Being a baseball fan during the playoffs can be exciting and entertaining; being a Red Sox fan can be as well, though usually the excitement and entertaininment quickly turn to anxiety and despair. And so it went last night at the end of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series in Boston, where the Cleveland Indians went into the top of the eleventh inning tied 6-6 with my *cough* beloved Red Sox. It was at this point that Red Sox manager Terry "Tito" Francona decided do to his best impersonation of former Red Sox manager Grady Little and make a doomed decision so head-explodingly stupid I had to walk out of the house and refuse to watch the rest of the game in protest (and thank goodness I did - but more on that later)
Grady Little, of course, is the manager of the 2003 Boston Red Sox whose decision to leave in an obviously out-of-gas Pedro Martinez is credited with Little's having lost both the series to the Yankees and his own job. I do believe the former charge is true (since the Boston bullpen had been lights-out most of that series), but the latter charge is total crap: Little had mismanaged his pitchers all year long up to and including that infamous Game 7 blunder. Up until Game 7, no Grady Little screw-up had induced more frustration and rage from yours truly than his decision to bring in "closer" Scott Williamson for a fourth straight day to pitch to Oakland in the bottom of the last inning of the decisive Game 5 of the 2003 ALDS. Little's decision was so outrageously moronic that I walked out of the house in protest. My reason was simple: I knew for a fact that Little's decision was doomed to fail, and I refused to watch a good bunch of ball players lose because of one freakin' idiot manager. Sure enough, the exhausted Williamson proceeded to walk the first two batters on eight pitches, thus prompting the slow-learning Little to realize what I had already known since the end of Game 4: that Williamson had been overworked and would be completely ineffective if called upon to pitch in Game 5. The fact that the Sox ended up winning Game 5 after Little brought in habitual miracle worker Derek Lowe is moot; the important point is that Grady Little had committed a strategic baseball sin by bringing in a pitcher that everybody on earth except Grady Little knew was doomed to fail. Which brings us to current Red Sox manager Terry Francona's bone-headed decision in last night's ALCS Game 2.
Here's the situation: it's Game 2 of the ALCS, and Boston has a 1-0 lead in the series. The Red Sox batters roughed up Cleveland ace Fausto Carmona (how can you not love that guy's name, by the way?), but the Cleveland batters did even more damage to Boston's post-season stalwart Curt Schilling. The teams traded leads three or four times and eventually found themselves in a 6-6 tie and completely unable to score off each other's relief pitchers. After receiving two scoreless innings from his best reliever, Jonathan Pappelbon, Boston manager Terry Francona was faced with a critical decision: what pitcher do I send to the mound for the top of the eleventh inning in a best of seven playoff series game? Hmm . . . I imagine this is what was running through his mind:
• I have Javier Lopez, the left-hander who actually pitches better against right-handed hitters and who can go at least two innings.
• Then there's the talented but inconsistent young lefty Jon Lester, who can give me plenty of innings just in case this game goes into a worst-case scenario eighteen innings.
• There's also the sure-to-be controversial choice of the aching, aging knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who's insertion here would probably force Game 1 starter Josh Beckett to start Game 4 on only three days of rest instead of the customary four days. Then again, the last time Beckett went on three days of rest in the playoffs was with the Florida Marlins in Game 6 of the 2003 World Series, a start that resulted in Beckett's Series-clinching shutout victory and ensuing MVP award!
"Hep me! Hep me!" I just don't know what to do!
Oh, wait, silly me! There's a fourth option:
• Bring in former Dodgers & Rangers closer Erc Gagne (whom the Red Sox acquired in a trade on July 31 - see blog entry from August 30) for his one inning maximum and watch the entire previous ten innings of effort explode in my face! Hey -- this doesn't sound half-bad!!!
Somewhere in America Grady Little had to have been smiling because Francona - defying all logic with his middle finger pointing straight in the face of Red Sox fans everywhere - went with option number four. Upon hearing Gagne's name (as in, "Boston's now got Eric Gagne and Javier Lopez throwing in the bullpen"), I turned to a friend and declared, "Oh, so now the objective is to lose in the playoffs?!!? Putting in Gagne is as good as saying, 'Here, take Game 2. We would rather lose this game immediately than have to play anywhere past the eleventh inning!'" And I said this not because I hate bearded French Canadian relief pitchers with overly stylish eyewear, but because Gagne's previous twenty-nine appearances with the Red Sox did everything but guarantee a Red Sox loss in this situation. Since arriving in Boston, Gagne has been stupifyingly ineffective. He came to the Red Sox with a 2-0 record and 2.16 ERA; since arriving he has gone 2-2 with a 6.75 ERA in twenty-nine appearances. So the question must be asked: did these previous twenty-nine disasters have any effect whatsoever in Francona's decsion to put in a guy who could give him only one inning in the first place? Did Francona look at the numbers for even a split-second before he put in a guy who had loaded the bases in a 10-3 Boston victory one night earlier?!!? Come on, Tito - Charlie Brown couldn't have managed this situation as ineptly as you did! Gagne's brief but horrendous track record in Boston aside, the situation itself calls for a reliever - any reliever - who can give you at least two to three innings just in case the game goes beyond the eleventh inning. Putting in Gagne is the equivalent of telling Indians manager Eric Wedge, "We're ending this game right here, right now" - and then putting a gun to the heads of his hitters and saying, "All right, guys - let's go out there and score three runs or more or we lose the game!" Thanks for the options, Tito.
Well, even I couldn't have foreseen just how disastrous Francona's decision would be. By the time I returned from a lovely Iate-night stroll the Indians had, just as I predicted, won the game - by a final score of 13-6. 13-6!!!!! The final line on the absolutely ineffective Gagne was 0.1IP, 1H, 1 BB, 2 ER. Actually, Javier Lopez entered the game after Gagne and proved to be even less effective than Gagne by allowing three runs while getting nobody out (0IP, 2H, 1BB, 3ER). Lopez' performance is moot, however, because he was, based on both pitchers' performances leading up to this game, still the more logical choice. The most important part of this gigantic implosion - no, make that the only important part of this gigantic implosion - is Terry Francona's inexplicable decision to bring in his absolute worst pitcher in a situation as critical as the eleventh inning of a tie game in the playoffs. It simply amazes me how some managers seem to learn absolutely nothing from experience and, thus, proceed to make the same mistakes time after time after time after time after time after time after time . . .
Yes, somewhere in America Grady Little is smiling.
