You Can't Win
if you don't try. With a double day/night dip, slow Joe had to rest his aging team, but when you have a 4-2 lead late, you should at least manage your bullpen as if you'd like to win. You owe that much to the position players like Abreu and Posada who put forth a great effort and you owe that much to the fams who are still filling the stadium. First, don't bring Proctor back after his effective first inning. Scott don't do encores--at least not well. Then after Meyers throws four straight balls to Ortiz, take him out. After all, he only has a spot in te major leagues to pitch to one hitter, Ortiz. If he can't do that a) it's not his night b) he's useless to you. So then Lowell gets a basehit off Meyers that is turned into a force out by Papi's egregious baserunning (MVP!MVP!). Now you surely take him out. No? How about after Varitek's single that shrinks the lead to 1. At that point even the other slow Joe, slow joe Morgan was speculating that people might wonder why Meyers was still pitching. His answer was that eric hinske still loomed on the bench ready to pounce on any wayward righty who might venture nto his lair. Eric Hinske? Mr..258? We're crafting our bullpen decisions to keep that mook from batting? Please. No, Joe knows he should make the switch, but he's become Bartleby the Manager. With his eyes vaguely on October, he'd just prefer not to pull out the stops.
So now Meyers, who looks like he's enjoying all of this about as much as a man being oiled up for the electric chair, faces Mireabelli. This is a beautiful face-off between two bottomfeeding specialists, Meyers who exists only to pitch to one man in the entire league (whom he's already walked) and Mirabelli, who exists only to catch one pitcher in the entire league (who's probably not even on site). Having gotten Mirabelli in the hole, thanks to a 340 foot foul ball, Meyers plunks him, plunks a 183 hitter on a pitch that was nowhere near Posada's target. Now the bases are loaded and I'm thinking well you've done it this time Joe, you've been so slow you're going to have to confront your next guy with a bases loaded situation, but (and I swear to God I thought this), you can't leave him out there as wild as he is (the four pitch walk, the plunk and all) he might walk in the tying run or even throw a wild pitch! In the meantime, Terry Francona sends out Hinske to pinchrun (well at least he values the guy appropriately), taking away even slow Joe Morgan's last rationale for leaving Meyers out there. Where are Beam and Henn, I wonder, they were warming up a couple of innings ago? Did they get lost out there? Then Meyers who looks briefly toward the dugout in one last plea to the warden for clemency, goes ahead and kills himself and the entire team with that wild pitch.
Bring in Fahrnsworth after Ortiz, get out of the inning, have a lead in the top of the ninth, and I doubt Coco is inspired enough to make that crazy play on Posada, and then you've got a big lead and anyone can finish. In the last innings of the game Crisp, Varitek et al were still trying to win, all the more so because it had become clear that Torre was not.
I think slow Joe did a great disservice to his players in this game. They wanted to win and, even with the depleted line-up, I thought they played pretty well: a nice catch by Abreu and he ripped the ball twice, Bernie hit the ball well, Giambi played well at first and that slap through the shift was great situational hitting. Posada was a monster. You should reward effort like that, in a less than meaningful game, by managing to win, or at least managing as if you had some care of victory. Jeter's saying, "If you're going to compete, you want to win," applies here. The Yankees did want to win last night and played well enough to do so. Slow Joe let them down. He became No Joe. He crossed a line between the kind of bumbling I take him to task for regularly, and the kind of tanking I have been excoriating the Sox for. I honest to God thought he was above that sort of thing, that his problem was a lack of brains, a lack of judgement, a tactical tin ear, but never a lack of competitive fire. Even his sentimentalization of "old boys" like Bernie stemmed, I thought, from a tribalism closely kin to competitiveness. This was for me his lowest point of the year and maybe of his tenure. It won't be perceived that way because the stakes are comparatively low. But hey, this is baseball, it's a game, in the larger sense the stakes are always low; it's baseball, it's a competition, in the larger sense the stakes are always as high as they can possibly be, you want to win. But evidently Bartleby the Manager preferred not to.
So now Meyers, who looks like he's enjoying all of this about as much as a man being oiled up for the electric chair, faces Mireabelli. This is a beautiful face-off between two bottomfeeding specialists, Meyers who exists only to pitch to one man in the entire league (whom he's already walked) and Mirabelli, who exists only to catch one pitcher in the entire league (who's probably not even on site). Having gotten Mirabelli in the hole, thanks to a 340 foot foul ball, Meyers plunks him, plunks a 183 hitter on a pitch that was nowhere near Posada's target. Now the bases are loaded and I'm thinking well you've done it this time Joe, you've been so slow you're going to have to confront your next guy with a bases loaded situation, but (and I swear to God I thought this), you can't leave him out there as wild as he is (the four pitch walk, the plunk and all) he might walk in the tying run or even throw a wild pitch! In the meantime, Terry Francona sends out Hinske to pinchrun (well at least he values the guy appropriately), taking away even slow Joe Morgan's last rationale for leaving Meyers out there. Where are Beam and Henn, I wonder, they were warming up a couple of innings ago? Did they get lost out there? Then Meyers who looks briefly toward the dugout in one last plea to the warden for clemency, goes ahead and kills himself and the entire team with that wild pitch.
Bring in Fahrnsworth after Ortiz, get out of the inning, have a lead in the top of the ninth, and I doubt Coco is inspired enough to make that crazy play on Posada, and then you've got a big lead and anyone can finish. In the last innings of the game Crisp, Varitek et al were still trying to win, all the more so because it had become clear that Torre was not.
I think slow Joe did a great disservice to his players in this game. They wanted to win and, even with the depleted line-up, I thought they played pretty well: a nice catch by Abreu and he ripped the ball twice, Bernie hit the ball well, Giambi played well at first and that slap through the shift was great situational hitting. Posada was a monster. You should reward effort like that, in a less than meaningful game, by managing to win, or at least managing as if you had some care of victory. Jeter's saying, "If you're going to compete, you want to win," applies here. The Yankees did want to win last night and played well enough to do so. Slow Joe let them down. He became No Joe. He crossed a line between the kind of bumbling I take him to task for regularly, and the kind of tanking I have been excoriating the Sox for. I honest to God thought he was above that sort of thing, that his problem was a lack of brains, a lack of judgement, a tactical tin ear, but never a lack of competitive fire. Even his sentimentalization of "old boys" like Bernie stemmed, I thought, from a tribalism closely kin to competitiveness. This was for me his lowest point of the year and maybe of his tenure. It won't be perceived that way because the stakes are comparatively low. But hey, this is baseball, it's a game, in the larger sense the stakes are always low; it's baseball, it's a competition, in the larger sense the stakes are always as high as they can possibly be, you want to win. But evidently Bartleby the Manager preferred not to.
posted by joe valente | 10:53 AM
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