Idiots Write About Sports

So last October, when the A’s rehired Ken Macha, I had this to say:

I will have more on this, once I’ve managed to reconstruct my exploded head.

I guess seven months is long enough for me to collect my thoughts.

I’m not that big a fan of Ken Macha. He’s not without his strong points, I suppose. The players seem to like him, or at least, they don’t openly mutiny against him. He keeps the team on an even keel, as evidenced by the way the A’s rebounded from last year’s horrible start to actually contend for a playoff spot up until the last week of the season. He… uh… pays his share of taxes. I guess. That’s admirable.

But there are other things that he doesn’t do particularly well, and unfortunately, most of them are part of a manager’s job description. He takes a very passive role when it comes to leading the team — “The players fill out the lineup card,” is one of Macha’s stock phrases — and I think the laissez faire attitude sets a lackadaisical tone that the rest of the team follows, resulting in things like last year’s horrible start.

We can argue about how much of an impact a manager actually has on a baseball game. Lineup construction really doesn’t affect things as much as you might think, and most of the strategic decisions over the course of a game — when you bunt, when you pinch hit — are so spectacularly obvious that you could pull any fan out of the stand and they would probably make the same call as Dusty Baker or Joe Torre most of the time.

But the one thing I think that a manager does have an impact on — besides keeping his players from murdering each other over the grind of a 162-game season — is how to best manage resources given the particulars of a situation. Or to put that in less tortured English: how does a manager use the players available to him to win ball games? At this, Ken Macha routinely falls flat on his face, particularly when it’s time to summon pitchers from the bullpen.

The latest example came in Sunday’s loss to Texas. (And yes, I would like it to be noted that I waited 13 entire games into the 2006 season before angrily denouncing a Ken Macha strategic decision. This is a new record of endurance for me.) The A’s went into the top of the ninth with a 3-1 lead, and the heart of the Rangers’ order — Mike Young, Mark Teixeria, Phil Nevin — due up. Sounds like a job for Huston Street, right?

Well, normally, yes. Street’s the closer. It’s a save situation. The heavy hitters are due up. Send in the righty, skip.

But while the circumstances may have called for a Street appearance, the context of the situation made that decision a little more dicey. Street had pitched the previous two games — and he didn’t look particularly good in Friday’s contest. Brought in with the A’s trailing by two in the ninth, Street lasted 2/3 of an inning and gave up a run on an infield single, a five-pitch walk, and a double that was absolutely scorched to left; Kiko Calero had to come in and finish the job.

So after having Street throw 41 pitches over the previous two games, why ask him to throw even more for a third consecutive day? As good as Street is, he’s not Oakland’s only option in a tight spot. Unlike past years, when a call to the bullpen was usually the time to begin working on the recriminations and fingerpointing, the A’s actually have a solid corps of relievers in 2006. And the best of the bunch were all available on Sunday — Calero hadn’t pitched since Friday night and Joe Kennedy threw all of three pitches on Saturday (getting Teixeira to ground into a rally-killing double play). Justin Duchscherer, who has closed games last year when Street was on the shelf, did pitch Saturday, but probably could have faced a batter or two on Sunday. It’s worth noting that Duchscherer, Calero, and Kennedy have yet to surrender a run this year. Why not start the inning with one of those three? If you get into trouble, you can still call on Street to put out the fire.

Well, the reason that Street starts that inning and the other three don’t — at least as far as Ken Macha is concerned — is because Street is the closer and it’s a save situation, so he goes in whether he’s rested and effective or not. In other words, a critical personnel move is being driven not by who might perform best in a specific situation but by some phony-baloney statistic that Jerome Holtzman invented one day. That’s mind-numbingly stupid.

And yet, perfectly fitting with human nature. The stories reporting on Sunday’s game all focused on Street’s performance — “Street bobbles the save” declares the San Francisco Chronicle — while paying very little mention to the man who put him in the game in the first place. But if Macha brings Kiko Calero in to pitch the ninth, and Calero blows the save in spectacular fashion, then the focus falls on Macha’s decision-making — “Why didn’t he bring in Street?” It’s a transparent way of shirking the responsibility of making difficult, game-changing decisions, and it’s dispiriting that this won’t be the last time it will happen this year.

Now let’s pretend for a second that I’m wrong here — I’m not, not in the least — but let’s pretend that bringing in Huston Street when he’s clearly not at his best is the right call. Once he’s given up a sinlge and a homer, shouldn’t you feel obliged to… oh, I don’t know… bring in someone else? The game is still winnable at this point. If you shut down the Rangers, you go into the bottom of the ninth tied. Instead, why wait for your struggling reliever to give up a single, a double, and another single so that you’re now facing a two-run hole? Why not try to win a game? That should be the goal every time you fill out the lineup card, Ken.

I was at that game, and while I was OK with bringing Street into the game, I was perplexed why Macha didn't replace Street with Joe Kennedy when Brad Wilkerson came up.

1) He had Kennedy throwing and ready several batters in advance;
2) Street was obviously not sharp pitching in a third straight game for the first time this year; and
3) It was no longer a save situation.

So if you're not going to bring in Kennedy in to face Wilkerson, why have him up and throwing at all? Who was he getting Kennedy ready for? Letting Street pitch to Wilkerson instead of Kennedy was the decision that cost the A's the game.

Deja vu all over again with the loss to the Tigers, just a few short games later.

I can understand bringing in Duke to close out the game, my problem is when the plan started to go south (regardless of the check swing that was called during the Inge AB) Macha did nothing, once again until the lead and game was lost.

You can also go back to the Twin's series... and see the exact same trend.

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