CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Excuse me don't you manage every game not to lose ? I've never heard of a manager managing to purposely lose , have you ? If you actually mean something different like perhaps managing to win, how is that any different in a do or die game you must not lose , you must win. The do or die nature of the game means your best possible guys on the field and if they don't do the job then you lose. Too many of the Sox best guys either on the mound or in the lineup failed to perform. Blame the players . I have never seen so many blame the manager for lack of player performance . 9 walks ! How many teams win giving up 7 walks from their best pitchers ? Not counting the 2 Rodon gave up.

So in No.1 you ,mention 3 pitchers and all 3 weren't available. Detwiler was replaced by Rodon as you noted so bringing him up makes no sense. Gio was injured and didn't make the playoff roster. Cease had pitched in relief the day before. Lopez didn't make the playoff roster. No one wanted Rodon to pitch let alone start. How you can say Dunning was distracted and or confidence ruined is pure speculation.He was fully aware that a shaky start could get him an early hook. You weren't there. You weren't inside his head and there's no way you can say it had anything to do with the offense. If the offense was effected how in the heck does it jump out to a 3-0 lead ? Robert looked very effected hitting that 487 ft. HR and I saw Dunning smiling in the dugout looking pretty damn happy to see that HR. These arguments are ridiculous. 2. Why would Crochet follow him up? The game plan is your answer . Start a RH pitcher follow him up him a LH hopefully negating the LH power of the A's. No one cared if Crochet was an inexperienced rookie straight out of college. Everyone was excited to see him pitch just as they were in his earlier games. Were you complaining at any point on this board about him being on the team or pitching when he was throwing 101/102 MPH in his previous games or questioning why he was on the team ? If the answer to that is no , then questioning it now is pure unadulterated 100% hindsight . It is the whole reason he didn't pitch in the 1st 2 games. Crochet was not overused. He hadn't pitched in the 1st 2 games because they had plans for him in this game. He pitched 6 innings in the regular season. He pitched in Schaumburg which probably is a lot less stressful than pitching in minor league games. If you are going to follow the RH Dunning with LH's your choices are Bummer , Crochet, Rodon and Fry. Pick one besides Crochet the Sox were prepared to pitch right after Dunning. You draft guys to use them . If all the coaches thought he was good enough to play in the big leagues then he should be in the big leagues. He wanted to help the Sox in the playoffs that you can be sure of. He hadn't allowed a run in his previous 6 innings and struck out 2 of 2 once he came in the game. The results speak for themselves. The only possible thing you could say is to start Foster or Heuer all rookies with less experience starting then Dunning who all would've been on equally short leashes. Anyone who started knew what was at stake and the possibilities of an early exit . Destroyed confidence ? A distraction , effecting the offense ? Please this is the weakest sauce ever and I don't care what Frank Thomas thinks.

It must be very hard to remember back 100 years when you were so young.?

I brought him up a few days ago along with the Santander kid from The O's. Everyone else is just piggybacking off me . ?

Their you have it ?

Practically everyone on this board wanted Crochet to pitch. He was held out of the 1st 2 games for this very moment. If that's unfair I don't know what to tell you. He's on the team, he had pitched very well and he struck out the 1st 2 guys he pitched to .Its very unfortunate he wasn't feeling right. Right or wrong he was being counted on for about 6 outs .

I never put Rodon in the really good guys category. I put Heuer, Marshall Bummer Crochet and Foster there. No one expects they all do well but you also don't expect 3 of your top guys to be as bad as they were and also dont expect another one of your top guys to get hurt. The Sox used 9 pitchers Oakland used 8 even though their starter went 2 shaky innings and they didn't have one of their best injured. The difference between who won and lost was 9 walks by our guys and 3 by theirs, not how long Dunning pitched.

No one knows if he gets scored on or if he gets out of it. Its not a matter of having faith in him . Mike Fiers has much more experience pitching then Dunning and the Sox roughed him up for 2 innings and only had one run to show for it. If you think its panic nothing I can say will change your mind. And you can't say the game would've gone differently either better or worse if they had left him in or started the game with someone else. All i know was that I liked having a 3-0 lead until the 4th inning. DId you not like that ?

All i know is that was the win probability in the bottom of the 4th so we survived that huge mistake of taking Dunning out and going with the game plan. That win percent went way down and came way up for the A's because our really good pitchers weren't really good and the game plan got severely altered with the Crochet injury. How you blame those guys pitching bad or the Crochet injury on how Dunning was used I haven't got a clue. Maybe that's the bigger giant leap in logic. Maybe you just have no idea how to be nice. Someone else saif you were grumpy and SSK2 scolded you also for how you presented your argument. Doesn't mean I'm soft at all just that I prefer less crazy ways to express yourself.

You let Dunning stick around to give up a couple runs and you got the same people screaming that RR is an idiot or that you're an idiot . Not saying you are just you don't have fans here who see it any other way than their own and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. I love intelligent discussion and welcome opposing views but if you can't do it in a civilized way without throwing around insults and vastly proclaiming your way is the only way to look at it I can't deal with you. SO thank you for disagreeing in a more than welcome way .

Oakland tried to get innings from Fiers too and left him in to give up a run in 2 innings with 5 hits and its should've been more runs. Fiers is a vet, a guy with 2 career no hitters I think. They got 2 very shaky innings from him . Dunning is a rookie coming off TJ suregry with very limited exposure MLB hitters . The Sox didn't have anyone like Fiers . All they had was a bunch of rookies and Marshall and Cordero. Who wanted to see Cordero or Rodon start ? No one . I don't think everything had to go right to win . But everything going wrong means you probably don't win. We got too little too late from Cordero and Colome and hitters leaving way too many on base in the last 3 innings and really throughout the game.

Oakland hits righties better than lefties So you get the RH Dunning in to start. Ideally he pitches without giving up a run or maybe 1 run but definitely you want a scoreless 1st . Yank him when there's trouble and now you bring in the lefties hoping that you can get 3 innings from Crochet and Bummer combined to offset the LH hitting strength of the A's. The Crochet injury messed that up but we still got through those less innings without giving up any runs. It wasn't until the RHP of the Sox reappeared that the A's got runs but at that point you really needed a couple of scoreless innings from one of Heuer , Foster or Marshall and not one of them could do it.

So you would have preferred Dunning staying in the game in a do or die game because you were confident he gets that 3rd out and doesn't give up a run and put the Sox behind from the get go ? Maybe you didn't like that 72.4 % win win probability way after Dunning was removed and the Sox held a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th ? Ok maybe you prefer instead the Sox started Heuer or Foster. Tell me how that would ve gone. Once again you can't. Face facts it was a meltdown from much more reliable arms than Dunning that led to the Sox loss and most of all Crochets injury. You keep thinking you're some baseball expert and so will I but some of the smarter minds on this website happen to agree with me. There was a game plan and they stuck to it with good results until the Crochet injury threw everything out of whack. You then needed some of those good pitchers to perform and they did not. Players not performing up to standards they have established is not the fault of the manager. Hitters failed, pitchers failed and got injured. You don't win giving up as many walks as the Sox good pitchers did. This was not my game plan . It was the Sox and I said at the beginning of that post you could disagree with that thought process but it was working until Heuer gave up the 2 run HR and all the bad from Rodon , Foster and Marshall helped along by a catchers interference from a batter who seems to be good at getting them. It is not panicked or little league thinking. It's doing what you have to do in a situation that warrants it. Fine you disagree with the thought process. It does not make you right and everyone else an idiot.

Hey tray thats what the odds said and the odds are based on solid info about having a 3 run lead at that time in the game.Could you have predicted Heuer, Foster and Marshall all with undrer 3.00 ERA would all be terrible ? Did you predict the Crochet injury ?

I guess I'm flat out wrong then according to you. Just because you think he wasn't pitching bad doesn't mean he wasn't. 4 hitters 2 hits . That's a .500 opposition batting average. That's bad. He also hung one pitch and missed his spots a couple times. He knew the plan going in. He knew he could be pulled early. That's just how it works in a do or die game. Should he have stayed in and given up a 3 run HR just to convince you he was pitching bad. Did his previous 2 starts not convince you that maybe the short leash was warranted ? The plan was to get some innings from him but scoreless innings hopefully or at the very least a scoreless 1st inning.. He didn't help himself by giving up 2 hits in 4 batters. How did this hurt the SOx more than the Crochet injury ? Do Heuer or Foster do any better ? You tell me who should ve started and how it would ve been better ? What's that ? You can't ? Why not ? Oh yea you're just a fan without a crystal ball that sees how things would've gone in an alternate universe 2nd guessing a decision that led to the Sox having a 72.4% win probability after Laureano struck out in the bottom of the 4th.

You are correct. Preaching to the choir Monsignor.

Hey I gave you credit in my recent post of the pitching and game plan analysis for alerting me in the game thread that LaStella had a bit of a history for getting Catchers Interference calls. Since it was during the game I wasn't prepared to look it up then and see what you were talking about. I don't think anyone said anything at the time in the game thread asking what you meant. So kudos for that tip.

You saying probably in the 1st paragraph means it's conjecture not fact. Why was that move foolhardy ? I'd like to hear your explanation before I respond. Maybe you are a baseball savant and I won't be able to refute your logic .

You really think that was the case and the forearm tightness reports we got were bogus ? Do you really think Crochet pitching a few MPH less wouldn't have been discussed beforehand ?

If he wasn't hurt then why did we get an in game report saying he had a forearm strain ? Have you seen reports that refute the reports we got ? You don't risk a kids future just because you are in a playoff game. The kids a gamer. He pitched in the past with a broken jaw. The Sox had seen Kopechs velocity drop and he ended up needing TJ surgery.

Look everybody has their way in their head as to who should have pitched when. There is no going back to see if your way would ve been better. I can tell by how it unfolded what the game plan was so here goes. Open with Dunning. Get a quick feel for how he's commanding his pitches. Can he get their lefties out ? The 1st 5 hitters should tell you this since 3 of them were lefties. Dunning did not pass the test however he did serve a purpose since he's righty. All the Lefties in Oaklands lineup would now have to face the Sox best lefty relievers for as long as they could go. Enter Crochet . The plan was now that Oakland doesn't hit lefties as well as righties was to make them face lefties as long as possible and leave Crochet in as long as he could go. That's probably 2 inning maybe a little longer . Unfortunately he got hurt . SO you still want them to face a lefty for another 2 innings. That meant either Bummer Fry or Rodon. They chose Bummer because he is their best lefty by far. The plan was working but the injury to Crochet changed things drastically. He could only go 2 batters ,both K's, 1 to finish the 1st inning and 1 to start the 2nd. Enter Bummer. It's only the 2nd inning and there's only 1 out and the Sox are on their 3rd pitcher. Can Bummer go 2 innings ? After getting 2 ground outs to finish the 2nd he starts the 3rd with a walk, a K ,and a single and appears to be tired. Well things are unraveling a bit. Your 2 best lefties can only give you 1.2 innings so its bring in Rodon or Fry with 2 men on or go to your most reliable RH's now. RR chooses RH Heuer. Sound decision Enter Heuer . Pinder PH for Lamb and singles. Bases loaded 1 out but Heuer works his way out of it with a popup and a K. That worked out well but pretty stressful work for Heuer. Bottom of the 4th Heuer starts with a GO, BB, K ,2 outs ,1 on. Maybe Heuer can give you those good 2 innings we need ? We're still trying to make up innings from the Crochet injury. Nope. Sean Murphy hits a HR cutting the lead to 3-2. Heuer is out. Enter Rodon. Still looking for the 3rd out. Just get 1 out Rodon . Bases are empty 2 outs. Nope. Walk , double, IBB . Well that IBB was interesting. Load the bases or have Rodon actually face another hitter. 3 batter rule. Hard call. Wasn't a wrong call , bad results followed but who thinks Foster is going to walk 2 runs in ? A single accomplishes the same thing , a double clears the bases and a HR would've sucked so yes it was bad to give up the lead but could've ended worse . Rodon's outing was terrible. His playoff ERA is infinity ( no lie). Enter Matt Foster. Surely the usually reliable Foster is more likely to get the out than Rodon against the RH Canha. Nope. Walks in the tying run. Then walks the LH Olson and A's lead 4-3. 3 pitchers, 6 batters 1 HR, 4 walks , and no one could get the last out,. Foster finally gets a Fly out to end that disaster of an inning. End of the 4th inning. Sox have used 6 pitchers , walked 6 guys, gave away the lead and they still haven't made up for the Crochet injury. The offense ties the game with a clutch 2 out hit from Mazara after a single and SB from Moncada. That's the 2nd hit and 2nd RBI for Mazara. Enter Marshall for the bottom of the 5th. Starts by getting 2 outs, a lineout and swinging K. Then a walk. Now La Stella is up . On an 0-1 count LaStella swings and misses a pitch. Wait what's this Catchers interference and we all start getting angry at Grandal. But wait ,whats this I find later thanks to a helpful hint from Fathom in the game thread ? LaStella actually has had more than his fair share of Catchers Interference calls. In June 2018 a tweet from Jesse Rogers says LaStella has reached base 6 times through catchers interference. How many he's had since then I don't know but he must stand as far back in the box as the ump allows so maybe Grandal isn't totally at fault here. Is this something that showed up in pregame reports ? Still seems pretty random but it's sort of a trend when 1 guy gets that many. So 2 on ,still 2 outs. Another walk now bases loaded without the benefit of a hit. Pinder singles in 2 . Another failure to close out the inning. Canha lines out to RF to end the inning. 2 runs, 1 ER, 1 hit ,2 walks, an error. In the 4th and 5th the A's score 6 runs on a total of 3 hits ,7 walks, a catchers interference. Marshall pitches the 6th inning with no runs. We finally get 2 innings from a guy but he ends up the Loser . Not the kind of 2 innings you wanted. While you get 1 scoreless inning apiece from Cordero and Colome . The Sox mount some rallies but could never get any key hits when they were behind in the 7th-9th. Season over. I did this as a learning tool so some could understand the thought processes behind some of the pitching moves. You can all question the thought process or be angry with the results but I don't see anything glaringly bad in how the pen was handled. Turns out it was just a bunch of strange stuff happening to our young pitchers. Whether that was a combination of youth in pressure situations along with the House of Horrors we all have come to expect who knows ? Lots of walks 2 key injuries a catchers interference and no clutch hitting or pitching and actually lucky we only lost by 2. Players didn't perform . Sox normally don't do a lot of BP games and certainly not in the playoffs . In the bottom of the 4th when Laureano K'd the Sox win probability was 72.4 % so I don't really have to question a lot of BP decisions until after that. The plan was working until the injury to Crochet . That's just a fact and it altered the plan significantly.

I'm just calling it Post Traumatic Tatis Syndrome.

I don't think you can ever blame the GM on moves not made. That falls mostly on Jerry's budget. For moves he did make sure.

To use her own words she should be thrilled if Rodon can become an "elite reliever". That would mean his endless string of injuries is over and he can make some money instead of ending up being some minor league contract addition when she realizes that nobody is going to take a chance on him starting with that injury history for more than petty cash. Yes by all means stick by your husband and aim high but don't be surprised if it doesn't happen.

I think if you get Bauer he is a big fish like Wheeler would've been or the guys we didnt go after like Cole and Strasburg ( dodged a bullet there) were. If we land him the 2nd pitcher probably could be a Quintana or Stroman and not many would be upset .