Why, when trying to protect a small lead, are the field managers of major-league baseball teams so programmatic in their late-inning choice of pitchers? If the local nine holds a two-run lead as the opponent comes to bat in the eighth inning, you can bet that the pitcher will be Jared Burton. He's our "eighth inning guy." If the lead is still two as the other team prepares to bat in the ninth, Burton will give way to Glen Perkins, our "closer." Perkins is the closer because he's the best we got. Burton is the eighth inning guy, also known as the set-up guy, because he's the second best we got. Almost every team's plan to protect a late-inning lead involves similar "roles" for their relief pitchers.
It seems to me that the strategy rests upon the assumption that games are more apt to be won or lost in the ninth inning than in the eighth. But that isn't always true, and it's possible to tell beforehand when it's more likely that the eighth inning will be the decisive one. Suppose the Twins are ahead 5 to 3 in the eighth inning. Burton enters and the result of the first three at-bats is a loud out and two solid singles. The other team's clean-up hitter is due up. Shouldn't Perkins be the pitcher? He's the best we got, and it's very much more likely that the next two at-bats will be more determinative than anything that happens in the ninth inning. If, for some reason I don't understand, Perkins cannot pitch in different innings, then he should pitch for the last two outs of the eighth inning--in this game, anyway. But that's not the way the Twins play it. Manager Ron Gardenhire will usually stick with Burton in the eighth, even after he gets into trouble. If he makes a move, it will be to bring in someone other than Perkins. And, as I've said, it's not just the Twins who decline to deploy their best relief pitcher with trouble brewing and just one out in the eighth inning. The closer's job is to get the last three outs of the game. I'm saying that your best relief pitcher should try to get the outs that matter most and that these aren't always in the last inning.
It's possible that the managers know something that fans like me don't grasp. Maybe it has less to do with baseball than with social science--economics and psychology. But it's at least possible that I'm right. People always act against their interest, like when down-on-their luck southern whites vote Republican, so it would not be particularly surprising if baseball managers regularly turn away from pursuing the optimal strategy. I've written before about the management professor and football fan who has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that NFL coaches call on their punter way too much. Notwithstanding his exhaustive and publicized analysis, they continue to punt when they should leave the offense on the field to "go for it" on fourth down. For what it's worth, my theory of the case is that people who make strategic descisions, whether they be football coaches or baseball managers or your boss at work, have gotten to where they want to be and that pursuing "unusual" strategies is not the best way to stay there. When you're at the top and the pressure is on, risk aversion becomes a kind of coping strategy, and the merits of a particular question get swamped by a defensive conservatism. It's the same attraction as religious fundamentalism. You don't have to agonize over hard questions if you decide beforehand that you will always "follow the book."
