Detroit Tigers: Brad Ausmus Bungled In-Game Strategy in Game 2 in Miami

Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus should have pinch hit for pitcher Anibal Sanchez in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s win over the Marlins.

The 2015 season did not go well for the Detroit Tigers or Brad Ausmus. The last place finish meant the young manager’s position with the ball club was in doubt for the 2016 season. His chair was so wobbly, in fact, that local media outlet WDIV reported that the organization planned to fire him at the end of the season.

That didn’t come to fruition, as we all know, and Ausmus was retained for another season.

But what caused his position to be so tenuous? Was it all the losing? That had plenty to do with it, I’m sure, but Ausmus also made it clear that he lacked the tactical wherewithal to be an effective big league manager.

The hope, at least of the present author, was that the Ausmus and the front office would have a series sit-down strategy discussions to help him in this ever important aspect of the job. So that he could actively manage situations rather than having the situation dictate his move to him.

More from Detroit Jock City

• Tigers Sign Manager A.J. Hinch to Long-Term Extension
• Lions vs. Bears Week 14 Opening Odds Disrespect Detroit
• Former Tigers Celebrate Jim Leyland Hall of Fame Call
• This Pistons Team Could be the Worst in Detroit Sports History
• 4 Free Agents Tigers Should Sign During Winter Meetings

Unfortunately we have evidence in this young season that Ausmus has not developed in his role as a tactician. This was clear in the Tigers’ bases loaded, two-out situation in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s game.

They had broken the game open to take a 5-0 against starter Jose Fernandez and were threatening to add to that against reliever Dustin McGowan, but unfortunately starting pitcher Anibal Sanchez was due up.

According to a run expectancy matrix, teams have pushed across at least one run in 31.6% of these situations (bases loaded, two-out) between the years 2010-2015 (inclusive).

Unfortunately those numbers are based on league averages and do not hold with the pitcher due up. What that number tells us (and what we can intuit) is that the chances of scoring at least one run are in this situation are equal to the on-base percentage of the batter at the plate. For Sanchez that’s about 14.5% (his career OBP). Ausmus’ other option was to pinch hit Victor Martinez (2016 projected OBP of .345).

The differential in the team’s chances to score a run (really at least one run, but let’s call it one run to make Ausmus look better) between Sanchez and Martinez is 20 percentage points. Let’s call that 0.2 runs. It’s more than that really, but let’s be generous.

0.2 runs aren’t a lot of runs, but if a manager could add 0.2 runs even once every game, the team would score 32 additional runs in the season and win three extra games. (It’s been shown that teams win one additional game for approximately every 10 additional runs they score or prevent).

But pinch hitting for Sanchez would mean the end of his day on the mound after five scoreless innings. This needs to be accounted for as well. It’s opening week and Sanchez has some arm injury scares in his recent past, so it should be safe to assume Ausmus was planning on him for only one more inning.

His pitch count was quite low at 79, but two full innings would have probably taken him above 100 (probably 105-110) when his target was likely in the 95-100 range.

Anyway, back to that 0.2 run differential. 0.2 runs in one inning pitched is 1.80 points of ERA (actually RA9 but stay with me). That means the difference between Sanchez and Drew VerHagen, the likely relief option, would have to be 1.80 ERA points or more to justify leaving the Sanchez in the game and allow him to hit.

According to the very reasonable FanGraphs Depth Chart projections, the difference between Sanchez (3.90 projected ERA) and VerHagen (4.24 projected ERA) is only about one-fifth of that gap. And that’s before accounting for the times through the order penalty (TTOP) which would make Sanchez worse than the projection as he was due to face the Marlins’ lineup for the third time.

Next: Detroit Tigers All-Time 25-Man Roster

To be clear, we’re only talking about small percentages in terms of win expectancy here — the Tigers had a 95% chance to win the game — but this is exactly the situation in which Ausmus should have exercised caution with his fragile-seeming starting pitcher.

The Tigers ultimately won the game, so hooray for them, but this is the type of decision that can (and probably will) cost the Tigers games this season. Ausmus’ habit of maintaining the status quo until the team gets into trouble should be concerning for a club clinging to the last hopes of a postseason run.