Sick In Bed

Stomach Flu Is Not Much Fun
For a few days I've just had this gastroenteritis. Anything I eat except crackers goes through me like I am a digestive non-entity. Nearly crapped my pants 3 times a day for 4 days now. Anyway, I'm getting better now.

View From The Couch - Olympic Softball

I caught the play-off game between Australia and Japan that went into extended innings. Of course the Olympics being the Olympics, they have a special rule for extended innings where both teams start with a runner on second, to speed up the game. Of course if the managers are idiots, then the game does not get shortened by a great deal, as evinced by the 12 inning game. That's almost 2 games in one, so clearly it didn't work.

Pleiades rang up during the break between the 7th and 8th and asked me what I thought. At the time I thought it was a nice tight game. But then as the innings progressed, it dawned on me that these managers were going to Sacrifice Bunt every lead off hitter. I got depressed just watching.

The game was already a low-scoring Pitcher's duel as the game stumbled into extended innings with a 2-2 scoreline. What was really annoying to see from both teams was that the first batter in each of these extended innings laid down a sacrifice bunt to move the runner over from Second to Third. The crazy thing is that the runner on second is in scoring position already - that's the point. So what you should be looking to do is simply get a hit to score that run, with 3 outs to do it. Not sac bunt that runner over, and try to score that runner with 2 outs in hand.

Now call me Bill James' long lost cousin, but it plain sucks to see so many outs wasted. Indeed, Australia scored a go ahead run in the inning when they didn't sac bunt, but swung away. The Japanese also scored a run in the bottom of the inning, but that was also swinging for it albeit after an unnecessary bunt. Had they not bunted, they might have won it in the bottom of the 11th.
It was as if neither manager wanted to win.

Let's put it another way. The run expectancy on a 0-out runner on 2nd situation is actually 1.189 to the end of the inning. This is compared to the 0.555 of 0-out, nobody on:

That's a chart I stole from here.
Now, that's from the MLB 1999-2002 seasons, but I can't imagine that Softball is skewed significantly differently to the above. So the managers are given roughly half-a-run advantage to score 1 run, which would stand up if your closer is Mariano River or Trevor Hoffman. The thing is, the other team also gets the same leg up in the bottom of the inning. In a sense, that runner on 2nd is illusory in that you start with a runner on second against you in the other half of the inning. That is to say, the other team has the same run expectancy to score that run right back.

So if you really want to put a winning margin on the other team, you have to score more than the bonus runner, because chances are, they have a just as good chance of scoring that runner on 2nd... except in this game, both managers quickly converted their runner on 2nd, 0-out into Runner on 3rd, 1 out.

Runner on 3rd 1 Out has a run expectancy of 0.983, which is just under a run. So you can see that by sac bunting the bonus runner across, the team has subtracted from its run value by a quarter of a run and made it less of a sure bet. Sure, the hitter could fly out and the runner stays on second for an even less (0.725); but you still have to look at scoring more than the bonus runner for the same reasons. A Sac Bunt is giving away a precious out.

The best way to put it is this: if you play for 1-run, that's all you will get. And when the opposing team gets the same bonus runner, then it's a moot point whether you really are closer to the end of the game by having that bonus runner on 2nd base - unless your opponent manager returns the stupid favor of sac-bunting their bonus runner over. Which is exactly what happened in the seemingly interminable game.

Other things I saw that made me wonder:
Was Australia's Pitcher really called 'Tanya Harding'?
Was Australia's Catcher really called 'Titcume'?