Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Where is Soria?
The last time Soria pitched was LAST Monday, April 13th. Since then, the Royals have played 6 games including three 1-run losses. In two of the run run loses, the winning run was scored in the 7th inning or later. Basically, I hate the "save". There is no other statistic to managers play to so much. If the winning run gets on base in the bottom of the 8th, why not go to your best pitcher? If the heart of the order comes up late in the game, wouldn't you want your best hurler up against them? In a one-run game I would certainly rather have a guy like Soria face the 3-4-5 guys in the 8th and then use my setup guy for the 6-7-8 in the 9th. No? I am constantly surprised that this isn't the norm for managing a baseball game.
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7 comments:
Happy to trade you George Sherrill for him. He pitches ALL the time.
Mark is complaining about this, and he doesn't even own Soria, I do. What is even more maddening is the fact that the Royals have blown TWO leads in the 8th inning using Farnsworth and other relievers. Once in a game where Hillman said he wanted to have Soria pitch NO MATTER WHAT because it had been so long since his last appearance. TWO FUCKING GAMES. If Hilman wasn't such an idiot the Royals would be 9-4 and the talk of MLB. I'm adding Hilman to the list of managers who I should be allowed to fire. I'm a GM, right?
Well, I have him in another league but there is no blog for me to gripe. As such, I will have to vicariously gripe through Bill.
In the context of this league, my middle reliever strategy would work much better if saves weren't reserved for a completely artificial role.
In a related thread, the A's seem to be avoiding pitching Santiago Casilla in their epic, 11 inning game (so far) against the Yankees, electing to pitch Josh Outman instead.
You should be happy - Geren must be "saving" Casilla for the save situation. I am actually not sure what I'd do here. If you are on the road it somewhat makes sense to me to "save" a better pitcher in a close game. In order to win you will have to take a lead into the bottom of the Xth inning and then you can put in the better reliever.
In a game that goes into extras, I would probably just use my best reliever I had in the 10th and go down the line from there (making room for some exceptions based on the batters coming up in the inning). Yes, if the game goes on for a while you end up having your 7th reliever close out the game, but at least you didn't lose with any good relievers still sitting on the bench.
Up to 13 IP by the A's, and still no Casilla...
You might get a save out of it... that has to be the thinking
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