Cruz Control

With the last pitching transaction being Rich Harden sent to the 15 day DL with starter Seth Etherton taking his place, the A's bullpen was constructed as such:

Keiichi Yabu

Seth Etherton

Justin Duchscherer

Juan Cruz

Huston Street

Octavio Dotel

Ricardo Rincon

Tim Harikkala

However, on Monday night, Yabu came in for Saarloos which was a surprise as earlier in the day, there was an article about Yabu making his first start in the Bigs. So that meant that Etherton would be replace Harden in the rotation.

Now going forward to last night(trippy), after the bullpen blew the game, Macha closed the door to his office to quickly gather his thoughts as he explains why his team lost it's tenth game out of eleven. So when he opened up, his first comment was that Dotel came to him and stated that his elbow was in extreme pain and so he was unavaliable. That made it 2 players who were unavailable by injuries, Duke and Dotel, 1 pitcher unavailable due to work in Yabu, and Etherton becoming a starter so the A's were left with Cruz, Rincon, Street, and Harikkala to get the final 12 outs of the game.

Macha's plan was to use Cruz until he could get close enough to Street to close it out. Cruz was able to get through 2 shaky innings until he got to the 8th when he was allowed to hit Jason Varitek, walk Bill Mueller, and walk Jay Payton. So now you have to be wondering, why didn't Macha replace Rincon after he hit Varitek? Well, Macha's explanation was since Bellhorn is worse as a right-handed batter, then a left-hander, that was the best opportunity to bring in Rincon.

Huh? It's a good idea to leave a guy, who before this game had been relegated to mop-up work, in to pitch for another inning and continue to let him pitch even after he hits a batter and walks two more? All of this with none out. So if one compares Bellhorn and Mueller's stats versus left-handers, we can understand Macha's "idea:"

	AB	H	2B	BB	K	AVG	OBP	SLG
Mueller	28	8	3	3	6	.286	.355	.393
Bellhorn	39	8	5	9	20	.205	.354	.333

In eleven fewer AB's, Mueller has a better avg but the same OBP and a higher slg percentage. So perhaps it was best to leave Cruz in there for one more batter. If you were to place anyone else in there, say Rincon, it would hurt regardless of the outcome because you would have to face at least 1 more batter and that would be Jay Payton. At that point, you could bring out Street for a 4 out save but then he may not be available if you need him the next day.

Before we delve into that issue, let's continue on with the way the inning unfolded. So now you have Payton at the plate and Cruz is still in the game; at this point if you are Ken Macha, you must be proactive in your ability to control the inning. If you leave Cruz out there, you are playing to the Red Sox advantage as Cruz is proving to be ineffective. So the best option would be to bring in Harikkala to to face Jay Payton; why you ask? Harikkala is a righty and as I will focus on in a soon-to-be-blogged post, he is a righty-specialist. All that matters now is that you know Payton is a righty, Harikkala is a righty, and that there is only one more OF on the bench and it's lefty Trot Nixon.

Now, the Boston manager, Tito Francona, has to make a decision on whether to leave Payton in the game to face the right-hander or to bring in Nixon; now Macha has backed Tito in a corner where he has to make the move as the inning is no-longer played on his terms. And in this situation, Macha has the upper-hand as Payton v. Harikkala is a smart move or Nixon v. Rincon is another move. As you can see from what Francona did, he left Bellhorn in the game to face Rincon solely based on the left-right matchup and not on the splits.

Had we lost the game in this manner, I would not have been made with Macha at all; he would have tried to use the rest of his bullpen in getting the final 6 outs of the ballgame and in my scenario, he would not have had to use Street until he was close enough to 4. But in the final result, he had to use Street anyways in an act of desperation in keeping the game close for his team to possibly win.

Ultimately, the problem with Macha is that he tries to squeeze water from rocks in the sense that he will ride the hot hand or he will try to get the most out of a reliever eventually setting them up for failure. While Macha may not have had the best of relieving corps possible, he had to make due which he did not. And it was shameful that he wasn't fired soon afterwards; If I failed to stop an accident from happening three times I know I would be. The boy from Pittsburgh should be so lucky...