Intriguing at-bat

The story attached is an interesting game scenerio.


http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3243227


This is the story of Anthony Gwynn Jr. who plays for the Milwaukie Brewers. He is the son of Tony Gwynn, the hall-of-fame player from the San Diego Padres. Anthony grew up around the Padres. And, he became very close to Trevor Hoffman, a pitcher for San Diego. As fate would have it, Little T faced Trevor Hoffman with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th inning, in a game that San Diego needed to win to make the playoffs.


I think the game player here, was not Gwynn or Hoffman, but the manager of the Brewers, Ned Yost. If considering mixed strategies, and how players need to "randomly" mix up their strengths and weaknesses to keep the other player off balance, Yost played a trump card. Gwynn grew up knowing Hoffman. As the story states, Gwynn learned how Hoffman set up hitters. So, by putting Gwynn into the game at this crucial point, Yost was jumbling up the known statistics with some intangibles. First the familiarity that Gwynn had with Hoffman. Second, the emotion of protege/mentor facing off.

It is also a pretty neat storry.