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I want to dig in on the ninth-inning sequence that put Ortiz into the game. With two outs and Cooper Pratt on first in a 2-2 game, Pat Murphy sent Andrew Vaughn to the plate for David Hamilton. While I wouldn’t have done this, I did see the logic. You want pop in that situation, and Vaughn is more likely than Hamilton is to drive the runner home from first. Giving up the platoon advantage seems odd at first, but Baker is a fastball/changeup pitcher with a consistent backwards platoon split. He works vertically, not horizontally, exactly the type of pitcher who will be as or more effective against lefties.
As I noted recently, Vaughn has crushed lefties since joining the Brewers. He hasn’t been bad against righties, though, with a .285/.369/.395 line against them in 198 PA this year. Dig in, and you see that when facing four-seamers and change-ups from righties -- Baker’s whole bag -- Vaughn hit .357 and slugged .607 this year. The best use of Vaughn would be against a lefty. The next-best use of him was against Bryan Baker.
Vaughn never got to swing the bat. He took a middle-middle change for a strike -- man, he needed to jump that pitch, it’s why he’s up there -- then a changeup down for ball one. On that pitch, Pratt broke for second, seemed to steal the bag, and was correctly called out after a long replay review. Liam Hicks made a great throw that dragged Richie Palacios’s glove into Pratt’s hand for the out. The inning was over, and while Murphy could have risked an inning of Vaughn at third base, where he’s played on occasion, to do so in a tied game as the road team carried too much risk. Ortiz went in, flied out to start the tenth, and made the key error in the 12th.
I’m fine with pinch-hitting Vaughn. I’m fine with running Pratt. I’m not fine with doing both. If you want to get Pratt to second, where he can score on a single, leave Hamilton in the game. If you want to send up Vaughn and play for a longer hit, then you have to leave Pratt on first. With a four-man bench, burning one of your only extra hitters without him getting a swing off is a big mistake. Pat Murphy hasn’t made many of them this month, but that was a big one, and would eventually be costly.
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