Whenever the Rays play the Angels, there seems to be this annoying feeling that Joe Maddon is always trying to show his mentor Mike Scioscia that JoeMa indeed is the smartest man in the room, and it inevitably turns bad, and Scioscia once again is proven to be the better manager.
It was tough enough on Friday night watching the Rays have a 4-1 lead, with their ace pitcher,David Price,on the mound. Price didn't have his best game, and the Rays lost the game 8-5. This was understandable, as it's baseball, and things happen, and the Angels outplayed the Rays on Friday night. Then the Angels hand the Rays a cookie, by not using their ace pitcher, Jered Weaver, supposedly due to illness. The Angels used a rookie pitcher, and the Rays scored 5 runs in the 1st inning to take a 5-0 lead. The Rays countered with a young rookie pitcher of their own, Alex Cobb, who overall didn't pitch poorly, and had a 5-1 lead through 4 1/3 innings. Then he got a little wild, and walked a couple of batters, then gave up a single to make it 5-2. So with runners on 1st and 3rd base, Joe Maddon opts to bring in his mopup pitcher, Andy Sonnanstine. Any Rays fan that actually knows anything about the Rays know that you never want to use Sonnanstine in a high leverage situation. Sure enough Sonnanstine walks the first batter, and the Angels get 3 more runs in the inning to tie the game, and the Rays eventually lost 6-5.
One has to question why Sonnanstine even has a roster spot on the Rays, and why they carry 12 pitchers to begin with, especially since Sonnanstine has only pitched twice in the past 18 games. Then for Joe Maddon to actually use his worst reliever in a high leverage situation with the game on the line, just shows a complete lack of common sense and there was no way to justify it, even among all his graphs and numbers that JoeMa likes to use.
When you have even the loyal Maddon fans asking the question of what did he just do, and even the sabermetric group questioning his management skills for this game, it is clear that Maddon mismanaged this game, and in turn cost the Rays a chance of winning today's game. We won't even start t touch on JoeMa's choice of not pinch hitting for certain players today, as the move to use Sonnanstine was the game breaker.
I encourage everyone to go to twitter, and just use the #rays to find all the talk about the Rays game today. Even the author of the Extra 2% Jonah Keri made a comment (Link Here) on how they should have taken the manager to the common sense room. No where for Maddon to hide from this loss. Trying to be the smartest guy in the room, instead of using common sense, just cost him a win once again.
It was tough enough on Friday night watching the Rays have a 4-1 lead, with their ace pitcher,David Price,on the mound. Price didn't have his best game, and the Rays lost the game 8-5. This was understandable, as it's baseball, and things happen, and the Angels outplayed the Rays on Friday night. Then the Angels hand the Rays a cookie, by not using their ace pitcher, Jered Weaver, supposedly due to illness. The Angels used a rookie pitcher, and the Rays scored 5 runs in the 1st inning to take a 5-0 lead. The Rays countered with a young rookie pitcher of their own, Alex Cobb, who overall didn't pitch poorly, and had a 5-1 lead through 4 1/3 innings. Then he got a little wild, and walked a couple of batters, then gave up a single to make it 5-2. So with runners on 1st and 3rd base, Joe Maddon opts to bring in his mopup pitcher, Andy Sonnanstine. Any Rays fan that actually knows anything about the Rays know that you never want to use Sonnanstine in a high leverage situation. Sure enough Sonnanstine walks the first batter, and the Angels get 3 more runs in the inning to tie the game, and the Rays eventually lost 6-5.
One has to question why Sonnanstine even has a roster spot on the Rays, and why they carry 12 pitchers to begin with, especially since Sonnanstine has only pitched twice in the past 18 games. Then for Joe Maddon to actually use his worst reliever in a high leverage situation with the game on the line, just shows a complete lack of common sense and there was no way to justify it, even among all his graphs and numbers that JoeMa likes to use.
When you have even the loyal Maddon fans asking the question of what did he just do, and even the sabermetric group questioning his management skills for this game, it is clear that Maddon mismanaged this game, and in turn cost the Rays a chance of winning today's game. We won't even start t touch on JoeMa's choice of not pinch hitting for certain players today, as the move to use Sonnanstine was the game breaker.
I encourage everyone to go to twitter, and just use the #rays to find all the talk about the Rays game today. Even the author of the Extra 2% Jonah Keri made a comment (Link Here) on how they should have taken the manager to the common sense room. No where for Maddon to hide from this loss. Trying to be the smartest guy in the room, instead of using common sense, just cost him a win once again.
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