They matter, but not nearly as much as wins and losses. The Sox have 3 more wins than any other team in MLB. So me, I give this manager the benefit of the doubt on practically any decision he makes. Plus he has more information and more MLB experience than everyone on talksox combined. On pitching moves he can even check with both his pitching coach and his bench coach, both of whom also have more information and experience than any of us.
I harbor a special resentment toward Kimbrel because more and more he looks to me like a prima donna. Nobody on base when he goes in. No 2 inning saves. No 4 run leads (and therefore no save). Rested. This would make more sense if the Sox weren't paying him $210K/inning and if Kelly, Velazquez, and Barnes weren't almost as good according to WAR ratings.
You and I simply disagree on what constitutes a mistake. I think almost all in game decisions are judgment calls and a trust his judgment and knowledge and information available more than yours or that of anyone on talksox. When Kelly screwed up in game 1 of the season, I blamed that on Kelly, not Cora. Ditto last night--Kimbrel should have gotten 3 outs on maybe 15 pitches because the Sox are paying him $210K/inning (based on 124 innings and $26M in 2016/17). Plus, of course, we now know for a fact we did not need him today.
Last edited by Maxbialystock; 06-13-2018 at 10:14 PM.
Meh. He gets 40% in large part because he only faces those guys once in a game. Oh, and he gets paid $210K/inning to do that. Last year Sale got paid $58K/inning to face hitters multiple times.
Kimbrel is a darn good closer and I'm glad we have him. But his WAR ain't that much better than 3 other relievers on the same thing, and it frosts me that there are more and more restrictions on when and how Kimbrel can be used. No 2 inning saves. No one on base when he goes in. Preferably no 4 run leads. In fact, preferably only save opportunities of 1 inning. For $13M/year?
First of all, I trust the manager's judgment more than my own for the reasons that you mentioned. That doesn't change the fact that they have the occasional brainfart and it doesn't take an insider with reams of data to spot those mistakes.
I didn't argue with you about last night. There hasn't been an issue with Kimbrel getting too much work lately and Cora has no way of knowing if a guy will be sharp when he comes into the game. Also, there was plenty of breathing room for Kimbrel even if he wasn't sharp. The problem with Kelly game was that it was obvious that he was blowing up and there wasn't a comfortable lead. He gets paid to know when the guy doesn't have it. He blew that one -- no ifs, but or whats. Of course Kelly is the performer and gets the stain on his record, but no pitcher walks off the mound when they don't have it unless the manager comes to get him. A managers most crucial in game decision is to know when he needs to make a pitching change.
I don't meh about a guy who is one of the best at what he does and also one of the best of all time. Maybe closers are overvalued in today's game, but that is the fault of the owners. There is a need to have a big hammer in the pen to lock down games, and Kimbrel is one of the best at it.
i agree with you 100%. it seems i am the only one posting the errors as i see them and that has only been..what? maybe 6 or 7 instances that i have pointed out in all the games played so far. and with many of them we still had a positive outcome (W) so it is easy to sweep them under the proverbial rug.
other names i have posted under: none
The way I see it, a lot of times a manager has to make a decision where there are arguments for a move and arguments against a move. Such as using Kimbrel in that second game. I suspect if you ran a poll on that decision here it would come in with about 55% supporting it and 45% opposing it or something like that. It's fun for us to debate these things. But it's the manager who has to make the actual decision and live with the results.
Very well said.
I try to avoid criticizing individual in-game decisions made by a manager. Sure, they must make mistakes, but I'm not even sure the ones they make are the ones we notice or call out, or that one's we pretty much all agree were mistakes might not really be ones, but for the hindsight fact that the choice failed.
Managers have reasons for doing things that we just don't know about. I'm fine with people debating the choices, but I, personally, prefer to debate managing philosophies in general- like the alternating lefty-righty line-up thing (I'm against it, unless both hitters are equal), where to slot your best batter, how often and when should you rest players, should you ever bench "the hot hand?", and much more.
Depends on how you're defining a mistake. Sure, Cora has tried tons of things that didn't work perfectly, but if it was the right thing to try at the time, how is that a mistake?
Managers stack the odds and roll the dice. If the dice come up against them, but they did everything they needed to to prevent this, hard to call that a mistake. At the very least I can't think of anything Cora's done so far this year that stacked the odds against his team, even if, again, he did try some things that didn't work (which every manager will have a few of those moments in any given year)
If history tells us anything, the path to redeption for any bad baseball team is marked with a deep rotation of durable starters, a world class defense in both infield and outfield, a lineup that can generate runs in more than one way, a bullpen that won't steal defeat from the jaws of victory, and a top end catcher to hold the whole package together. These are the conditions by which victory is achieved, anything that does not accomplish these objectives is a waste of resources.