I was "watching" yesterday's Tigers game against the Twins via MLB's online game stats service (the modern version of the sports ticker). Pitcher Jeremy Bronderman was almost perfect through 7 innings and the Tigers were rolling to a 4-0 win and a series sweep in the Metrodome. I clicked the window closed as the game entered the bottom of the eighth (Ray had woken up from his nap). Later on, I summoned the result to my cell phone via SMS and was stunned when my tiny screen read "Minnesota: 6; Detroit 4." What the hell had happened?!?!
From my three seasons with the Madtown M's Recreational Base Ball Team in Madison, WI, I was all too familiar with the concept of the meltdown inning. It's fairly common occurrence; a Google search for "meltdown inning" results in 109,000 hits. Some are metaphorical, but the vast majority refer to actual baseball games. During one of the Madtown M's spectacular meltdown innings, for example, we gave up 9 runs to the weaker Ravens after having shut them out for the first four innings.
The meltdown inning is always on the defensive side. Offensive failures -- such as stranding three runners on base -- are usually referred to as "killed rallies" or "chokes" and are seen as the result of individuals' flops, not the team's. A meltdown, however, involves everyone and is usually the result of a perfect storm of defensive mishaps and pitching breakdowns, usually with a bad call or freak mishap thrown in for good measure. In yesterday's eighth inning, two Tiger errors were capped by a balk that drove in the tying run. After that, the team was doomed.
The meltdown inning reveals how much of baseball is psychological, and how every player on the team can simultaneously suffer from the effects of a bad turn of luck. When one player's confidence is shaken, or when a player becomes emotionally unhinged, it doesn't take much for the entire team to collapse with him. Efforts to pull the team out of the rut tend to drive them further down, just as struggling in quicksand causes you to sink faster. Throws are rushed, grounders are booted, fielders throw to the wrong bases, etc. The pitcher, generally the emotional core of the team, is usually affected the strongest, and most meltdown innings are probably prolonged because a scarred pitcher isn't removed quickly enough. It is generally understood that "unearned runs" (those due to error) aren't a pitcher's fault, but the pitcher is still haunted by them (perhaps more so than "earned" runs).
In yesterday's game, Bronderman -- despite his amazing first 7 innings -- should have been pulled after the balk ... not as punishment, but to protect the team from collectively suffering from his personal meltdown.
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