Ricky Leroux: Wild Card game requires different strategy | Online ...

With the end of the season looming, it?s time for Fredi Gonzalez and the Braves to begin turning their attention toward the postseason.

This year, Major League Baseball will introduce the new Wild Card round, where the teams with the best records that did not win their divisions will face off in a single game series. Unless the Washington Nationals suffer a drastic change in fortune, it seems the Braves are headed for this single game series.

This game must be managed differently than a traditional playoff series, where the importance is on winning a majority of the games rather than one game in particular.

After all, teams in the postseason need only win 11 of 19 games in the Division, League and World Series to win the championship.

Forcing teams to focus on a single game changes the nature of baseball. When winning or losing a single game will change the season, the sport more closely resembles college football.

Even the roster rules are different in this new Wild Card round.

The Braves are allowed to set a 25-man roster for the Wild Card game, and then set a new roster for the rest of the postseason. This means that the Braves will not have to include all their starting pitchers on the roster for the Wild Card round. Instead, the team can add additional bench and bullpen players to increase their flexibility in this winner-take-all game.

This roster rule has led many to wonder if teams in the Wild Card round should abandon starting pitching altogether and use a variety of relief pitchers throughout the game. The benefits of this method are numerous. The team would keep all their starting pitchers fresh for the rest of the postseason and be able to use their expanded bullpen to focus on left-handed/right-handed matchups and use specialists to get outs when the situation calls for it.

Using several relief pitchers instead of a starter will also keep batters from becoming acclimated to a pitcher?s style. Rather than allow batters to become familiar with a starting pitcher during the second or third time through the lineup, batters would be forced to adjust to a different pitcher each time at the plate.

Using this patchwork pitching strategy also makes it more difficult for the opposing manager. They will have to adjust their lineups more frequently and change their game plans on the fly.

For example, if a manager knows they will face Tommy Hanson pitcher for several innings, they will probably try to play small ball in the early innings. They will attempt to steal more bases to manufacture runs because Hanson has a notoriously bad pick-off move. If the manager doesn?t know who will be pitching for an at-bat until the batter steps into the box, they will have to adjust their strategy quickly after they find out.

The notion of using the bullpen for nine innings is an extension of the ?Moneyball? approach that the Oakland Athletics pioneered in the early 2000s. Where that strategy involved selecting hitters with a high on-base percentage, rather than batting average, this strategy dictates selecting pitchers for their ability to get outs in specific situations, rather than ERA.

It is certainly a radical idea, but teams in the Wild Card round are in untested waters. No one knows what strategy will work for this game because no one has played a game like this before. It seems unlikely that a manager will attempt such a risky and unorthodox approach with so much on the line, but a new strategy might be necessary because this game is so much different than any other the team might play.

Source: http://onlineathens.com/sports/2012-09-22/ricky-leroux-wild-card-game-requires-different-strategy

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