Source: www.purplerow.com --- Sunday, October 01, 2017
Who will the be on the roster on Wednesday night in Arizona? Ever since Major League Baseball instituted the second Wild Card, the game has come with a distinct quirk. It’s a postseason series, and, as such, teams can make a 25-man roster for just one game. The most notable decisions come in deciding how may position players and pitchers to carry. Unlike the regular season, the team doesn’t need to have a full starting rotation. But it might be wise to have more than one starting pitcher. Also, unlike the regular season, there’s an opportunity to carry actually useful bats off of the bench. On the surface, it would make sense for a team to carry as many as 16 position players. If two of the nine pitchers are starters who can handle a few innings, that’s more than enough to get through a game, even with playing matchups. But there’s a question of diminishing returns. Most teams don’t have five capable bench bats, let alone eight. Those seventh and eighth guys on the bench probably won’t add much. It’s probably better to reserve extra spots for pitchers, just in case the game goes deep into extra innings. There’s still another way the Wild Card game is different. In the regular season, a team needs some utility off the bench more than they need someone capable of hitting a periodic pinch-hit home run. The Wild Card roster allows the team to have that. And that’s why it’s wise not to go too far in the other direction and just carry ...
from Baseball http://ift.tt/2yAXJkC
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