Alas, one-and-done relievers are a part of the modern game and will surely reassert their importance in the coming playoffs. Managers will check the stat sheets, fans will check their watches and we will all check the box scores to see if the shenanigans were worth it.
They probably will be. As tedious as the tinkering can be, one-batter relievers generally thrive, leading to even greater use.
No manager is more linked with this strategy -- or blamed for it, depending on whose side you are on -- than Tony La Russa, who has used his St. Louis relievers for just one batter 64 times this season, the most in the majors, according to Sports Team Analysis Tracking Systems, known as Stats. (Almost half of those appearances went to the left-hander Ray King, who specializes in facing southpaws.) It is hard to argue with La Russa's judgment: The Cardinals got 57 outs in those 64 matchups, for an 89.1 percent conversion rate.
"If you believe that getting that out in the seventh is critical to you having a chance to win in the ninth, sometimes you make a move for one hitter to face one pitcher," La Russa said. "You have convinced yourself that by getting this out, we have a better chance to win; if we don't get this out, we won't be in position later."
Most contenders this season have a reliever who specializes in one-batter duty. The Red Sox have the left-hander Mike Myers, who leads the American League with 25 such appearances. He has faced a single batter 257 times in his career, the most in major league history, according to Retrosheet. The Braves -- despite Mazzone's distaste for the strategy -- have used the lefty John Foster to face one batter 18 times.
"I'm basically a pitcher who pitches at-bats, not innings," Foster said. "If I get eight out of 10 batters out, that's pretty good."
Relievers have been used for just one batter 1,013 times so far this season, roughly the norm for the past five years, according to Stats. Most of them are left-handers like King, Myers and Foster, and their brief but vital role leaves them likened to field-goal kickers. Or worse: the statistics community has come to call each of them a Loogy, short for Lefty One Out Guy.
The one-batter strategy usually works because such relievers are saved for the single batter they should be the most effective facing. This season, they have yielded a cumulative .170 batting average and a .282 slugging percentage, both remarkably low. In 2004, they were even lower, .131 and .209.
Some managers do not use the strategy much, like the Angels' Mike Scioscia (16 times this season) and the Padres' Bruce Bochy (19). But Bochy does scratch the itch vigorously at times: in a tight game two years ago, he changed pitchers after each of four consecutive batters.
This is a relatively recent phenomenon. As relievers began their rise to prominence, from 1960 to 1980, only one in five games had a pitcher last just one batter.
Torre, like most managers, makes more pitching changes today in large part because increasingly sophisticated data show each reliever's performance against specific hitters or even which types of hitters (those who hit fly balls or to the opposite field, for example). What once were considered "gut" maneuvers have been replaced by scientific statistical matchups that proceed one batter at a time.
"You stat yourself to death," Torre said. "If it wasn't for having the stats at your disposal," relievers might be used for longer periods.
But they probably won't this postseason, because of the heightened importance of every at-bat. Make way for the loogies.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with