In the 5th inning, up 8-1, Dodgers’ catcher AJ Ellis tried to steal second. Cubs’ manager Mike Quade has a problem with this:
Is this a delayed April Fools joke? 8-1 in the 5th is a game that is still competitive. I generally roll my eyes at baseballs unwritten rules, but this takes it to a whole new level.
Yeah, but the losing team was THE CUBS.
I personally think unwritten rules are stupid. As long as the other team isn’t gloating, why should they alter their play?
What is anyone suggesting is an unwritten rule in this scenario? Running up the score?
If someone hits a stand up double, do they get all the money in the pitcher’s pocket?
It’s accepted on all sides that you don’t steal, hit and run, or bunt for base hits when way ahead in a game. One might question whether 8-1 in the fifth inning constitutes “way ahead”, but the underlying principle is not in doubt.
The puzzling thing in this case, though, was that the strategy made no sense whether the score was 2-1, 8-1, or 15-1. The runner was a catcher, A. J. Ellis, who had never in his career even attempted a stolen base. The batter was Chad Billingsley, the pitcher and a career .129 hitter.
In those circumstances, neither a straight steal nor a hit-and-run makes any sense. The play was fairly obviously the result of a garbled sign.
Yes.
It’s not very competitive, actually.
A comeback from a seven-run deficit in five innings would be a landmark event for anybody’s season, and would be flirting with records for some teams. I’m told the all-time record deficit overcome for the Cubs, with over 20,000 games in the books, is nine. Seven runs would set a new record for the young Marlins.
Of course part of baseball’s allure is that until the last out is made, all kinds of things can happen. But typically most of them don’t.
Here’s the game. At the middle is the win probability chart. The Dodgers went into the Billingsley at-bat with a 98% chance of winning the game.
Quade is just playing the psychology game to let his team know he’s got their back. It’s a mythos role that baseball managers are forced to suffer.
Maybe they knew he’d get thrown out, but they were counting on a homer from Billingsley, and they didn’t want to get two runs off it. 
2% ain’t much of a chance, but it’s still a significant amount. Here is an example from last year of a team coming back from 10-2 in the 5th (really the 7th) and winning.
No, 2% is an insignificant amount. One example is really a pretty bad argument. 2% means that for every 50 8-1 games in the 5th, 49 of them are going to end just how we expect it to. That’s a third of a season of nothing but 7-run leads with an extremely predictable ending.
The thing I find funny is that he wants a copy. Of the unwritten rules.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Except the unwritten rules. THOSE are made up.
And what if it is that failure to attempt a steal while 7 runs up that prevents a team from being one of the 49 out of 50 that wins? Teams do come back from seven runs down, teams do lose the pennant by one game.
I don’t get this unwritten rules stuff, and never have, and never will. A baseball player and a baseball team should always play as if this play will decide the win.
Considering that there are 2,500 games in a MLB season 50 or more games like this happening a year is probable. Like I said, in 10 seconds of googling I found an example game. I’m sure there are a lot more out there.
Uh, no it’s not. 2% of 7-run games end in an amazing comeback. There are not 2500 7-run games over the course of one season.
Congratulations. Next time someone asks you what confirmation bias is, you can recreate this experience.
But it’s precisely because a comeback from 7 runs has happened that the unwritten rules are garbage.
I can understand the intent behind them; if you’re up 10 in the 9th inning, why are you running? But a 7 run game in the 5th is winnable. It happens every year and it would behoove teams to try to win games. If the other team doesn’t like it, they can suck an egg (or throw the guy out at second).
I recall a manager saying in similar circumstances (paraphrased), “I won’t try to score one more run if [the other manager] will promise he won’t score seven.”
I’m not arguing for or against the rules - just that a 2% chance of winning is both insignificant and extremely rare. However, it seems to me that people who get paid to play this game have noticed a few trends, and are willing to dial it back a few notches so that they get a near-certainty over with so they can go home. There are 162 games in a season - that’s a long, hard, grueling schedule. I don’t begrudge anyone for coming to a near-universally agreed upon understanding to alleviate that just a little bit.
Overcoming a ten-run deficit in the last inning is possible too (I think the record ninth-inning deficit overcome in MLB is eight runs; certainly bigger ones have happened in other leagues). In any such case, if the team that’s behind scores a few and starts to look like they’re really making a game of it, the perception changes.