Rob Neyer wonders why Joe Girardi didn’t pinch hit for Raul Ibanez with a left-hander, Phil Coke, on the mound Tuesday night.
So Girardi had a choice: Raúl Ibañez and his massive platoon splits against a left-handed pitcher with big platoon splits, or switch-hitter Nick Swisher against a right-handed pitcher. Swisher, in his career, hasn’t been great against right-handed pitchers but he’s been good, with an 820 OPS.
Essentially, Joe Girardi gave up somewhere between 200 and 250 points of OPS when he chose Raúl Ibañez over Nick Swisher. Unless you believe that Swisher really can’t hit in October, and Ibañez is still covered with a layer of that magical pixie dust.
I’ll postulate the following. Joe did take a question about this non-move, but it wasn’t the highlight of the press conference. If Joe had pinch hit for Ibanez, however, and whoever ended up at the plate made an out, the entire press conference would be Joe answering variations of, “How could you pinch hit for a hot player with a cold one?”
Many years ago, when I was at ESPN, I asked two former players about the success of left-handed batters against Tom Glavine. One was Ray Knight, the other was Greg Olson, the catcher. Greg had caught Glavine with Atlanta. Both gave the exact same answer. They described Glavine as throwing a “dead fish,” a pitch that moved away from righties but into the wheel house of lefties. (I asked this question probably a year apart, and they had not hear the other’s answer.) I then asked each of then why managers didn’t bat more lefties against Glavine? At the time, Tom was seeing about 80% right-handed batters. Again, I got the same answer for both. They each said the manager didn’t want to explain to the press why he had so many lefties in the lineup if the team lost.
So in other words, managers knew that batting lefties against Glavine was a good idea. They knew this was a real result of the way Glavine pitched, not just statistical noise. They didn’t do it, however, because they didn’t want to deal with the fallout if they lost.
Joe had enough to deal with the last few days, with the death of his father and all the gossip about A-Rod, not to mention his offense disappearing. I’m guessing he didn’t want to spend a half hour after a loss talking about clutch hitting.
If that was really Girardi’s reasoning and he went through it consciously, then he should be fired. The team had a chance to win a playoff game, and he reduced their chance because he didn’t want to have to explain things to the press???
Screw that.
I think the pixie dust explanation is the right one. Girardi isn’t an idiot (really!), but like a lot of ex-players he just can’t quite believe that getting red hot isn’t a hugely important phenomenon.
Are you implying that managers rather lose conventionally and not be bothered by the press than win a game?
Not to marginalize Joe’s dad dying but he died many years ago from alzheimer’s. All that happened was his body finally gave out.
I’m sure his death was not nor has been a factor for him.
Explaining a standard platoon advantage move shouldn’t be a problem–the Glavine situation would have involved going against the standard platoon scenario, and as such might be beyond the typical Knight of the Keyboard to comprehend. Modern rosters are built around using normal platoon edges (although the creeping growth of pitching staffs is making it increasingly harder to do it on the offensive side–they really ought to cap pitching staffs at 10 or 11, or increase roster size: giving teams the option of signing relatively cheap platoon players for position play would give low salary teams another option for being competitive).
max g. » That’s what two ballplayers told me, when it came to Tom Glavine, so they believe it happens.