Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Advice to the Indians
Here is my free advice to Eric Wedge, a former catcher in the Red Sox system and now the manager of the Indians: I do not care if first base is open. I do not care if you have to face David Ortiz. It does not matter how Manny has started the season: You do not intentionally walk anyone in order to face Manny Ramirez. That is never a favorable matchup. Manny makes silly men pay. Silly men paid big tonight.
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3 comments:
You would be better off advising him not to have half of his relief pitching get hurt in the first ten days of the season. Apparently the Indians are on the every other year plan for their relievers sucking, so that's nice.
The Indians certainly have bullpen issues, though at least some of those should settle down once the starters stretch out and are more likely to go deeper into games. But I don't care if you have Bob Feller in his prime -- you don't intentionally walk in order to face Manny Ramirez with the game on the line.
Or, put it another way -- I hope that every manager makes that choice this season. The Red Sox will win a lot of games if they do. That goes double now that Manny has shaken his April slump and is poised to go on one of those 1.500 OPS, 12 home runs in 8 games sort of tears.
dcat
That is nonsense and you know it. You and the rest of Red Sox nation have been giving Ortiz virtual bjs for being the greatest clutch hitter of all time, and now you're advocating pitching to him with a right-handed pitcher with first base open late in a tied game after he hit a home run off the Indians best lefty reliever the last time he was up?
The reason the injuries to the pen matter is because that would have been a perfect situation for sidearm righty Matt Miller to come in against Manny, but Miller is gone for the year with an elbow injury.
Wedge did the right thing and Manny was still good enough to get the homerun. If he hadn't walked Ortiz, and Big Papi hit the homer instead, everyone would be crowing about why Wedge pitched to him. And they would be right. You are wrong.
But it sure is a nice luxury to have two players as deadly at the plate as those two guys. The Indians used to have that, and could again if their owner wasn't so cheap.
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