A wonderful thing about baseball is that you can see something new every day. Another wonderful thing about baseball is that the patterns that emerge from all those unique moments deliver us data samples large enough to predict future events more effectively than most other sports. Sometimes, however, events like this past weekend occur, and show us something we haven’t seen in over a century.
The “Opener,” as the Tampa Bay Rays’ Sergio Romo was dubbed after Saturday and Sunday, is the simple strategy of beginning the game with a pitcher only slated to go an inning or two.