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.

It's called the Grady Little managing theory.

So painfully true.

But Grady at least can argue that he was leaving Pedro Martinez in (or the corporeal remains of Pedro Martinez, anyhow) to fritter away a lead. The last time I checked Jim Mecir's stats, I didn't immediately confuse him with Pedro Martinez. Hell, I don't even confuse him with Tippy Martinez.

Just to broaden your knowledge of idiom, here in Phoenix, we call that sort of thing "Pulling a Mantei."

Seriously: last night I was at the Diamondbacks/Cubs game. After Finley whacked his *third* homerun to tie the game, you could smell blood in the water. The fans beside me started waving a broom, the annoying Cubs fans that are apparently flown in at team expense had finally shut up -- it was great baseball.

Top of the ninth, tie score, edge-of-the-seat game, and we hear that Matt Mantei is coming in to close the game...

...and fans start to leave. Rabid fans; fans with brooms, with spunk...they left.

As the guy behind me put it after the game, "Dusty Baker knew he needed to win this game. So he called our bullpen and brought in Mantei."

Long-winded story, I know, but it still hurts.

(Love your Web sites -- thanks for the writing.)