When you absolutely must prevent a run from scoring, what pitchers are major league managers calling on this year?
To find out, I selected a subset of games, namely 9th inning walk-off wins after one out. Why those ones? A couple of reasons: first, most of these games will have been tied going to the home 9th, meaning the visitors cannot allow a run; and second, these games can easily be found using the Play Index in Baseball-Reference (whereas 9th inning walk-off wins with no outs are indistinguishable in Play Index from home 9th innings that are not played).
Anyway, this early in the season, it is a small enough set of games to look at each one and play manager (with the obvious benefit of hindsight) . After the jump, we’ll find out who the managers did call on.
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