re: Do Costal, Auburn and Ok st wish they started their #1 pitcher in hind sight?

quote:

---

I wouldn’t have started Skenes. But I did hear Jay on the radio talking about how much scouting they did on all 3 teams this week. Said they were at the facilities till late in the morning all week. Given that, can you not concede that maybe Jay and staff liked the matchup against Oregon State and their 4th starter on June 3rd better than Tulane’s 1st stater on June 2nd and did, in fact, play the percentages? That they had access to much more information than us and came up with a different calculation?

---

Carl, have you heard of coach speak? Do you blindly accept every explanation ever given by a coach, as factual, rather than potentially an excuse? Would you care to even make an attempt at explaining what possible matchup there could be that would suggest that Paul Skenes, the best pitcher possibly ever in college baseball, is not an infinitely better matchup? An explanation that would tell how burning your ace against a 19-40 team is a good idea? What information do you suppose they have, that we don't, that could explain this? Because when comparing Paul Skenes to every other pitcher on our team, we aren't exactly splitting hairs to tell the difference.

quote:

---

Or that there may have been a psychological reason/reasons they took into account realizing that games are not played on paper or in computer simulations, but are actually played by different and unique human beings? That every team is different and what’s good for one isn’t necessarily good for all the others?

---

Were you under the impression that I was talking about analytics? I'm the furthest thing from being pro analytics, and if you've paid any attention to my post history, this should be well known by now. I'm usually at the forefront of reminding people that the game is played by humans, and not by numbers.

I'm talking about straight up basic knowledge, from traditional statistics, to the eye test. We know what we have in Skenes, and we know we have no one who can be trusted after that. So you take your chances with the less trusted guys, against the 19-40 team. Whatever psychological game you're trying to play at this point in the season is an exercise in pure arrogance. It's trying to be the smartest guy in the room, when just having common sense will do.

There isn't a sound argument to be made in favor of starting Skenes yesterday. You have to resort to contorting some weird mind games that make no sense. Bertman and Mainieri both said last week that they would have started Hurd, which happened to be the same guy I thought would start. If anyone knew about psychology in sports, it was Bertman. But he never tried to overthink it with something like this. He always saved his ace. Seemed to work well for him.