You can learn a lot from watching baseball nonstop for six straight glorious days during the first round of the playoffs. Like, that despite our plunge into a not-yet-officially-a-recession recession, the erectile-dysfunction-obliteration industry has plenty of dollars to spend on TV advertising during baseball games. Or that networks pay actual U.S. currency to commentators who comment thusly about Chicago's Alexei Ramirez: "He puts a smile on your face every time he comes to the plate."
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| Too bad we will have to wait until next season to watch the smile-inducing Alexei Ramirez. (AP) |
Good managers sometimes do dumb stuff: Mike Scioscia has been hailed since 2002 as the human embodiment of a tranquil pond. Lou Piniella earns plaudits for his pluck, smarts and ability to redistribute the dirt in the immediate vicinity of a misinformed umpire. Neither had a great first round.
Take Game 1 of Boston-L.A., in which the Red Sox started Mike Lowell at third despite his inability to bend or pivot. Though they have a not-entirely-deserved rep as speed and run-production merchants, the Angels didn't bother to test him with a bunt or three. Then the team proceeded to spend the rest of the series dashing around the base paths as if blind.
And how about Sweet Lou, lining up his starters in such a way that Ted Lilly, one of the team's two most effective starters down the stretch, didn't get to pitch a single inning? News flash: In a short series, you don't save your bullets for a contingency game. Piniella also defied common sense by playing Kosuke Fukudome, who hasn't hit a whit since May, instead of righty-slayer Mike Fontenot in Games 1 and 2. Afterward, Piniella deflected blame for his own puzzling decision onto the player, publicly suggesting that Fukudome kinda stinks. Not cool.
All this got me thinking about the role of baseball managers in general. Yes, a La Russa or a Leyland (not the 1999 or 2008 versions) give their squads a strategic kick in the pants. But for the most part, given the inevitable ups-and-downs of any season that stretches from mid-February through October, teams should be content with managers who simply don't get in the way. You can have the guy who fiddles with his batting order every night and bases his bullpen decisions on gut hunches -- give me the one who sets established roles for each of his 25 players, communicates those roles effectively, and doesn't lose his crap when the team hits a stretch of hard road. That's all.
CC Sabathia is not, in fact, unbreakable: He was a machine down the stretch this season, consistently kicking ass on three days' rest (insert sound here of old-school, every-three-days mainstays like Tom Seaver sarcastically saying "bravo" and applauding). But for the second straight season, CC pooped out in the playoffs. This suggests that he is human and could probably use a nap.
Will whatever team signs him get its money's worth? I answer that query with the extensive list of long-term deals for pitchers that have worked out well this decade: Mike Mussina. Be wary.
Dioner Navarro is about to become a favorite of stodgy pundits who enjoy watching baseball played the "right" way: Here comes the hype. He's a leader by example and a sage ennobler of young pitchers! He plays when he has a boo-boo on his thumb! There was this one time where Matt Garza was all, "I'm not going to throw that pitch" and Dioner totally got in his face and was all, "Yes, you are, dude, because doing so will advance the collective good!" He's a fine player, but let's not imbue him with mystical Jeterian qualities just yet.
Related: I don't know anybody who likes to watch baseball played the "wrong" way, save possibly for Mariners season-ticket holders. Missed cut-off men, lazy jogs down the first-base line after a pop-up, two-pitch-and-out at-bats during blowout losses, Bonilla-esque interactions with fans and the media ... none of this is fun.
When Rafael Furcal plays, the Dodgers tend to win: We spent the year obsessing about L.A.'s outfield mix -- specifically, begging Joe Torre to chain Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre to a boiler in the Dodger Stadium basement -- and tsk-tsking Ned Coletti for the personnel misassessments that required him to become a genius via late-season deals for Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake. All the while, we might have overlooked Furcal, who was tearing up the league before he went down in early May. He upgrades the team's defense and gives them on-base goodness atop the order.
Teams don't need more than 10 pitchers on their playoff roster: No team in baseball has 12 playoff-caliber pitchers -- certainly not the Brewers, who activated 12 for the NLDS, including two situational lefties. On some level, Dale Sveum and Co. have to realize how this could have handcuffed them tactically. When were the Brewers planning on using all these guys? Did they anticipate a 16-inning game? Did they think the bullpen regulars would need a day or two off, just in case the torturously brutal five-games-in-seven-days NLDS schedule left them plumb tuckered out? Granted, it's not like the Brewers had a glut of bench players from which to choose, but surely a speed/defense sort would have been more useful than a second lefty specialist.
Meanwhile, while we're on the topic of bullpens, let me say I wouldn't sign Francisco Rodriguez with your money. Forget that his herky-jerky throwing motion -- think an epileptic in mid-seizure doing the Hokey Pokey -- portends a cataclysmic injury somewhere down the line. The guy simply isn't an elite pitcher, no matter how many saves it says he has on the back of his baseball card. The Red Sox touched him up in Game 2 by waiting on his breaking stuff; he almost blew Game 3 after loading the bases on two walks and a single. I would not want to be the GM who shells out $75 million of my boss' money over the next five years for 375 innings of a closer who looked afraid to throw his fastball over the plate.
