Managers and Mistakes

One of the many quirks of baseball is how little a manager can do to help his team win games. Compared to a sport like football, where coaching is everything, baseball managers don't offer much positive value. Take Joe Maddon off the Rays and they're still a good team; put him on the Padres and they're still a bad team. A manager's most important functions are filling out a lineup card and making pitching changes; the success of those 'strategic' moves are mostly decided by the personnel at his disposal, which a manager does not control. Unless he's batting Delmon Young leadoff, or using Freddy Garcia as an ace reliever, a manager's typical functions don't allow him the opportunity to really hurt the quality of their team.

That's why the collective failures of John Farrell, Don Mattingly, and Fredi Gonzalez on Monday night were so impressive. All three managed to make questionable strategic blunders in their Game 4 matchups, proving that managers really can have a negative impact on their teams -- if you try hard enough.

Mistake 1: John Farrell Gets What He Asked For
Up 2-0 in the best-of-three series, Red Sox manager John Farrell came tantalizingly close to finishing off the Rays in the ALDS on Monday. Game 3 was tied headed into the top of the eighth, and David Ortiz led off the inning with a walk. Farrell decided to pinch-run for Ortiz with Quintin Berry, removing Ortiz from the game. This wasn't a bad decision on its own -- Farrell was playing for the go-ahead run, and Berry is one of the best base-stealers around. In fact, he stole second (though possibly helped by a blown call).

After a groundout, intentional walk, and a strikeout, Stephen Drew was due up with two outs and runners on first and second. Jake McGee, a lefty, was on the mound. Drew has been miserable against lefties this season -- a .196 average and .246 OBP. Fortunately, Farrell had an option on his bench: Xander Bogaerts, one of the top young prospects in the game, a right-handed hitter who could pinch-hit for Drew and replace him at shortstop. But Farrell didn't use him. Drew popped out, ending the inning. Farrell gave up Ortiz for the rest of the game in a gamble to try and score the go-ahead run, but by letting Drew hit against a lefty, he compromised his chances of scoring that run. Why is Bogaerts on the postseason roster if Farrell isn't going to use him in that situation?

The strangeness of that decision was compounded by another one an inning later. The Rays had grabbed a 4-3 lead, so the Red Sox were down to their last three outs in the top of the ninth facing Rays closer Fernando Rodney. The inning began with a five-pitch walk to Will Middlebrooks and a single by Jacoby Ellsbury, putting the tying and go-ahead runs on base. Rodney's control was iffy -- six of his first seven pitches were balls. But then Shane Victorino laid down a bunt, moving the runners over to second and third. If John Farrell instructed Victorino to bunt, then it's absolutely fair to question his judgment.

Because Farrell had already removed his cleanup hitter Ortiz, Boston's chances of winning an extended extra inning game weren't good, especially since they were on the road. The Red Sox should have been trying to win the game in the ninth by scoring multiple runs in the inning. They were in a great situation to do just that, with two runners on, good speed on the bases, a shaky Rodney on the mound, and Shane Victorino and Dustin Pedroia due up. Instead, Farrell chose to give away Victorino's at-bat to play for one run. Even though Victorino isn't a double play risk; even though he's been awesome against right-handed pitching; even though Rodney hadn't yet proven he could actually throw a strike.

Victorino bunted the runners over and a Pedroia ground-out did get that tying run home. But the winning run was stranded when pinch-hitter Mike Carp (batting at the DH spot where Ortiz would have been, mind you) struck out. And the Rays won the game on Jose Lobaton's walk-off in the bottom of the inning.

John Farrell asked for one run. He got exactly one run. Unsurprisingly, he also got a loss.

Mistake 2: Don Mattingly's Bunt Fetish
There might not be any manager in baseball who likes to bunt more than Dodgers manager Don Mattingly. Hopefully, the 8th inning of Monday's Game 4 against the Atlanta Braves will teach him a lesson. (Spoiler: it won't.)

Entering the top of the eighth inning, things were looking pretty grim for the Dodgers. Sure, they were up 2-1 in the series, but they were also trailing by a run with six outs to go in Game 4 against a dynamite Braves bullpen. A loss would mean that the Dodgers had wasted a Clayton Kershaw start on short rest against notable zombie Freddy Garcia with a decisive Game 5 looming in Atlanta. Without a doubt, this was a dire situation.

Yasiel Puig provided a spark by leading off the bottom of the eighth with a double. Juan Uribe was due up next ... and Mattingly apparently asked him to bunt Puig over to third. Now, Juan Uribe is no Shane Victorino. He's not a particularly good hitter. But he's above average, which is more than you can say for the guys following Uribe in the lineup: Skip Schumaker and A.J. Ellis. Both are pretty bad hitters. Uribe was clearly the best chance the Dodgers had at scoring the tying run. And Mattingly wanted to throw away that chance to put the game in the hands of Skip Schumaker and A.J. Ellis. Bad idea.

Fortunately, Juan Uribe is a bad bunter. He failed to put the ball in play twice, taking the bunt off the table. And then he crushed a two-run homer, putting the Dodgers on top 4-3 and sending them to the NLCS.

See, John Farrell? Sometimes, when you let your players hit instead of sacrificing them to the God of Bunts, good things happen.

Mistake 3: Fredi Gonzalez Doesn't Budge
This was easily the least forgivable mistake of the three. Farrell and Mattingly's teams were both ahead in their respective series; Gonzalez's Braves were down 2-1, one loss away from the end of their season. His mistake had far more lasting consequences.

Gonzalez was on the other side of that dramatic Uribe home run. His team was up 3-2, needing six more outs to stave off elimination and force a Game 5 in Atlanta. He brought in setup man David Carpenter to pitch the eighth, not a poor decision considering how good he's been this season. But then Puig led off the inning with a double, and suddenly the tying run was on second and the go-ahead run was at the plate. And with the best short-stint pitcher in the world available to him in the bullpen, Fredi Gonzalez never budged from the dugout.

That's amazing if you think about it. The Braves were up a run in the eighth inning of a game they needed to win, and Craig Kimbrel didn't even face a single batter. Kimbrel is the best relief pitcher in baseball. Over the past two seasons combined, he has a 1.11 ERA with 214 strikeouts and just 66 hits allowed in 129.2 innings. David Carpenter is great, but Craig Kimbrel is better, because Craig Kimbrel is the best.

Still, Gonzalez stuck with Carpenter after the leadoff double to Puig. He's shown a willingness to bring in Kimbrel for a four-out save in the past (he did it in Game 2 of this series, in fact). But needing six outs, in an elimination game, with the tying run on second? In that scenario, Gonzalez refused to summon Kimbrel. To reiterate: had the season been on the line with four outs to go, Kimbrel would've been in the game. But with the season on the line with six outs to go, Kimbrel wasn't an option. That rigid stubbornness lost the Braves the game, as Uribe hit the game-winning two-run homer off Carpenter with Kimbrel watching helplessly from the bullpen.

We traditionally think of mistakes as sudden, unwise deviations from an expected course of action. This mistake wasn't that at all. It wasn't a mental lapse or a brain fart. Quite the opposite: Gonzalez actually adhered to the same bullpen routine he's always followed, the same bullpen routine that got him to the playoffs in the first place -- Carpenter in the eighth, Kimbrel in the ninth. And that right there was the problem. Compared to the regular season, the playoffs are a different beast. Elimination games are a completely different beast. Desperate situations require flexibility; they require creativity; they require the willingness to push your best players to their physical limits, like the Dodgers did by starting Clayton Kershaw on three days' rest. The conservative Fredi Gonzalez showed none of those qualities. Instead, all he had was The Plan. And when The Plan went awry, he was left with nothing.