September baseball can often feel like October playoffs. Monday night, Mike Scioscia managed his squad like it was the last game of the World Series.
On the cusp of what could be the most important week of the season for his Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Scioscia took over the one-game make-up contest against the New York Yankees as if his whole season was riding on it.
He pinch ran, pinch hit, and defensively substituted players all over the field. In every way, Scioscia outfoxed and out-managed his counterpart in the Yankee dugout.
But the Angels still fell short, in spite of the efforts of both managers.
Scioscia did his best to keep the Halos in the game, while New York skipper Joe Girardi did just the opposite.
Girardi made two moves during the course of the eighth inning that, on the surface, might have looked good, but ultimately almost cost the Yankees the game.
First, in the top of the inning and with the Yankees up 3-2, he brought in Phil Hughes to preserve the one-run lead.
Now, Hughes has a good year—posting a 3.18 with 86 strikeouts and only 27 walks in 79 1/3 innings—but this was not the time to use him.
Phil Coke worked a skillful two-thirds of an inning prior to the eighth, only throwing 12 pitches and striking out one. His ERA is nearly two runs higher than Hughes', but the fact is he was dealing.
Instead of of leaving Coke in, however, Girardi brought in his young hurler, who promptly gave up two hits and a walk to load the bases with nobody out and the Angels' best RBI man in Kendry Morales at the plate.
The Angels only squeaked out one run in the inning, but we'll get to that later.
In the bottom of the eighth, with two men on and one out with the score now tied, Girardi put a pinch runner on second in place of first baseman Mark Teixeira.
Let's recap:
The game is tied, and Teixeira—maybe the leading candidate for AL MVP, and a dominant hitter who was only a home run away from the cycle—is already in scoring position with less than two outs.
Not to mention, Tex has one of the finest gloves in the league at first base.
Good defense would seem to be important late in such a close game. But not to Girardi.
Despite having one of the most potent lineups in all of baseball, he decided to take a chance by pulling his best all-around player in the eighth inning of a tie game to try and manufacture a run.
Only the poor defensive play of Angels catcher Mike Napoli could have overshadowed Girardi's hasty mistake.
Why he would manage the game in such a way is beyond understanding. The Yankees are under no threat from any other team, and their playoff berth is all but clinched at this point.
All they have to do is stay calm, play their game, and get the starters some rest before October.
Two substitutions. Two potentially game-changing errors in judgment.
And unfortunately, two failures by the Angels.
Unlike Girardi and the Yankees, Scioscia is fighting for his playoff life, and with a slumping offense to boot.
For the 10th time in 13 September contests, the Angels failed to score more than three runs in a game, despite being the beneficiaries of excellent starting pitching—this time from Jered Weaver.
Morales's bat has finally cooled off after a blazing August, Napoli can't buy a hit, and Bobby Abreu continues to disappoint in key situations with men on base.
This after Abreu and the Angels lead the league—on an individual and a team basis—in batting average with runners in scoring position all year.
So it is easy to see why Scioscia would go out on a limb and make the substitutions that he did.
Vladimir Guerrero had a great game at the plate, going 3-for-4 with a home run, but his knees aren't what they used to be, making him a liability on first base late in a close game.
Second-string catcher Jeff Mathis is having a horrendous year at the plate, hitting just .210 without much power. Gary Matthews, Jr. has been less than impressive as well, but despite hitting .241 for the season, he's come through big in key situations.
Swapping Matthews for Mathis was sound strategy, especially considering the Angels had a powerful replacement for Mathis in Napoli waiting on the bench.
Scioscia's highly tuned baseball senses told him these were the right moves to make at the time, and he answered the question of how the Angels would approach this upcoming road trip.
After the one-game excursion to New York, the team moves on to Boston for three, Texas for three, and then returns home to face the Yankees for three.
This week will be absolutely critical to the Angels' postseason hopes, and Scioscia knows it. All week, he's been fielding questions about the trip, dodging and ducking and giving his usual politic responses.
But on Monday night, he showed that he'll do whatever he must to put his team in a position to win.
The problem is, the manager can only do so much.
Girardi made ill-advised changes late in the game that should have cost his team their league-leading 93rd win.
Instead, the Yankees came through, as all good teams do, and came away with a tense and uneasy victory.
Scioscia, meanwhile, made all the right moves to give the Angels their best possible shot at winning. But this offensive slump has silenced the bats this month, and they failed once again to utter more than a whisper.
Thanks, in part, to the moves of both managers, the Angels found themselves with a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the eighth inning, and they still couldn't find a way to execute.
Instead, Morales—exactly who you'd want up in that situation—grounded into a double play. The tying run came in to score, but that is hardly what the Angels were looking for.
In the bottom of that inning, Girardi sent his pinch runner Brett Gardner out to replace Teixeira.
He immediately tried to steal third, and would have been thrown out by two steps had it not been for the increasingly poor defense of Napoli, who came in to replace the weak bat of Mathis.
Once again, Scioscia does what he can to give the Angels the best shot for a win, and the players come up short.
It is encouraging to see Scioscia manage this way heading into the toughest stretch of the season. He looked for opportunities to score and win at every turn, and he wasn't afraid to do what it took to jump-start this failing offense.
But the Angels must start taking advantage of situations and swinging better if they hope to get through this week in good standing in the AL West division.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
- Login to post comments