This is fine when you're managing for a whole season in a series against the Rockies or something.
This was a game against our only divisional competition and we just lost the division lead in a sweep and a 3 game swing.
I'm pretty done with Williams. If he had grown since the NLDS in managing a single series and game you would think we would have seen it this weekend, when the situation called for it. Instead, we lost two close ones and another by 3 runs, and the new strength that Rizzo traded for was nowhere to be found.
Perfect opportunity, too. Blame Game 1 on the offense, if you think even if Casey Janssen had been run out in the 12th and 13th they still would have lost, either with him or a position player on the mound. The hits were there but the fundamentals weren't, FP said it himself, game should have been 3-1 Nats in 9 but it was 2-1 Mets in 12.
But Game 2 was the perfect opportunity to treat like a playoff game. There are going to be games where your starter only has thrown 80some pitches and has gotten through well enough but is about to have the game on the line in one AB. That's when you make the switch to Drew Storen to run the gauntlet, inning be damned.
If this were the NLDS there would be no Games 4 and 5 featuring Max Scherzer and Gio Gonzalez, one an ace and the other a noted Met killer. I feel pretty confident going into Games 4 and 5 with those two vs this team. But they wouldn't have the opportunity thanks to Matt's boneheaded devotion to "roles."
Buck Showalter, perhaps the best current manager, even said as much in an interview, that "it's really important for relievers to know their roles [for the sake of their comfort and ability to perform]." Somehow I don't buy that. I think the best of them are adrenaline junkies who will try to get outs wherever and whenever they get thrown in there. I don't want a groomed creature of habit, and that goes for Papelbon as well, but I'm willing to swallow his inflexibility because it was part of the cost to get him so cheap. They can have their "roles," I'm going to face righties, or lefties, more often, I'm going to face heart-of-the-order more often, or bottom-of-the-order, I'm long, I'm one-inning, I'm both, etc. But I'm sick of this blatant
inefficiency that you have resources being misused, simply because of the inning's number. I'm willing to buy that the 9th inning is a different animal, look at how many perfectos and no-nos die there, look at all these improbable comebacks, something about "finality" changes the circumstance and the players' performance. The other innings, not so much.
Right now I put Matt ahead of Mattingly, below Matheny. Superstar "names" with ultra-talented rosters, who can manage A-B-C and have good-to-excellent control of their clubhouses, but whose braindead decision making handcuffs their teams and runs them right out of October. Randy Choate was Matheny's Aaron Barrett. Leaving Kershaw in the 7th in games 1 and 4 was Mattingly's version of leaving Ross out there just long enough to cough up the lead. Matheny stuck with one of their veteran outfielders last year, can't remember who, for way too long, because "he's my guy." Mattingly's let Andre Ethier rot on the bench for years now in favor of big names like Carl Crawford, Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp, whose droughts made Los Angeles look sodden. Sounds just like the Ian Desmond debacle this year.
Two superior managers in Bochy and Maddon could be there in October this year. Let's see if any of these three knucklehead Goliaths can simply overpower their way to victory thanks to their rosters, or will David have his way with them again. At least when Buck Showalter lets his pitchers live by their roles, when he brings in firemen he puts them in a place to succeed, as if he knows things like Yoenis Cespedes bats 100 points lower than Duda vs lefties.
