Looking through the Prism of McCarverism

If you somehow kept your finger off the mute button during last night's broadcast, you probably heard Joe Buck and Tim McCarver speculating how Damon on third would impact Brad Lidge's pitch selection.  McCarver asserted that Lidge would have to rely on his fastball because he couldn't risk a slider in the dirt reaching the backstop with Damon waiting 90 feet away to plate the go-ahead run.  Out of curiosity, I pulled out my Pitch F/X database today to see if there was any merit to McCarver's line of thinking.

Judging by McCarver's tone, you'd think Lidge's slider is impossible to catch.  In my Pitch F/X database, I found that Brad Lidge has thrown 1496 sliders in the past three seasons (not counting these playoffs) and 80 hit the dirt. That's a 5.3 percent rate, meaning one out of about every 20 sliders that Lidge throws hits the ground. And within that subset only a couple trickled away.  Needless to say, there's a very very small chance that a Lidge slider would cause any trouble. 

When it comes down to it Lidge really only has two pitches: a fastball and slider. He throws the slider 47.3 percent of the time while his heaters make up for the other half. With a man on third, his slider percentage jumps to 53.3 percent.  In other words, Lidge actually uses his slider more often when there's a man on third.  How could that be, James Timothy McCarver? 

The main issue here, and I think this is crazy important, is that McCarver's effectively asking Lidge to throw batting practice. If hitters knew Lidge won't throw a slider with a man on third, then they'll just sit and wait for his fastball. That = batting practice. That = why he has a 53.3 slider percentage in that situation.  Lidge, like all pitchers, are game theorists by trade.  It's mind-boggling that McCarver has no apparent grasp of game theory or pitch randomization after considering this fact: he caught 1300 games in his major-league career. If McCarver played Rocks Paper Scissors, he'd probably insist on waiting three seconds after the others throw their weapon of choice.  Randomness is a powerful thing.