Game 4 wound up being a laugher, with the Phillies crushing the Rays in an October edition of Home Run Derby. But the first three games were close, and any of them might have been determined by the managers. Color Mitchel Lichtman unimpressed. A sample:
It might just be my perception, but the likely winner of the AL manager of the year, Joe Maddon, and the NL manager who will probably receive a few votes, Charlie Manuel, are just butchering the game, on an almost inning-by-inning basis.
Let's forget about the games in the past. They have been aptly analyzed by the good folks here and on other web sites. I'll focus only on last night's game, Game 3 of the World Series. That will give me plenty of fodder.
Let's start in the AL manager's office before the game, while he is sitting down and contemplating his lineup, or perhaps just
throwing darts at the wall. Let's see, a lefty pitcher on the mound in Jamie Moyer, who doesn't have a huge career platoon split, but a conventional split nonetheless. Hmmm. Last game I started my right-handed batter Rocco Baldelli (I am not sure he should be playing at all -- he does not look well to me, but that's another story) against a right-handed starting pitcher, so what the heck, I'll start my lefty batter against a lefty pitcher. It is better to be consistent than right, right? Don't dare peek at Greg Gross' splits. You might be "Gross'd" out. He is positively anemic against lefty pitchers, not that he plays much against them -- so you never know.
Here's Maddon's
explanation for starting Gross against Moyer in Game 4:
Maddon conceded the decision to start Gross did not come easy.
"I really was pondering that one a lot," Maddon said. "Again, it's versus Jamie Moyer, the left-handed situation. You look at Jamie -- I've known him for years -- you look at our right-handed hitters versus him, you look at our left-handed hitters against him. Believe me, that one I went back and forth with a lot. I was not comfortable making that decision until I really let it stir a bit."
Gross' swing turned out to be one of the deciding factors.
"The swing path where Jamie likes to throw the ball, I felt Gabe was the best matchup with him, even over our right-handed hitters tonight," Maddon said. "So we chose to go in that direction, and that's quite frankly the reasons.
"Again, not trying to get too smart, but when we have so many options, almost too many options, like in right field, we could go [with] either Ben [Zobrist] or Fernando [Perez] or Rocco [Baldelli], and of course Gabe, and the other guys being right-handed, it looks like you might go that way. For those of you that have watched Jamie pitch in the past, sometimes it might be better left-handed."
I don't know a swing path from a cow path. But if starting
Gabe Gross against Jamie Moyer isn't "trying to get too smart," then what exactly is it?
I think I would like Joe Maddon if I spent some time with him. I appreciate his creativity and his intelligence, and he's certainly one of the more interesting men managing in the majors today. But managers have been looking to gain the platoon advantage for a long, long time, and there's a pretty good reason for it. I think Lichtman is mostly wrong when he says Moyer has a "conventional" career platoon split; Moyer has actually given up slightly more to left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters over his entire career. But Gabe Gross? He's a lifetime
.148 hitter against lefties. Granted, that's only 122 at-bats and Gross can't really be
that bad. Also granted: Maybe there's something going on that we don't know about.
But usually the game isn't really so complicated. Fernando Perez and Ben Zobrist are both subpar hitters. If there's a lefty starting, Baldelli should almost always start. If a righty, then Gross should start. Stray far from that formula -- as Maddon has, almost completely -- and you're wide open to charges of trying to get too smart. And it's really hard to outsmart the game at this point, after more than a century.
The Rays have been outplayed to this point. Obviously. And as Lichtman points out, Charlie Manuel hasn't exactly covered
himself in tactical glory, either. (Does
Pedro Feliz really
have to keep hitting against right-handed pitchers?) But it's Maddon's team on the verge of getting knocked out quicker than most of us imagined. So it's Maddon who's going to be second-guessed if that happens.
Rob Neyer
