In game 6 of the World Series Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash pulled starter Blake Snell with one out in the 6th inning after giving up only 2 hits and striking out 9 while throwing only throwing 73 pitches. It was instantly met with criticism, which only grew louder after the Rays gave up the lead two batters later. The conventional wisdom is that when your starting pitcher is rolling and he’s only thrown 73 pitches you should leave him in no questions asked. Many of these same critics have called Kevin Cash one of the best managers, if not the best, in baseball. So why were people so quick to dismiss his decision here?
Back when I used to play poker, when I would see someone better than me make a play I would have never thought about doing I would never instantly dismiss it just because I would never do it. I would wonder what the thought process was that lead them to make that decision and wonder how I could use that to improve my own game. That doesn’t mean that the play they made was definitely the right play, it’s possible that I was right and they were wrong, but anytime someone better than you makes a decision that you don’t understand it is an opportunity for you to learn.
If we operate on the assumption that Kevin Cash is a good manager and knows more about baseball than we do and we see him make a decision that we would never make, the reaction of a good analyst should be to wonder what information led him to make that decision, not to instantly dismiss it as wrong and bad because it’s unconventional. To think that whatever surface level logic that leads you to think the decision was wrong wasn’t something that Cash considered is just insulting to Cash. If someone is smarter than you shouldn’t they at least get some benefit of the doubt that maybe they know more than you do and that’s why they made the decision they made? He’s not making that decision because he didn’t think of something all fans watching the game from home thought of.
As an aside, I was disappointed in the mainstream sports media coverage of the decision. There seemed to be no attempt to even guess at the logic Cash could have used other than the magical black box boogeyman of analytics. Given that it was pretty in line with how Cash had been managing Snell all season, it seems pretty disrespectful to viewers to not have a single person who can explain the likely logic behind the decision in a position to do so.
As a casual baseball fan I thought Cash’s decision was a little weird at the time, but after reading stuff from people smarter than me I now think both pulling Snell and leaving him in were probably pretty similar in terms of their overall impact on Tampa’s chances of winning the game. By not dismissing the decision because it’s not something I was used to seeing I was able to learn more about modern baseball strategy.