TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Friday, October 29, 2004

THANKS, CURT!! (Now you can shut up!)

Some wrap-up musings on the Red Sox victory and the aftermath.

• Once upon a time, discussion of religion and politics at the dinner table was considered impolite. Insofar as actors, singers, and athletes seem compelled to share their religious and spiritual motivations with us within the field of play, I suppose there's a point, although there's a breed of player that would have us believe that their successes on the field are due to their particular beliefs. I never question the motivation of a player, and brazen self-confidence that you are the Annointed One seems to me like a confident advantage on the field of sports. But God Help Us All when singers, athletes, and actors hit the hustings, and we pay attention to what they have to say more than people who have spent their lives in public service. Trust me, I'd be telling Bruce Springsteen and Bono to shut up, too, if this were a blog about music. Since it's a blog about baseball, I'll just say thanks for helping with the Championship, Curt, now please exercise some comity and restraint. That's not entirely fair: we all have our first amendment rights. Just count me among those who, while seriously impressed by his courage on the diamond, have gotten more than his fill of Curt Schilling interviews for the next 86 years or so.
  
  
• I found it an interesting footnote that the managers Terry Francona bested along the way to the crown are all past winners themselves: Mike Sioscia of the Angels (2002), Joe Torre of the Yankees (too many to mention here), Tony LaRussa of the Cards (sadly, still but the 1989 A's). I hope we never hear again the concept that "post-season experience" has much to do with a manager's marginal contributions to the post-season success or failure of his club.
  
  
• The 2004 Sox have their case to make based on the tough LCS comeback from 0-3 as one of the greatest post-season runs of all time. The Sox post-season record was 11-3, and of course included a record eight straight wins. The 2004 Sox share the distinction with the 1999 Yankees for having two series sweeps, in the LDS and World Series. The '98 Yankees went 11-2 in the post-season, although they were behind the Cleveland club two games to one in the LCS. The most impressively dominating post-season run since the institution of the three-round format in 1995, though, has to be the '99 Yanks: they went 11-1, losing only one game in the LCS to the Red Sox (Pedro Martinez cruised while Roger Clemens got rocked), and never trailed any of the three series at any one time. The only team in the playoff era to win all of its post-season games was the 1976 Reds, which brushed aside the Phillies 3-0 in the LCS and swept the Yankees 4-0 inn the World Series. Of course, that may have been the most boring post-season in history as well.
  
  
• So how does the 2004 post-season stack up among the greats? With a sloppy, albeit usually entertaining, World Series of only four games, 2004 drops down a few notches overall. The four Series games, we hope history remembers, were in fact all close: 11-9, 6-2, 4-1, 3-0. But close does not mean, necessarily, closely contested. We'll perhaps leave a detailed analysis for the Hot Stove League. One is inclined, at least, to rank the two seven-game LCS as among the best pair of play-off series since 1969, with only 1986 perhaps edging it out.
  
  
• I neglected to mention one Red Sox in my article yesterday: Ellis Burks. Burks is retiring, and will stay with the Red Sox in a coaching or instructional role next year. Burks didn't do much for the team this year, playing in only 11 games and getting but one homer in a meaningless game situation. But he was by all accounts a great presence on the bench this year, and the team's one remaining playing link to the late-1980s Red Sox teams, appearing in the swept-away-by-the-A's 1988 and 1990 teams. Burks suffered in his early Red Sox years from the usual over-high expectations, where his power and speed combinations were hailed as being hall-of-fame stuff. He left the Red Sox as a free agent in 1993 for the White Sox
  
  His final career ended up paralleling another similarly-touted Red Soc centerfielder, Freddy Lynn, with whom Burks has a similarity score of 88.8%. Burks had a stop and start early career, which was marred by major injuries; only twice did he play in as many as 150 games, and he averaged but 111 over his career (ending with a nice round total of exactly 2000 games played). He had a near-MVP year in 1996, albeit in Colorado. He was a two-time All-Star, in '90 and '96, and won a single gold-glove, in 1990. He ended his career with 352 homers, good for 68th all-time. I haven't seen the numbers recently, but my recollection is he has homered in more ballparks than any player in history save Fred McGriff, thanks to the circumstances of switching leagues and overlapping the wave of new ballpark construction in the 1990s. He finished with a .291 batting average, a nice .363 OBP, and a .510 SLG (70th all-time). This puts his OPS for his career at season's end at .8773, which is good enough for exactly 100th all-time. Ellis will no doubt be pushed off the top-100 almost immediately, but it's not a bad career when you can claim that when you retired you were in the top 100 hitters who ever played the game. Ellis also appeared in the post-season with five different clubs in six years (not counting this year, when he wasn't on the post-season roster), but didn't get a single ring (through little fault of his own -- he hit a respectable .800 OPS in 103 post-season plate appearances) -- until now. Burks will get even bigger cheers than Manny, Papi, Schilling, Lowe, and Petey on the post-season parade route, I believe I can safely predict.
  
  What a way to end a career. If Burks had been made up with better knees, and we extrapolate his 162-game averages to a healthy 18-year career, he ends up with 522 homers, 1764 RBI, and 3078 hits. That's a big what-if on Burks, but he should be an easy qualifier for "Stars in Their Time" when his time on the ballot comes up.
  
  Here are Burks' final top ten most-similar players: Luis Gonzalez, Reggie Smith, Bob Johnson (the late-arriving AL outfielder of the 30s and 40s, not the scrubby 1960s utility man), Duke Snider, Larry Walker, Dick Allen, Lynn, Bernie Williams, Jim Rice, and Will Clark. Not bad company.
  

posted by The Crank 8:26 AM

Thursday, October 28, 2004

It's Over

It's not really very easy to describe the sensations I'm feeling tonight to anybody who hasn't been a Sox fan for quite a while. I hope for the fans of the city of Chicago we have company some time soon. But it's a sense of release: now we can get back to admiring the baseball and not worry quite so much about the outcome. We can go back and marvel at how far the '86 Sox got against teams that were better than them, how much heart the '75 team played with, how great that '78 team was despite not even making it to the dance, how improbable the '67 pennant was, how great Pesky really was and what a pity it was he missed the war years so we'll never know how fine he might have been, what a bomber the beast was, and what a great pitcher Ruth was. We can move on and enjoy our team without holding them to an impossible burden of relieving the horrors of nearly 90 years.

I'm particularly happy for a few people in particular.

One is Dan Duquette. He was vilified for trying a bit too hard and not being nearly enough of a communicator with the fans and his own employees, but he laid out the groundwork for the great victory. Four of the starters tonight were his. He made the second-best Sox trade of the last generation in getting Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb. He acquired the great Pedro Martinez, who will be remembered a hundred years from now. And Duquette was such a fan, even unemployed by organized baseball he paid his own way to see the Sox finally win it all.

Another is Lou Gorman. Lou was not well-loved at the end of his tenure with the Red Sox, and represented an old school that really didn't fit too well. But Gorman did put the Red Sox close in '86 and '88 and '90, and his last first-round pick, Trot Nixon, was in the lineup tonight, hitting three doubles and getting two RBI. Lou is still employed by the club as a consultant and may well share in the glory, finally.

We are very grateful for the gracious presence of Tim Wakefield on this club for the past ten years. Wakefield was a cast-off from the Pirates when he upped with the Red Sox, and came within a start of winning a Cy Young in his first full year with the club. He's had an up and down career (no pun intended), but has always been there through thick and thin. He did not get the job done in Game 1, yet somehow I feel this victory is more his than anybody else's. Timmy is a strange throwback to another time with his knuckleball, his gentle way, and his genuine warmth. After last year's ignominious defeat at the hands of the Aaron Boone homer, he, more than anybody else, deserves to hold this trophy for his perseverance.

I continue to hold a special place in my heart for Johnny Damon. I was privileged to see Damon's first championship, in 1994, for the high-A Wilmington Blue Rocks. That team featured a half dozen future major leaguers, notably Damon and Jon Lieber. It won over 100 games in a short minor league season plus post-season, and swept the post-season series 3-0 to win the Carolina League. Damon was a second-baseman then, clean-shaven and with short hair, and was one of the nicest players I've had the privilege to talk with. He just never seemed to get caught up in the hype, either back then or during his stint with the Sox, the A's, and the Royals. He was as much an MVP for the Red Sox this year as anybody, and despite a temporary outage of production in the ALCS ended up being instrumental to their post-season success as well.

I'm so happy for Derek Lowe, who may or may not be the quality of pitcher he showed in 2002. But no matter what happens to Lowe's career the rest of the way, he'll have the 2004 post-season to look back upon. No pitcher can do anything but match what he did: win the deciding game in three consecutive post-season series, and pitch his team back from the brink of elimination twice in the same post-season.

But most of all, I'm ecstatic for myself and my fellow New Englanders. The Patriots? Myeah. A late expansion to our pantheon. The Celts, the B's? Sideshows. The Red Sox form the rhythym of the season that counts in New England, summer. I can get back to an account of town ball being played in the time of George III in about four generational leaps. The Red Sox matter more than most sports franchises because entire families mark their histories by what the Sox were doing at such and such a time. My sister was married during Game 4 of the 1990 ALCS; my wife and I picked the date of Fisk's homer (the actual date, since it was hit past midnight) for our own wedding because it was the one childhood memory we first discovered we had in common; I watched Game 6 of the '86 series with my best friend from college in a smelly dorm lounge. A million families have their own versions. It's as meaningful a way of marking our time on the planet as anything else.

And for all those families, from the centenarians who remember the last championship to the snips of kids who don't have a clue about how long this wait was, this will always be: the Year the Sox won it.

posted by The Crank 1:07 AM

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

What Are the Nerds Trying to Tell Us?
In a mad fit of random web-surfing I managed to end up on the official Strat-O-Matic records page. This page lists the all-time records for online Strat-O-Matic leagues. There are some doozies here. Barry Bonds hit 97 dingers for both the St. Upid Hose Monkeys (naming fantasy league teams is probably as fun as naming porn movies) and Going Going Gone. Bonds also drove in 218 RBIs for St. Upid. Jim Thome has managed 231 Ks. Ichiro racked up an amazing 762 AB, but collected only 249 hits.

There's a pretty good spread in the records. Bond's feats outperform reality, while Ichiro falls a Baker's dozen shy of his own real-life mark. But there's one category that sticks out like a sore thumb. IBBs. The record is held by Bobby Abreu with 30. Not 120, 30 - Bonds has 8 seasons with 30 or more IBB, and yet in Stratoland online nobody has ever put up a season with more than 30.

Bill James once said something along the lines of "prospective managers should be forced to play 1000 games of Strat-O-Matic before they are given the job." This is to prevent Dusty Baker wannabes from playing littleball in the first when the wind is blowing out. There's something to be said for this. But 30 IBBs? Well, some of this comes from the fact that the game play is plate-appearance by plate-appearance, a pitcher won't fall behind 2-0 and then decide to give up the IBB. But a huge number of Bonds' IBBs this year were decided before he strode to the plate. Perhaps Strat managers are a little smarter than Brian Sabean, and have a bona fide slugger batting behind Barry. Even still, 30 seems like a small number. You have to go down to #16 all time to get to 30 IBBs.

An interesting case was the Maine Bears I. Bonds slugged .994 by playing in Coors Field, yet no IBB avalanche - of course, having Pujols in the lineup might have had something to do with that...

At the end of the day, I think that online Strat players have to be the nerdiest of the baseball nerds, and they've run the numbers. If their league records show that they almost never intentionally walk Bonds, that might be the best method.

posted by David 10:45 AM

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Zuh?!

What did we just see there with Jeff Suppan at third base? I can only assume that Oquendo told Suppan to go if it was on the ground. We're also getting the 411 from La Russa that Mueller was way over at the normal shortstop position on the grounder hit by Walker to Bellhorn. Unbelievable. It's starting to look like the Red Sox are an unstoppable force of nature.

posted by Tom Renbarger 6:40 PM

There's a touching account of Victoria Snelgrove's memorial service on the wires this morning. Grief and anger over the senseless death is causing a mix of reactions.

Her pastor, delivering the eulogy, blamed the fans: ''Why did this have to happen?'' he said. ''I don't know why. Some people feel it's their God-given right to riot, to destroy property and cause mayhem. ... It is destructive and it is deadly."

The Mayor is implicitly blaming the bars in Kenmore Square, and somewhat more elliptically, the television coverage that fueled alcohol-consumptive-showing-off; the Mayor reached an agreement with the bars in the area to limit fan loitering, put a limit on the number of drinks served per customer, and to ban TV cameras from the watering holes.

The Boston Police are blaming bad luck: the article says police are calling it a "horrible fluke". Although it's worth noting three other persons were hospitalized because of the percussive effects of the pepper spray bullet casings (not the pepper spray).

One might question the very nature of "non-lethal force" weapons which <kill people with some frequency, anyway. Some have argued that rather than reducing the possibility of violence in crowd-control situations, they increase it because of fear and panic among the crowd when weapons are used, and the higher likelihood police will resort to the use of weapons earlier.

The fans, the bars, the TV cameras, the Mayor, the police -- there's plenty of blame to share.

There's an internal police investigation going on in Boston as to whether the use of force at the time was excessive. I've already got my own conclusion: yes. Somebody died celebrating a victory in a game. That's excessive.

posted by The Crank 10:23 AM

Monday, October 25, 2004

There's been a bit of talk concerning Victoria Snelgrove, who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time (how could just outside of Fenway right after Game 7 be the wrong place and wrong time?). This brings to mind Bubba Helms. Although he seems to be innocent of anything more than trying to grab 15 minutes of fame, this guy was the posterboy for bad behavior by celebrating fans. His life spun out of control, and he was dead by drugs before the age of 35. Two very sad cases...

posted by David 11:10 PM

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Boston up 2-0 in World Not So Serious

How good are the Red Sox? They're so good they committed four more errors tonight, making eight in the world series already, and they still won. They're so good they've left 21 runners on base (in only sixteen innings of at-bats) and they've still won. They're so good they sent out a guy with more stitches in him than Frankenstein's monster and they still won.

Well, maybe not that good. The second game of the World Series was another un-classic, at 6-2 for the Red Sox, but it was more like the coda for the war of attrition in Game 1. The Red Sox scored all six of their runs with two outs, two at a time, on what should have been three doubles. The third double turned into a single by Orlando Cabrera, as he dogged it watching a high fly ball that looked like it was going over the Monster in left but got knocked back down by the wind. Cabrera then dogged it on a two-out pop-up by Manny Ramirez that got knocked down by that same wind and fell in front of Jim Edmonds, and ended up stranded on third when he should have scored even from first. Cabrera may have produced two runs, but he cost the Sox another one. And still they won. Bill Mueller tied a world series record with three errors in one game, cost Curt Schilling eight extra pitches and a whole inning's worth of work, somehow costing only on unearned run, and still the Red Sox won.

The Red Sox might have gotten a bad break on a tremendous 1-1 blast by David Ortiz in the fifth with a runner on first that was so high, it went over the foul pole. From a variety of angles, it looked inconclusive as to whether it was fair or foul, but from my own experience at Fenway, my guess it was probably fair. The umps called it foul, because nobody really was following it, I think, conferred, and left it foul. I don't blame them much since it was a tough call and not so fair that it wouldn't have been tremendously controversial had they ruled it fair.

Let's just leave it at this: the Red Sox did not get too many breaks, they made a lot of luck for the Cards, and they still won. Call it karma, wretched good luck, or just the better team finding a way to win, they won.

For the Cards' part, their batters seemed bothered by the cold and misty conditions and were clearly expecting from their experience and scouting reports a different game from Schilling. Schilling threw a lot of change-ups, laid off his slider, moved his fast ball in and around, and used a curveball as his out pitch on several occasions. He dropped in the splitter early when he had it, and stopped using it when it started going away. In short, he pitched more than he threw, and it was his art as much as his physical prowess that got him through six gutsy innings.

"The Cardinals pitchers are giving the Red Sox hitters too much credit." I heard the following ridiculous old-school cliche TWICE in the post-game coverage: once from Joe Morgan on ESPN radio, once from Larry Bowa on the TV wrap-up. This is a way of saying neither guy understands on-base percentage or patience or plate discipline. And Larry Bowa doesn't understand why he was fired this year. He actually said, and I quote again, "the best hitters in baseball make outs seven times out of ten." Um, no they don't. They make outs about 11 or 12 times out of 20. The other times they don't swing at crappy pitches and they walk. And that's what the Red Sox did early against Matt Morris. Of the four runs scored off Morris, two were men who walked, and another a guy hit by a pitch. The Red Sox hit at least two balls that on a normal night would've been homers, possibly as many as four or five, because they got into the situation where the pitcher was forced to pitch up into the hitter's zone or walk the bases full. Timely two-out hits come from a lot of origins, but patience -- the lack of panic, coolness, selectivity, if you want to put it another way -- is the best source. (That Larry Bowa doesn't understand walks and plate discipline is no surprise: he was a slasher as a player. But Joe Morgan's completely traditional attitude is ever a mystery, as he had one of the greatest batting eyes and a fantastic walk rate.)

So, you know what? Game 2 just showed that, yes, good teams can win despite making a lot of crappy defensive and baserunning plays because, well, that's a smaller portion of the game than a lot of people seem to think, and smart hitting (and smart pitching to smart hitters, like Curt Schilling tonight) makes more of a difference than a lot of people apparently still think. So it wasn't pretty, again: the Cards are looking even uglier because they're staring at a 2-0 deficit.

Joe Morgan, among many others, I suppose, has been critical of the Red Sox "attitude" in a tangential way. Sometimes this is well-warranted, as with Manny and Orlando Cabrera celebrating their great hits before they've even touched first and then neglecting to take another base. But a lot of time this seems to be an Old Guard reaction against players who are having a bit too much fun, who aren't taking this great event Seriously enough even if they are, at heart, playing with appropriate gravitas. It's the former attitude that likes to quote meaningless stats about how no team can come back from an 0-3 deficit, curses are real, and managers win close and late games. It's players like the Red Sox who seem to enjoy the joie de vivre that should be at the heart of a game.

---

Keith Foulke came on for four outs in a non-save situation tonight, and has thrown three innings in the first two games -- 39 pitches. He may be the emerging story of the series, hidden behind the slopfest of Game 1 and Schilling's remarkable Game 2 start. He seems pretty resilient for this late in the season. A rubber-armed closer in late October trumps weary middle relief and short starters.

---

The series now moves on to St. Louis, where it looks like Jeff Suppan will be moved up to face Pedro Martinez in Game 3 (Cardinals' pinch-runner Jason Marquis made an appearance in relief tonight, walking two in one inning, and will be the Game 4 starter). The weather right now in Missouri is warm. Pedro will like that, and Derek Lowe, currently slated for Game 4, might not.

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My favorite series quote/malapropism thus far: Curt Schilling, referring to something happening "to the umpth degree".

posted by The Crank 8:48 PM

Slopsville USA!

No Laugher, But Lots of Yucks at Fenway

The Gaffe-Aws Continue into the Night

Here's a quick inventory from my scorecard of Game 1:

• 12 walks
  
• 2 hit batsmen
  
• 5 errors
  
• 3 bad defensive missplays that cost bases not counted as errors
  
• 3 bad-hop hits
  
• 1 passed ball
  
• three base-running gaffes
  
• 22 questionable managerial decisions
  
• 1 blown save
  
• 2 blown leads
  
• 5 of 12 inherited runners scored
  
• 9 relief runs given up by 5 different pitchers
  
• 3 1-2-3 innings
  
• 4 at-bats for Johnny Damon in the first four innings
  
• 1 umpire smacked by a ball in play - the left field umpire!
  
• 4 of 4 catchers used
  
• 0 hits by Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen, combined
  
• 5 times on base by Larry Walker without facing a single lefty pitcher
  
• 12 lunging swings by Kevin Millar trying to be a hero
  
• 1 too many pitch in the strike zone by Julian Tavarez to Mark Bellhorn after he'd already turned on a pitch and barely hit it foul
  
• 100,000,000 dangerously-high blood pressure readings
  

After this kind of barrage, one has to ask...where was the balk? I swear I saw at least two, but neither were called.

In my series preview, I noted as one of the keys to the series "overmanagement" and both Francona and La Russa were vying to see who could out-do the other in this category. As ever, La Russa came out well ahead. Francona got things going by trying to prove he could manage an "NL" game on a night he was starting a knuckleballer who throws a shut out once every ten blue moons (gaffe - Francona - 1 - asking Cabrera to bunt in the first just ahead of Ramirez and Ortiz.) That one didn't end up hurting, since after failing to get the bunt down Cabrera got hit by a pitch. La Russa countered with identical strategy in the second. It's one thing to let Jimmy Edmonds take a bunt hit the Red Sox defense (gaffe: Francona - 2 - infield positioning), quite another to then use a sacrifice bunt down 4-0 in the second when your starter is redefining ugly and you're facing a knuckleball pitcher, not a 95-MPH fastballer (gaffe: La Russa - 1 - use of sacrifice with two runners on and nobody out down 4-0). Then we have So Toguchi striking out with two on and one out after a sacrifice fly in the second (gaffe - La Russa - 2 - putting a guy who just can't hit in the starting lineup for defense by way of taking advantage of the DH.)

I'm not sure what La Russa was thinking watching Williams pitch from the dugout, but he clearly left him out at least two batters too long (gaffe: LaRussa - 3 - leaving your veteran pitcher in to get out of a jam after he's struggled through two). Then there was Francona, who had a quick enough hook on Wakefield after he struggled (predictably, after sitting for 25 inutes during the Red Sox half of the inning -- even knucklers lose their grips), but didn't use one of his two lefties to face Walker in the fourth, instead bringing in Arroyo (gaffe - Francona - 3 - believing lefty specialists should be saved for later in the game instead of being brought in to two-out bases-loaded situations).

With Wakefield out of the game, Francona was free to pinch-hit for Doug Mirabelli with Jason Varitek in the sixth (gaffe - Francona - 4 - pinch hitting with your last catcher with two out and nobody on even though Mirabelli had a hit in the game and Varitek, as switch-hitting power off the bench, could've been used later). Pinch-hitting overmanagement continued, as La Russa did what he does best -- take his best pitchers out of the game needlessly -- in the bottom of the seventh. Francona pinch-hit Gabe Kapler to chase out lefty Ray King (gaffe - Francona - 5 - taking out a lefty who can handle lefty specialists for a weaker hitter who was going to come in later for defense anyway), but La Russa responded by taking out the lefty, King, who can handle righties (gaffe - La Russa - 4 - using up a pitcher needlessly) and putting in Cal Eldred, who made everybody look like a genius by striking out Kapler (gaffe - Francona - 6 - failure to complete the minuet and have a lefty on the bench to face Eldred, who is not effective on tough lefties, because he didn't want to lose Kapler's defense) , who watched three quite hittable pitches sail by him and left runners on first and second.

LaRussa, however, was not to be outdone. He pinch-ran for slow-footed Mike Matheny in the eighth (gaffe - using up second catcher in a tie game with no emergency catcher available - La Russa -5; gaffe - La Russa - 6 ending up having to have Molina hit for himself with a runner on base on the ninth and one out because he had no catcher left; gaffe - La Russa - 7 - sending in his best starting pitcher, Jason Marquis, who stumbled around the bases and nearly took himself out of the series by breaking his ankle) after he reached base on a Manny Ramirez error (gaffe - Francona - 7 - failure to replace Manny Ramirez defensively while ahead late when his spot was six away in the order and wouldn't've come up until the ninth). With one out and the runner on in the eighth, Francona decided to bring in one of his specialist lefties to face switch-hitting Roger Cedeno (gaffe - Francona - 8 - suboptimal use of situational lefty), and Cedeno promptply singled. Francona then brough in closer Keith Foulke in the eighth (gaffe - Francona - 9 - bringing in ace closer early after he'd thrown 100 pitches in three consecutive games in the LCS when he had a short righty in the pen still). He then, of course, did not want to pull Foulke even after he'd given up a hit to bring the score to 9-8, so again there was no lefty specialist to face Larry Walker (gaffe - Francona - 10 - failure to plot out optimal match-ups close and late). Walker didn't exactly rip the ball, but he did send it towards Manny Ramirez, who kicked up a divot that could've been mistaken for the start of the Big Dig II, and the game was tied.

True to form, La Russa made a late-inning comeback in the bottom of the eigth. He brought in Julian Tavarez to face switch-hitters Bill Mueller and Jason Varitek (now catching and in the eight hole), even though he had his closer, Jason Isringhausen, available in a close game late (gaffe - La Russa - 8 - conventionally keeping closer for when his team is ahead on the road). Renteria coughed up a grounder to his right to let Varitek on with one out, and Tavarez made a poor choice to Mark Bellhorn, who hit the ball around Pesky's Pole (gaffe - Joe Buck and Tim McCarver - 312th of the night -- it's Pesky's Pole, not "the pesky pole".) In the ninth, he was left with Reggie Sanders, who was hopelessly mismatched against Foulke. Marlon Anderson playing for the injured Tony Womack, doubled (gaffe - La Russa - 9 - failure to start Anderson in the first place when Womack, who was 0-2 with a walk and a sacrifice, had a bad back, and when Anderson was as good a defender and had more speed than Renteria) (gaffe - La Russa - 10 - failure to use the steal against Wakefield, the knuckler, instead of the sacrifice, and continuing to fail to use the decided St. Louis weapon in this arena until it was too late). Then of course Molina came up and La Russa left him in there because he had to (gaffe - La Russa - 11 - failure to pinch-hit for his weakest hitter just to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to use an emergency catcher in case they tied the game), and Molina popped out on an 0-2 count. Finally La Russa was left with Roger Cedeno (gaffe - La Russa - 12 - failure to use a guy with power off the bench as your potential tying run, in John Mabry, when he had a weak-hitting speedster up with two out and one on).

Oh yes, just another litany of second-guessing from an armchair manager. I stick by my basic point: managers are way too eager in the post-season to insert themselves into the play, and they either get off their games or they stick to decisions they made in advance even though the game situation doesn't warrant it.

Correction

In my World Series preview, I neglected to mention that Jim Edmonds had lots of experience facing Wakefield, and was hitting over .300 against him career. Edmonds got a bunt hit and a walk in two appearances against Wake.

posted by The Crank 9:31 AM