Give him the hook: New data shows baseball managers when to replace the starting pitcher
Last October, the Detroit Tigers won the first game of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox; the Tigers led the second game, 5-1, going into the eighth inning in Boston’s Fenway Park, with one of the league’s best starting pitchers, Max Scherzer, on the mound. They were six outs from taking command of the series.Then Tigers manager Jim Leyland made a disastrous decision: He turned the game over to his bullpen, which promptly blew the lead in the eighth inning and lost the game in the ninth inning. Instead of the Tigers holding a 2-0 series lead heading back to their own ballpark for three games, the series was tied, 1-1, and the Red Sox went on to win it in six games. Should Leyland have taken Scherzer out of the game? No, according to a unique model built by two MIT computer scientists, which indicates...