Quote:
Originally Posted by dkgo
There is always a break-even point evaluating the risk vs reward. Yes it is possible to never throw an interception if you just throw it away or take a sack when you aren't 100% sure, but playing so conservatively means you are sacrificing way too many chances at completions. In poker you could never lose a showdown if you fold everything but the nuts, but then you are going to be bluffed off every single other hand and hardly ever win pots.
And in baseball, you can play super safe one base at a time with zero risks if you want but then you are giving up too many opportunities which would increase your expected runs. If you never make an out on the basepaths then you aren't being aggressive enough. There are definitely bad times to be aggressive (if you are down 3 runs in the ninth then taking a risk is obviously not worth it) but this doesn't seem like one of them. Sometimes it just doesn't work out.
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Right
If a runner tries to steal home 100 times and gets thrown out 60 of them, then they created more runs than if they had never tried to steal home (assuming a break even point of 33%).
The reasoning, again, is obvious. The batter at the plate would get out more than 60% of the time.
It's exactly the same as the "the hitters strike out too much" argument.
Hitters don't want to strike out. And, if they wanted, they could almost never strike out. They could give up trying to drive the ball and bunt every time up or just try to make weak contact to avoid the K. But, that wouldn't be maximizing their hitting. So, they take bigger swings (not to mention taking more pitches which results in more two-strike counts) which increases the reward (extra base hits) but also the risk (strike outs)
Edit:
Someone posted that there is a positive correlation between strike outs and (maybe) wOBA.
This is evidence for the above. Each hitter has their own break even rate for striking out. Hitters who K a lot have to do more damage when they do make contact than hitters who make contact more often.
So a graph of wOBA vs K rate would start near 0,0 (never K'ing but producing minimal offense) increase to some point (their break-even K rate) then decrease as they struck out too often.