When you absolutely must prevent a run from scoring, what pitchers are major league managers calling on this year?

To find out, I selected a subset of games, namely 9th inning walk-off wins after one out. Why those ones? A couple of reasons: first, most of these games will have been tied going to the home 9th, meaning the visitors cannot allow a run; and second, these games can easily be found using the Play Index in Baseball-Reference (whereas 9th inning walk-off wins with no outs are indistinguishable in Play Index from home 9th innings that are not played).

Anyway, this early in the season, it is a small enough set of games to look at each one and play manager (with the obvious benefit of hindsight) . After the jump, we’ll find out who the managers did call on.

So, here are our games. Of course, this sample is of games where the visiting team’s strategy did not work. However, since there was already one out before the winning run scored, the manager did have a chance to adapt his strategy to respond to events occurring during the inning.

Thus, the closer was not used in any of the games that were tied going to the home 9th. The pitchers that were used faced over 3 batters in 5 of the of the 10 tied games. Thus, there was opportunity for the manager to adapt his strategy during the inning. Even if the manager had hopes of getting through the 9th and using his closer in a later save situation, when that strategy began to seem less likely, he still did not go to his closer in a mid-inning pressure situation in the hopes of extending the game.

So, that’s 9th inning walk-off games. How about extra-inning walk-offs – did those games get to extras because the closer was brought in to extend the game?

Not much different from the 9-inning walk-off games.

• In games 1 & 2, the closer was brought into a tie game, but not until the 12th inning in game 2.
• In game 9, the closer was used, but not until a save situation was in order.
• In games 4 and 6, the Rays didn’t use their closer, despite getting into tight spots before losing each game.
• In game 8, the Mariners pretty much emptied their bullpen, but still did not go to their closer.
• In game 10, the closer stayed in the bullpen while the losing pitcher struggled through a lengthy inning.
• Game 5 was a throwback with a closer used in a pressure situation before the 9th inning, something only Mariano has done with regularity in the recent past.

Conclusion: no change from the status quo we’ve become accustomed to seeing for the last decade or more – closers close only in save situations, and only to start an inning. Everybody else handles the dicier situations that arise late in close games. The fact that the game is over if your team allows a run appears not to be a consideration by managers for bringing in their closers in a non-save situation.