Circle me Bert!

Soria already was dominating the winter circuit, leading all three pitching triple crown categories (9-0, 1.77 ERA, 73 strikeouts). But the 22-year-old right-hander struck out nine and threw 101 pitches to remain unbeaten.”

That was only two years ago. He was the most dominating starting pitcher in the league.

And now everyone is afraid to overextend him by forcing his poor fragile arm to throw more than one inning?

For crying out loud, put him in the friggin’ rotation already. Putting him in the bullpen was stupid enough. Putting him in the bullpen and barely using him is unconscionable.

Of course, what makes more sense is what Torre has done with the Dodgers this year. Kuroda, the opening day starter, went on the DL. James McDonald pitched lousy his. So Torre replaced Kuroda with Eric Stults, who pitched well, and then with an off day helping out, replaced McDonald with Stults again. But he used McDonald in relief in a blowout for an inning, to help McDonald get some confidence back, and then started McDonald on a short leash, pulling him with a 4-0 lead but allowing him to keep the confidence of 4+ scoreless innings. So not only is Torre helping the Dodgers win, he’s also using all his pitchers and in spots where it is appropriate.

And Torre also used Broxton, the closer, with one day of rest, for 1 2/3 innings against the Rockies on 4/17. Broxton got the long save, and then the team scored a lot of runs the next two days and had an off day yesterday, so Broxton’s next outing will be with at least three days of rest. I’ve gotta say, that seems to be to be a smarter use of a closer than what Hillman is doing with Soria. Broxton’s on a pace to throw 83 innings, which isn’t too many for a relief ace. Soria’s on a pace to throw 54 innings. Assuming your ace is probably one of your best four pitchers, would you rather have him throw 54 innings for the year, or 83?

More detail can be found here:
http://ussmariner.com/2009/04/18/wakamatsu-likes-to-bunt/

It’s not a purely adversarial question, either. From reading Weaver’s book, I think he could actually tell you the percentages he was chasing for any given move. I kind of wish Hillman would just take a copy of The Book into the dugout with him and look these situations up as they occur. Then he could play the percentages by actually looking up the percentages and making a choice based on that.

Let’s go Banny.

Fans want to win the next game, no matter what. Especially if they bought tickets to go see that game. And that’s their right. But the manager can’t manage his team like that all year, the players will break down, especially the pitching staff. It’s a huge part of his responsibility to protect the best pitchers arms as much as possible.

Maybe Hillman really is an idiot, but managers also know their players and what’s going on with them way more than us people on the outside do. And their explanations for their moves shouldn’t be given any weight whatsoever. What’s the manager supposed to say, “we pushed back one guy because he’s got a little tender arm and he’s not real tough compared to the other pitchers, so we’re worried about him holding up strong all year”? Or how about “we don’t want Joe Blow pitching in Detroit because his mistress lives there and he’ll never get a good night’s sleep or be able to concentrate if he’s within 100 miles of that town”?

It’s easy to call managers dumb without knowing what’s really going on, but I’m pretty skeptical of fans who think they know it all bashing the manager every time he does something they don’t like. Sometimes a manager does do something dumb, but there are plenty of times that he’s called an idiot when there’s a good reason for his decision that the fans don’t know and can’t know.