a piece that suggested<\/a> one of the most crucial factors that aided Springer in the at-bat was familiarity. Bazardo had already faced Springer twice in the series, including the previous night, when he got him to ground out to third base on the same sinker he homered on to end the Mariners’ season.<\/p>\n“Since 2016, when a batter has seen a reliever a third time in a postseason series, his OPS has jumped over 140 points, according to STATS Perform. This fits into moreample research that suggests that the more experience a batter has with a pitcher and his offerings, the batter\u2019s advantage grows,” Sarris wrote. <\/p>\n
“We can\u2019t be sure that spike in success comes from the fact that batters have seen those pitchers\u2019 pitch shapes and learned their tendencies, but if it\u2019s not command or fatigue, that\u2019s a natural way to think about it. Bazardo had mostly thrown inside sinkers to Springer in the previous at-bats, he went there again, and Springer had seen enough of Bazardo\u2019s inside sinkers to take advantage.”<\/p>\n
Sarris’ entire piece is fascinating and definitely worth a read in full. But the crux of the matter is that Springer wasn’t getting fooled by anything Bazardo would throw him, and ironically enough, his at-bat played out the exact same way it had the night before, with back-to-back sinkers resulting in a ball in play. <\/p>\n
Springer hadn’t faced Mu\u00f1oz at all in the series, and he was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against him in the regular season. There’s really no evidence to support the idea that he should have remained in the bullpen, apart from extremely old-school baseball thinking that the closer shouldn’t pitch until the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
More MLB: Mariners’ Cal Raleigh Explains Disastrous Choice That Led To George Springer Blast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Springer’s back-breaking three-run home run on Monday was quite arguably the most gut-wrenching moment in Seattle Mariners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-231952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}