Managers make mistakes, and Hillman might be poor strategically, but the point is fans who are so sure that they know best and declare that the manager (who quite likely has a lot more information on all his players than they do) is an “idiot” just sound ridiculous.

Anyways, this just goes to show you that closers probably don’t go 100 innings a year like Quiz, Goose, and Sutter did not because they don’t have the capabilities, but the managers just don’t give them the opportunity. I personally think Hillman has a man-crush on Farnsworth and his 100-mph fastball. Perhaps he was entertaining thoughts of moving Soria to the rotation and making Farnsworth the new closer.

… then, by logic, we’ll use Soria less innings this year than we did last year.

Question: how many times did Soria go over a week without pitching last year?

In the meanwhile, Joe Torre brought in Broxton with 1 out in the 8th and the bases loaded. Broxton struck out 4 of the next 5 hitters and really did “save” the game.

Unfortunately, as Clint Hurdle proved, more managers are like Hillman than Torre when it comes to closer usage. Bruce Bochy made a similar error in the Dodgers-Giants game Wednesday. Not sure how much consolation any of this is.

As a Yankee fan, I WAS outraged when Girardi blew last Saturday’s game by failing to use Rivera in the 8th. The reaction in NY was very quiet, at least in the papers (I don’t know what the WFAN reaction was). There is some small justification for saving Mariano: he is coming off offseason shoulder surgery, after all. But besides that, what was particularly infuriating was that Girardi 1) used the best setup man, Bruney, in the 7th; 2) after using Marte and Veras to get two outs in the 8th, went to the 5TH best reliever, Coke, rather than Mariano to get FOUR outs with the tying run on first base.

Like all of you, I can’t stand the modern use of the closer. But I don’t see the status quo changing any time soon. It’s just far too easy for the manager to look at the press and say, “I’m not going to use him when it’s not a ’save’ situation.”

Can you name another manager, other than Torre, who will use his closer in a close eighth-inning situation? If not, then does it make sense to argue that every manager in baseball is supposedly saying “I am a better manager than Joe Torre?”

It can be argued, though not proven, that the consistency of guys like Joe Nathan comes from only being used in specific situations and for limited innings — in previous eras, closers (then called ‘firemen’) were brought in early to protect close games. Guys like Mike Marshall would pitch 200 innings or more per year in these situations**, and most of them were wildly inconsistent from year to year. Limiting closers to ninth-inning appearances has not eliminated the problem of the inconsistent closer, but closers are more consistent on the whole now than they once were.

** – OK, there weren’t many guys like Mike Marshall, but closers did pitch significantly more innings in the late ’70s to mid-’80s than they pitched in the ’90s and pitch today.

If you don’t plan to use your best players (Soria) to do what they are best at, there’s no hope. We all know what Kyle is best at. Bang, zoom, to the moon, Trey.