Thoughts on todays debacle: 1) Managers throughout baseball, including Brad Ausmus and Jim Leyland, always put in the closer (not another reliever) with a three run or less lead in the 9th inning. Nor do they every have another pitcher warming up. It seems to be something about not harming the fragile psyche of a reliever, from what I can see. 2) One thing I really liked about the Ausmus hire is that he is considered to be so smart. I was hoping he might challenge the conventional thinking in #1 above. Unfortunately, he does not. This really disappoints me 3) Until last night, Nathan has been pitching much better lately (2.25 ERA, .182 BA, 16 Ks in 12 innings from July 1 to yesterday). Should he be the closer, the anointed one? 4) Even if Nathan has been pitching much better , he struggled so badly yesterday that, given that he has another guy who has been a successful closer this season (Soria) who was rested, Ausmus had Nathan come in. Probably just about every other manager in the game would have done the same thing. 5) I was very disappointed that Nathan took no responsibility for he loss in his postgame comments. It was all ground balls that got through the infield, back luck, according to him. This is not the first time he has skirted responsibility for his pitching. I wonder how that goes over with his teammates? 6) Does this mean that Ausmus is a bad manager? No. My thought is that the strategic part of being a manager is at best 20% of the job. The other 80%+ is managing the players in the clubhouse, on the plane, and in the dugout. I dont think that fans can easily judge this part (I know I cant), unless the guy is very good according to consensus of those who see what is going on (Tony LaRussa, Jim Leyland) or really bad (Bobby Valentine, Vern Rapp). This team seems to be similar in this regard as last years team, when a highly-regarded manager of players ran the team. 7) The bigger concern is the offense. If we hit, it does not matter what Nathan would have done today, and we would have won three or four games in New York. I like the Price deal, but it does put a lot of pressure on JD and Rajah to keep it going. We really need some good lefty hitters, but there are none out there. (The Cubs just cut Nate Schierholtz. I know he is having a dreadful year, but might he be worth a flyer? Hes one of the guys I was hoping the Tigers would consider signing last winter.) 7) On the bright side, we have David Price going tomorrow and are in first place. The Royals might be hot, but they are not that good and they will fade again as they did earlier in the season. This is a, maybe the, golden era of Tiger baseball, and we are lucky that this is our favorite team. (We cant forget that it has not been that long since we had a dreadful excuse for a baseball team to root for.) Im really enjoying this season! Go Tigers!
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 21:47:02 +0000
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