Contemplating Decision Making
Today, I find myself defending a man I very much would like to see fired, so I’m in a little bit of a strange situation right now. A day after semi-blasting the work ethics of the team and Tony Pena, an article on the Royals’ web site detailed the lengthy full-squad workout the Royals had prior to Tuesday evening’s game against the Minnesota Twins. Despite the fact they blew another opportunity to emerge victorious for the first time in about a week, seeing that they still care about fixing what’s wrong was definitely encouraging. Additionally, I really liked reading that Pena will have the Royals “work on fundamentals every single day” during homestands. While that new revelation certainly scores the manager some points in my book, I spent more than a few minutes over at the Royals’ mlb.com message board defending not Pena himself, but a decision he made in the ninth inning of yesterday’s loss.
With one out and nobody on base in the inning, Pena came out of the dugout to summon his new closer. Ambiorix Burgos replaced Andrew Sisco, who pitched what’s becoming his usual: scoreless, one-strikeout baseball spanning two-thirds of an inning. The move made sense at the time; the Twins were scheduled to send up four consecutive right-handed hitters. Since the Royals are apparently doomed to have at least one disastrous inning a night that tears out the hearts of the Kansas City players and their fans, Burgos promptly surrendered a broken-bat flare single to Matthew LeCroy and a close 3-2 pitch to Michael Cuddyer that was called a ball. The Royals badly needed a double play to escape without any damage, and they damned near got it. Shannon Stewart, pinch-hitting for Luis Rivas, hit a 2-2 pitch from Burgos on the ground towards third baseman Joe McEwing, who fielded the ball and stepped on third base to force out pinch runner Jason Bartlett. Despite Stewart’s speed, it looked like the Royals were going to get out of the inning with the score still tied at one … until McEwing fired the ball about 15 feet wide of the bag at first.
That was another Royal mistake; any regular third baseman would’ve been able to accurately make that throw. Good teams capitalize on their opponents’ mistakes, which is something the Twins have been better at than most any other team in baseball over the last three seasons. This time, the player who stuck in the dagger was KRB favorite Lew Ford, who, like LeCroy before him, hit a flare to the right side that just barely got past second baseman Tony Graffanino. Cuddyer scored the go-ahead run, Joe Nathan did his thing in the bottom of the inning, and the Royals suffered another heartbreaking one-run loss, their fifth in the last six games. It’s been said that good teams create their own luck and that bad teams create their own misfortune, but there’s just no reason why the Royals shouldn’t have won at least two of those five games.
It’s very difficult for baseball fans to accept a string of losses as little more than plain old bad luck, so to take out our frustrations, we immediately look for spots in the game in which a different move could’ve been made that might have affected the outcome. Almost immediately after the game was over, Pena was taking another beating on the message board for removing the red-hot Sisco and replacing him with Burgos. I still don’t think Pena should be allowed to keep his job much longer and I can see the logic behind leaving in the hot hand, but suggesting that any switch was the wrong move only after seeing the result is the worst kind of second-guessing out there. For example, Grady Little may have left Pedro Martinez in too long back in the 2003 playoffs, but if ‘dro hadn’t allowed what he did in that deciding inning, nobody would’ve been upset with the decision. In this case, Pena could’ve replaced Sisco with Ruben Gotay if he wanted. If Gotay somehow would have escaped the inning without allowing any runs to score, would Pena’s choice to have an infielder pitch a high-leverage situation have been the right one? I certainly don’t think so, and I hope you don’t either.
I’m not saying that Tony hasn’t made some blunder-headed decisions with his pitching staff in the early-going this year, because he most certainly has. I’m also not trying to suggest that replacing the guy who’s been the team’s best reliever to date with a wild rookie was the right thing to do. However, if we’re going to criticize a managerial move, it’s important to do it at the time the move is made, not afterwards when we’ve seen the result of the action. If Burgos had done his job (or if he’d been a little bit luckier in this instance), no runs would have scored, and I’d be willing to bet that not a word would’ve been spoken of the situation. Managers can only do so much, like putting their players in the best possible position to succeed. Pena – who doesn’t have a crystal ball – did that last night, and it just didn’t work out.
Random thoughts...