Chris Gilligan • April 17, 2022
On Friday night at Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX, Joe Maddon found himself in a tight spot, with his Angels down 3-2 to the Rangers in the fourth inning with the bases loaded and $325-million-dollar man Corey Seager coming to the plate.
With Los Angeles in danger of dropping the first two games of the series and falling to 3-5 on the young season, Maddon did what he thought was best to keep the Angels in the game, what only Buck Showalter and he himself had ever (at least since 1950) thought to do—he instructed 26-year-old right-hander Austin Warren to intentionally walk in a run to instead face Rangers catcher Mitch Garver.
On paper, calling for an intentional walk with the bases loaded is a foolish thing to do. You’re offering a free base when you don’t have one to give—in this case, willingly deepening your deficit. On slightly more detailed paper, one can start to understand Maddon’s mindset (and Showalter’s before him).
First, there are a few key differences in the situation that Maddon found himself in and the previous times this strategy had been called upon. On May 28, 1998, Showalter’s Diamondbacks found themselves up two and one out away from a win, with the bases loaded and already-three-time MVP Barry Bonds up. Bonds, whose 688 career intentional walks are, um, 373 more than anyone else in baseball history (Albert Pujols, 315), had homered in three of his last four games (he’s also quite famously the all-time leader in that statistic). On deck to face Diamondbacks closer Gregg Olson was platoon catcher Brent Mayne, who would go on to post 5.1 WAR and 74 wRC+ over a 15-year career. Olson walked Bonds and Mayne put a good swing on the 3-2 pitch, but drove it right at Arizona right fielder Brent Brede for the final out.
On August 17, 2008, Maddon and the Rays also needed just one more out to finish a 7-3 win, but the Rangers were rallying, having scored once already in the inning and loaded the bases for first-time All-Star Josh Hamilton against right-hander Grant Balfour. Balfour was one of the newly-minted Rays’ best tools that summer, with a 1.21 ERA entering the game, but he had walked two hitters already in the inning, and Hamilton was en route to leading the AL in both total bases and RBI. Waiting on deck was Marlon Byrd, who was a good hitter in his own right, but against whom Maddon would be able to have a platoon advantage with righty Dan Wheeler coming out of the bullpen. Balfour walked Hamilton, and Wheeler struck Byrd out to earn the save.
In each of these situations, the proposition was pretty simple: concede a run and take your chances on Olson getting Mayne out, or Wheeler retiring Byrd, each of which had about a two-thirds probability of happening (Mayne’s career OBP was .332; Byrd’s .329). In Wheeler’s case, he even had more margin for error with a four-run lead. Really, the strategy in that situation was to limit the chance of an extra-base hit, and Hamilton was emerging as one of the league’s greatest extra-base threats. Neither came back to bite the gutsy managers.
And then there’s Friday night, when Maddon made the same call with one out in the fourth. He again faced an unenviable situation. According to FanGraphs’ run-expectancy (RE) tool, a bases-loaded, one-out situation in today’s game (4.53 runs per game, .314 league wOBA in 2021) yields an average of 1.45 runs for the hitting team. With a player with Seager’s career wOBA against righties (.380) up, this figure inflates to 1.76. This time, too, he had no option to turn to the bullpen, with the inexperienced Warren having just entered the game and faced only one of his now required three batters.