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An Open Letter to John Farrell: Splits and Sample Sizes

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"Octavio Dotel against lefties? Noooo!!!!!! Moving Travis Snider to second against AJ Burnett because of success over seven plate appearances??? Nooooo!!!!! Having runners-- like Corey Patterson last night, or John McDonald at Fenway on Saturday-- try to steal bases down multiple runs in late innings? Nooooooo!!!!! This should be basic stuff, John. Any idiot with a computer-- me, for example-- can see that Dotel has sucked ... against left-handers the last two years, or that in the AL last year, of the 16,039 plate appearances with a runner on first and less than two outs, only 1804 resulted in double plays, for a rate of one every 8.9 plate appearances-- hardly a reason to literally run scared of one." Andrew Stoeten http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/2011/04/open-letter-to-john-farrell.html I know it's also a pretty small sample size to judge John Farrell on, but bad decisions are bad decisions regardless of how often it's happening. To take a twenty percent chance of getting caught stealing to avoid a 10% chance of hitting into a double play is not a good decision when your behind by a couple of runs. Its also possible that these are just players who have the green light, and it wasn't the managers call and it won't happen in the long run. Nor is it a good decision to let Dotel face a significant portion of lefties, but he has had 13 plate appearances against lefties who are OPSing 1.250 against him versus just 10 against righties who are OPSing .400 against him. Given that last year righties OPSed .576 versus lefties who OPSed .993 and in 2009 righties OPSed .653 versus lefties who OPSed 1.000 he should almost never see a lefthanded hitter.