Baseball management fail.
July 16th, 2008 | by Scott Jennings |I enjoyed watching the All-Star Game last night. I know! But then again, I’ve always been an asshole for trainwrecks and watching things break.
The American League won the All-Star game, 4-3, in 15 innings in front of a sellout crowd of 55,632 at soon-to-be-razed Yankee Stadium when Justin Morneau scored just ahead of right fielder Corey Hart’s throw on Michael Young’s sacrifice fly. At four hours, 50 minutes, it was the longest All-Star game by more than an hour and the number of innings equaled the previous high, set in 1967.
I’d have paid $20 for Morneau to be out at home. That would have ended the fifteenth inning, and put the AL on the spot for a pitcher to trot out for the top of the sixteenth. Scott Kasmir of the Rays had the ball, but he had pitched on Sunday and the Rays didn’t want him to pitch at all on Tuesday. Because we play the All-Star game like 3rd grade PE class, everyone had to get in the game, and Kasmir was the last pitcher on the roster. Terry Francona of the Red Sox, their sudden division rival, was responsible for the scorecard. The announcers were hinting pretty strongly that there would come a point where Francona could not send Kasmir back out, and then what? An outfielder pitching in the All-Star Game? A forfeit in the All-Star Game?
I was probably super pissed off about the tie in the 2002 All-Star Game, but that’s as much a function of hating Bud Selig as anything else. So the answer was to make the game “count,” and assign home field advantage in the World Series to the winner. Ok, I can swallow that.
But if you’re going to play the game like it counts, you can’t manage it like it’s an exhibition. You can’t manage it with no plan for extra innings, letting pitchers pitch eight and twelve pitch innings and then hit the showers, and then hang the six extra innings on one inning relievers. You either manage to win the game, let starters go at least five and get a rhythm, knock shit over like Pete Rose, play the players that are playing well and let some clowns ride the bench. Or you play a toothless exhibition, smile for the cameras and enjoy the trip and rack in the money, and if it’s tied after ten innings, you call it a tie and go home. Or maybe do a home run derby, everyone loves home run derbies.
So what now? Something, I hope. We can say the game counts all we want, but it totally doesn’t count. No one moves up in the standings, no one really cares that the National League hasn’t won the thing since we all were in short pants. It’s just a fun thing they do one Tuesday in July. I’ve always been partial to pitching and defense in baseball, but put a pitching machine out there for all it matters. I have no conclusion.
One Response to “Baseball management fail.”
By conklin on Jul 17, 2008 | Reply
Now that managers understand what a pitch count is and that eventually human arms just damn fall off at the shoulder if they are used to throw too many pitches, you’ll never see a guy go more than 2 innings in a mid-season exhibition.
So here’s my suggestion: a knuckleballer for each team. If the game goes past 10 innings, each team goes to the knuckleballer the rest of the way out. This way you have a guy on the mound who can essentially pitch forever without doing much damage to his arm. And you’re only ever 7 pitches away from the winning run (a walk and 3 passed balls). And knucklers are hilarious.