Idiots Write About Sports

So I’ve got a little quiz for you folks out there. Let’s say you’ve opened up an 8-4 lead over the Yankees in the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium. And let’s say you go to your bullpen and call on a pitcher — oh, just for argument’s sake, we’ll call him Jim Mecir — to get you out of the eighth with your lede in tact. And let’s pretend that the following things happen:
1) The leadoff batter singles to right.
2) The next batter singles to left.
3) The third batter draws a walk.
So it’s now bases loaded, nobody out, and the tying run is at the plate. If you’re the manager of this ballclub, do you:
A) Realize Mecir just doesn’t have it tonight, and call on another pitcher — say, a guy who’s good at inducing ground balls like Chad Bradford — to try and minimize the damage;
B) Conclude that Mecir’s gotten you into a jam, and it’s time to call on the closer, Arthur Rhodes, since it’s no use saving him for the ninth inning save if you blow the lead in the eighth; or
C) Leave Mecir in the ballgame because you’re busy ordering a pizza or contemplating your navel or something.
If you answered C, welcome to Idiots Write About Sports, Ken Macha.
I do not, will not, cannot understand why Macha left Mecir in to flounder for two more run-scoring batters before going to the ‘pen (I also don’t understand why you call on Ricardo Rincon in a bases-loaded situation when Rincon has been having a hard time throwing strikes as of late, but that’s a rant for another time). If it’s because he honestly believed Mecir was his best bet for retiring Gary Sheffield and Jorge Poasada, then Macha wasn’t watching the same game I was, since Mecir gave no indication he was capable of retiring any carbon-based lifeform during this particular outing. And if it was to spare Mecir’s delicate feelings, then that’s simply idiotic. A manager’s role is to put his team in the position to win ballgames using the best personnel at his disposal. If Jim Mecir can’t bounce back from getting yanked out of a game where he wasn’t delivering the goods, then perhaps it’s time he found a less stressful line of work.
In times like these, I turn to Earl Weaver for comfort. The passage quoted below deals with pinch-hitting, but replace the words “pinch hitter” with “relief pitcher” and “hit” with “pitch” and I think its relevance to tonight’s Yankee-A’s game will be obvious even to someone of Macha-level intelligence:

No player likes to be lifted for a pinch hitter. I never heard of a player who wanted to be pinch-hit for. That goes against human nature. The player is bound to be angry if you pinch-hit for him. But in most of these instances, it’s twenty-four against one. Forget the manager and forget the coaching staff. Just consider the other players. When I let a player bat in the eighth inning of a close game and I know he should be called back for a pinch hitter, there are twenty-four players who know the exact same thing. If a manager doesn’t make the move because he doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of one player, he loses the respect of the other twenty-four.

(Emphasis added.)
So I guess I don’t understand why Ken Macha made the moves he did tonight. Then again, my head exploded sometime during the bottom of the eighth, so I’m not exactly thinking clearly.