Quote:
Originally Posted by kaldaniels
I see 2 things that may differentiate the 9th from any other inning.
1) There will be pitchers that can't handle the pressure. Rick has alluded to this many times.
2). The offense may be in "just scrape across the tying run" mode, at least more so than other innings.
Unless I am missing something, given the above, what makes Marshall unworthy for the 9th as opposed to other innings?
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His performance. Just like he was not an effective starter, so he was moved to the pen in the first place. Just like certain styles of pitchers don't make starters and are relegated to the bullpen, it seems intuitive to me that certain styles of pitchers don't make closers, so are relegated to other places in the pen, and are found to be very effective there.
It is clearly the case that pitching performance is not linear, whereby you look at statistics and conclude "he pitches to this level in x or y inning, therefore he will perform the same in z inning, where z is the 9th inning.