Baseball Strategy:Defensive Replacements
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The defensive replacement is just a player who's better defensively than the player who may be a liability in the field, but has a great bat and, therefore, must be in the lineup. Defensive replacements typically come in towards the end of the game.
Let's take the 2004 Red Sox for example. In the World Series, David Ortiz was forced to start at first base because there's no DH in NL stadiums. Towards the end of the game, if Boston was in the lead, the Sox would bring in Doug Mientkiewicz to play first base instead of Ortiz because Doug is a much better defenseive player. Boston wouldn't want to risk any errors and let the game slip away, so they would play it safe to keep from making bad plays in the field. Even if Doug has to take an at-bat, it really doesn't matter because Boston would already have the lead. Boston wouldn't want to leave Ortiz on the bench all together because they need Ortiz's bat to get the lead in the first place.
