Korean Nationalism Costs It WBC Crown?

There are numerous reasons why you don’t even attempt to pitch around Ichiro in the first place, and why the intentional walk was the only smart move in that situation:

- The object of pitching around a guy is to nibble at the corners and try to get him to chase stuff out of the zone, that he has little to no chance of connecting with, get ahead in the count, and then go after him more aggressively so you get a strike out. Ichiro is a contact hitter, high avg, who rarely chases crap out of the strike zone, and if he does, its often for slap hits to the opposite field or infield hits that he beats out with his great speed.

You play the corner-nibbling game with guys that are free-swinging power hitters prone to striking out, NOT high average slap hitters with speed. The entire strategy is predicated on having a hitter at the plate that is exactly the opposite of Ichiro. The fact that the Korean manager couldn’t recognize the situation tells me he either consciously decided to play with fire, or he’s an idiot.

- When you decide to nibble at the corners, you take the risk of a pitch getting away and floating into the zone. This is a stupid risk to take with one of the greatest hitters in the world at the plate! With the intentional walk, there is zero risk. A smart manager takes the variable of the pitcher making a mistake out of the equation. The fucking moron lights the torch and lets him play with fire, and then blames the pitcher/catcher when they get burned.

- Intentionally walking Ichiro loads the bases and gives you a force all the way around, dramatically improving your chances on a ground ball anywhere in the infield. Ichiro gets more infield hits, nubbers, and slap hits through holes than any hitter alive. Pitching to him just increases the probability of one of those occurring when you’re trying to decrease the number of ways to get beat.

- Baseball is a game of percentages. Smart managers do everything they can to consistently put the percentages on their side. The ones that do that the most often, will get rewarded. The ones that take the 40/60 instead of the 60/40 will often times get away with it, but will always get burned in the long run.

- It is amusing to see shit like “it took guts to face Ichiro,” “I’d rather take my chances throwing garbage at Ichiro,” or “they played aggressively and weren’t intimidated by anyone,” blabbity blah blah.

That’s all great if your goal for the WBC is to show everyone how much guts you have, or how aggressive you are, or how you’re not afraid of anyone…but it’s fucking RETARDED if you’re actually trying to win.

And yes the decision was cut and dried, at least for anyone with a fucking brain instead of a head full of useless guts. You never let the opponent’s best player beat you, especially when you have the opportunity to increase your odds at an out and face a far inferior batter in the process.

Covering for the rank stupidity of Kim In Sik with excuses and justification only increases the chances that it will re-occur. Shine the light on the moron, learn from it, and hire someone that values victories over bravado.

‘I make it a point never to buy any Korean products on principle. Why? I will not support such a rabidly nationalistic, xenophobic, and mercantilist economy. Koreans are so predatory and nationalistic. They have a closed economy and zero-sum attitude to trade. Protectionism in the early stages of an economy is not unreasonable. But in the case of Korea it is almost a religious doctrine to keep foreign things out. If you buy a foreign car, you’re seen as a traitor. They pick narrow industrial sectors and all jump in like copycats.

If I see a Korean sports team, I root for the other side. Why? Because they’re so full of themselves that they leave no room for other parties to participate and enjoy themselves. The 1988 Olympics was worse than the Hitler Games of 1936. Dealing with Koreans is like dealing with bright adolescents. They’re full of energy and want to do everything yesterday. But they throw tantrums and are prone to dangerous and erratic behavior if their whims are not indulged. In most countries, intellectuals become universal. You learn that great ideas and values have no national boundaries. What is profoundly disturbing is that Korean intellectuals become more xenophobic and nationalistic, and perpetrate the idea that all of Korea’s problems are the result of wilfulness by foreigners. This is the mark of a scoundrel.’

‘But,’ he said after a pause, ‘I love many aspects of Korea.’
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A shiny new nickel to whoever knows where that quote comes from.

I think Ichiro is not a traditional high-average contact hitter who is selective the way, say, Boggs or Gwynn were. One powerful indicator is his relatively low walk ratio per plate appearance

I agree with that, but regardless of the low walk ratio, he’s still among the league leaders every year in ABs per strikeout. In fact, he’s tied for 8th best in that category among all active players, and of all the players ahead of him, only Juan Pierre averages nearly the number of ABs (650-700 per yr) that Ichiro does.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/ABpSO_active.shtml

Bottom line is, a strikeout was a roughly 10% probability.

There also seems to be insufficient attention paid to the fact that there would be a lynch mob if Ichiro were intentionally walked, and Korea still lost.

Korean lynch mob or expat lynch mob? Are you saying that you think Kim would’ve been criticized here regardless of his decision?

I won’t speak for anyone else, but I wouldn’t have been part of that lynch mob. Walking Ichiro was not only the smart strategic play, but it was the percentage play as well. If Nakajima had driven the winning runs in, you live with it knowing you forced the inferior hitter to beat you.

In fact, if the gamble had paid off, Ichiro had struck out and Korea went on to win the game, I would still be here criticizing the decision to pitch to him. The result is really irrelevant, and you have to look at the decision independent of it.

Please give some plausible statistical data to back up your wild, sweeping generalizations.

JW’s claim sounded so ridiculous on its face (the first hint it was bullshit was his proclaiming “You know that, I know that, everyone who follows baseball knows that..”) that I didn’t even bother looking for any data to confirm it was bollocks. It seemed fairly obvious to me that any minimal potential gain from some magical “transformation” would be offset by the disadvantage of having force outs at all bases.

Cuz I think it does make a big difference if you have 1 runner in scoring position vs 2, in a tight game like that where every run counts.

Sorry but you’re wrong again. In a tie game, there’s very little difference in one runner vs two in scoring position, which is why they conceded the stolen base. When tied in extra innings (absolutely for the visiting team, but also for the home team), you base your strategy on the presumption that conceding one run is conceding a loss. Giving up the second run is almost meaningless. Of course you want to minimize damage as much as possible, but gaining the statistical edge of increased force outs on the infield outweighs the disadvantage of a second runner in scoring position.

If Korea were ahead one run in the 9th or in extra innings, then the value of the second runner in scoring position increases dramatically, and they likely don’t concede the stolen base. The thinking in that situation is that preserving at least a tie (and preventing a potential loss) as a worst-case scenario has more value than the gain in force out options.