The Most Exciting Inning of the Night
The seventh inning of the Rockies/Phillies affair takes the crown even on a night with a normal schedule.
Joe Beimel opened the inning on the mound facing Placido Polanco with a 7-3 lead in hand. The sequence of events from there until Beimel’s exit included a Polanco double, Chase Utley scoring, and then Ryan Howard hitting a homer. Just like that, the lead was down to one. Jim Tracy turned to the newest toy in his bullpen collection. So entered the flame-slinging Manny Delcarmen just acquired from Boston. Most of Delcarmen’s issues in Boston this season came because of a sharp increase in gopherballs allowed. Given his walk rates, allowing homers is not a smart plan if he wants a lengthy career in the majors.
For his opening act, Delcarmen gave up a homer to Jayson Werth. He was not done, though, as the Phillies then went on a singles parade that saw Shane Victorino, Brian Schneider, and Ben Francisco sending baseballs across the field like beads. By now, Polanco stood in the on-deck circle with Jimmy Rollins due up. Tracy again came out and this time inserted Matt Reynolds.
An appropriate accompanying instrumental to a short ditty about Reynolds’ appearance would be the Jaws theme with slowly ascending volume. Rollins would single off Reynolds, loading the bases for Utley with two outs in a one run game. These are the moments situational lefties who love to flirt with danger love. If Reynolds were one of those who likes to cuddle with a Russian chick named Roulette then what Utley did to the baseball on his 3-1 pitch has probably scared him straight. To Reynolds’ credit, he did retire Howard quickly, keeping the damage at 7-12 and ending the nine run Phillies’ outburst.
Things were just getting started after the stretch ended and the Rockies’ reassumed their position as orchestrators. Seth Smith waved the wand and led things off with a double and scoring on a Jonathan Herrera single. Eric Young Jr. would then double, placing two runners in scoring position with one out. Dexter Fowler’s single plated both and the score would stand at 10-12 through seven.
All told, the seventh inning saw 11 runs score, three homers, 10 balls in play hits, and a swing from the Rockies holding a 89% win expectancy down to 4.7% and back up to 25.1% before dripping back down to 15.4%. The four pitchers who contributed to the inning each held negative Win Probability Added scores. Delcarmen (-.389), Beimel (-.254), and Reynolds (-.237) for Colorado and Philadelphia’s Chad Durbin (-.109). That adds up to -.989, or about an entire win from four of the 14 pitchers used last night.
45
FAIL
If you watched the game, you would realize that Jim Tracy was ejected before that inning.
I call for a lifttime ban on anyone who uses the cliche “FAIL” to lead off their post again.
One piece of laziness begets another. If you aren’t even going to bother reading the recap on mlb.com or yahoo sports when writing a review of that inning, then any replies don’t deserve more than a few seconds of thought, and the post deserves to be ripped.
I second that motion. Also, can we do something about the people who end arguments with “End of story”, or think writing the word “Really?” is an effective rebuttal.
Really?
FAIL
I think people who this gets under the skin of should just lighten up. I mean Really?
End of Story
But his point his still valid because Tracy didn’t make those changes because he was ejected the inning prior. If you’re going to write a game recap (or an inning recap in this case) at least get the characters correct.
Is it safe to say that Delcarmen has worn out his welcome in Colorado?
Watching the game, I got a tiny boost of hope as soon as I saw them go to Delcarmen. After living in New England and seeing many many BoSox games, I just laughed when I realized that the Rockies actually thought bringing in Delcarmen was a good idea.
“That adds up to -.989, or about an entire win from four of the 14 pitchers used last night.”
I’ve always thought of 0.50 (not 1.00) as a full win, since each team is given 0.50 WPA as a freebie just for playing. For any game, if you sum up the WPA of the winning team you get 0.50 and likewise the losing team’s WPA sum to -0.50. Summing up an entire team’s season long WPA contributions and then dividing by 0.50 would get you the number of games by which they are over or under .500. As such, I would call a -0.989 a contribution of almost 2 entire wins (or losses, really). Am I looking at this wrong?
I’m pretty sure the point of this post is about the excitement of the inning, not who made the pitching changes. Anybody who’s actually taking the time to get pissed about as small a mistake as Jim Tracy NOT making the change fails.
if youre going to tell the story, an important part of the narrative is that Tracy got ejected, and at least to some degree there is the chance that Tracy might not have used Delcarmen in that situation, or might have yanked him earlier, or who knows. but it was an important part of the storyline, that was noticed at least by the philly announcers as well.
Howard mashed the ball to center. He was retired quickly because he hit a bullet a few feet from where the CF was standing.
I know people love to correct fg posts, and if done correctly it will enhance the article, so next time try to be constructive and not a 5 year old.