowe, he of the 5.40 ERA this season who responded by giving up 3 runs in the 5 batters that he faced. The insurance runs were huge.
This decision isn't without justification but it pretty much signaled that Texas was giving up on this game. With their offense a 4 run deficit shouldn't be a fold situation, not in the World Series were every game is huge.

The timid managing continued in last nights game. Again in the bottom of the 8th down by 2 runs which with a team that boasts having a good offense isn't a massive deficit the Rangers manager was timid in bringing in his best reliever to stop the bleeding.

Darren O'Day who did a decent job got the first 2 guys of the inning out and then gave up a single to demi-god Buster Posey. There is no shame in that and he was lifted for a left hander to gain the platoon advantage against Nate Schierholtz, another justifiable move. The only issue was that Derek Holland had no control that lead to 3 straight walks.

The next guy Washington called for? Again Mark Lowe. Why wouldn't you go to your bullpen ace in this situation? There are 2 outs, you are down 3-0 with the bases loaded. If you give up a hit here the game starts to get out of hand, if you can manage the damage you still have a shot.

Instead Washington went with this arguable 7th best reliever to get a very critical out when the bullpen ace sat on the bench not even throwing in the pen.

I do not understand the call to not bring in Neftali Feliz here. You have to believe that in the best case Perez can get 4 outs and at worst case he gets one out and has a travel day to rest. It isn't the typical spot to play your closer but this isn't a typical regular season game.

In a similar situation in game 1 Bruce Bochy did not hesitate to bring in his big gun to stop a late rally that his mop guys created. In the World Series you play to win in the regular season you save arms, Bochy played the situation correctly Washington didn't.

That is the difference here. Bochy used his bullpen aggressively like there is no tomorrow and each game is the most important of the season, while Washington saved his best reliever for a game that may never come.

Bochy continues to out manage his counterparts, I would have never thought it.

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Handicapping the World Series Matchup Between the Rangers and Giants

Numbers sooth me, so to help overcome the jitters of the World Series I have attempted to project the odds of each potential game outcome.

To do this I used the lineup Analysis tool from Baseball Musings to give me runs per game for each lineup. The Giants lineup at least on paper is slightly below that of the Texas Rangers but that in its self is not surprising. What is surprising at least to me when you do an adjustment for home road splits the Giants at home project to score nearly the same amount of runs!

On the run prevention side I used the tRA stats from Stat Corner to give me the runs allowed for both teams. To give an idea of how long each pitcher went is innings pitched divided by games started. Then this number is multiplied times the tRA/9 to give the number of runs per inning pitched.

I did the same thing for the bullpens and had them pitch the remaining innings of a 9 inning game.

Both runs scored and runs allowed are adjusted for home and road splits and it is these adjusted numbers that I used the Pythagorean winning percentage to determine each times odds of winning using the log5 method.

Here are the results:

Game 1	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Tim Lincecum	6.43	3.04	0.338	2.17	3.074851	2.9248602		4.73	4.8374656		0.732293		0.527848
Bullpen	2.57		0.351	0.9
Cliff Lee	7.58	2.61	0.29	2.2	2.82197	2.8860848		4.746	4.5144901		0.709876		0.472152
Bullpen	1.42		0.44	0.62
Game 2	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Matt Cain	6.77	3.58	0.398	2.69	3.476325	3.3067501		4.73	4.8374656		0.681538		0.593055
Bullpen	2.23		0.351	0.78
CJ Wilson	6.18	3.5	0.389	2.4	3.642631	3.725392		4.746	4.5144901		0.594895		0.406945
Bullpen	2.82		0.44	1.24
Game 3	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Jonathan Sanchez	5.86	4.17	0.463	2.71	3.818121	3.9048682		5.35	5.089027		0.629419		0.337412
Bullpen	3.14		0.351	1.1
Colby Lewis	6.28	2.94	0.327	2.05	3.246766	3.0883885		5.515	5.6403008		0.769338		0.662588
Bullpen	2.72		0.44	1.19
Game 4	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Madison Bumgarner	6.17	3.85	0.428	2.64	3.633472	3.7160249		5.35	5.089027		0.652232		0.520863
Bullpen	2.83		0.351	1
Tommy Hunter	5.82	4.82	0.536	3.12	4.514369	4.2941579		5.515	5.6403008		0.633059		0.479137
Bullpen	3.18		0.44	1.4
Game 5	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Tim Lincecum	6.43	3.83	0.426	2.74	3.639555	3.7222458		5.35	5.089027		0.651473		0.297443
Bullpen	2.57		0.351	0.9
Cliff Lee	7.58	2.61	0.29	2.2	2.82197	2.684314		5.515	5.6403008		0.81533		0.702557
Bullpen	1.42		0.44	0.62
Game 6	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Matt Cain	6.77	3.58	0.398	2.69	3.476325	3.3067501		4.73	4.8374656		0.681538		0.593055
Bullpen	2.23		0.351	0.78
CJ Wilson	6.18	3.5	0.389	2.4	3.642631	3.725392		4.746	4.5144901		0.594895		0.406945
Bullpen	2.82		0.44	1.24
Game 7	xIn	tRA	tRA/9	xRA	XRA Total	w/ Adjustmet		Runs Scored	w/ Adjustmet		Win %		Odds Of Winning
Jonathan Sanchez	5.86	4.17	0.463	2.71	3.818121	3.6318726		4.73	4.8374656		0.639521		0.489739
Bullpen	3.14		0.351	1.1
Colby Lewis	6.28	2.94	0.327	2.05	3.246766	3.3205322		4.746	4.5144901		0.648929		0.510261
Bullpen	2.72		0.44	1.19

 

The Giants are favored in 4 of the 7 games, game 1,2, 4 and 6 lean in their favor with the best odds in games 2 and 6. Games 3 and 5 heavily favor the Rangers in Arlington with game 7 essentially a toss up.

This should be a very close series.

When you put together a probability true the closeness becomes very apparent. The following table shows the odds of each team winning in that number of games.

Games    Giants    Rangers

4    5.47%    6.15%

5    7.28%    17.94%

6    16.92%    14.85%

7    15.52%    15.89%

Total    45.2%    54.8%

The Rangers are rightly being favored by the media but I still think that the Giants chances are pretty good. If I had done this for the Phillies series it would have been very similar maybe even more leaning toward the Phillies then this series.

The Giants best chances rest on taking the first 2 games and making sure to get at least one in Texas, that will be the path of least resistance. Winning a game besides game 4 in Texas could be a tall order so hopefully they don't go in their needing more than one.

Go Giants!