|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Tale of two managers While Baker blundered, Torre worked his magic again
Dusty Baker has a rested bullpen today. What's that? Oh, right. The Giants are home. No game today. Baker is the fine manager of the San Francisco Giants. He is one of the best in the business, a man whose fierce loyalty and belief in his players is rewarded virtually without exception by their honest, consistent effort. His greatest asset, according to executives and scouts, has not been how he runs a game. That became abundantly clear in the Giants' failed Division Series encounter with the New York Mets. Baker had a rough time of it. He pulled a (take your pick) Bonds, Clemens, Norman or Van de Velde. By now you're well versed in what happened. Baker watched his team lose Game 2 of the NLDS by one run without ever calling on his best (and arguably the league's best) relief pitcher, Robb Nen. It is standard operating procedure to use your closer in a tie game at home in extra innings. After all, you never have to protect a lead. Preserving a tie is the aim. Baker believes in Felix Rodriguez. Fine. Felix Rodriguez is not Robb Nen. Baker didn't want to double switch his shortstop or catcher out of the game. He didn't want to hit for Nen after one inning. He was playing for a 13-inning game. All of that might be fine for June baseball. October baseball is an entirely different beast. You just tied the game with a shocking three-run homer. You must keep your foot on the throat of the Mets. You must seize the game. Baker let it pass. He lost with Rodriguez on the mound and Nen in the bullpen. He saved up for a 13th inning that never happened. Hey, at least with the go-ahead run on second base? Can we get Nen in the game there, please? Far worse was Baker's decision to allow pitcher Mark Gardner to bat with the bases loaded in the fifth inning of Game 4, trailing 2-0 to a guy, Bobby J. Jones, who had allowed one hit. Baker is very loyal to Gardner. Gardner is, at best, his No. 5 starter. If Baker had sent a left-hander to bat for Gardner, Mets manager Bobby Valentine might well have brought in lefty Glendon Rusch, who was throwing in the pen. And then Jones wouldn't have thrown a complete-game one-hitter. But that's not even the most important element. What matters is trying to win what could be your last game of the year. That, folks, is called a sense of urgency. You are down to your last game of the year and you cannot let pass what is a rare scoring opportunity. But Baker was loyal to his guys, believing they would break through against Jones at any moment. Baker didn't have anybody throwing in his bullpen when Gardner hit. Not enough time to get someone up? Shame on you, then, for not anticipating the pitcher's spot coming up. Bullpen's short? Don't want to get someone warmed and not use him? One word: winter. It is very long. There are no games. Rest is plentiful. Gardner ended the inning. Gardner, bless his little No. 5 starter's arm, didn't even make it out of the next inning. The Giants were done. For good. "You're not examining me, you're dissecting me,'' Baker was quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle as saying to some reporters after the game. "I'm hearing from people who know less than me about what I've done. Myself? No problem. I'm going to live with me. I'm not gonna let other people control my self-esteem.''
Here's the problem with how Baker managed that series: he went with what worked for him during the season. His loyalty is his greatest asset. That is devalued in October, especially in a best-of-five series and in an elimination game, when windows of opportunity slam shut quickly and with heavy consequence. Yankees manager Joe Torre is the greatest postseason manager of this generation, and one of the best ever. His postseason record entering the ALCS is 38-12. Perfect? Of course not. But he gets how it works in October. Here's a story Torre likes to tell about how he got it. It was the 1996 Division Series and pitcher Kenny Rogers was scuffling against the Rangers. It was only the second inning. ``Better get somebody up,'' Don Zimmer, Torre's bench coach, told him. Torre looked at Zimmer oddly. "What?'' he said. "It's only the second inning.'' "This is the playoffs,'' Zimmer said. "You don't have time to mess around.'' Said Torre recently, "I learned. You only have to tell me once. I learned every game is precious in the postseason and that's how you have to treat it.'' Zimmer is a tremendous resource for Torre. Baker has Ron Wotus, a man who never has managed in the big leagues but is considered managerial material someday. How strong of a presence is Wotus? Would he tell Baker, "Better pinch-hit here"? Is he constantly in Baker's ear, as Zimmer is with Torre? Torre engenders the same loyalty from his players as Baker does from his. But look what Torre did with Chuck Knoblauch in the ALDS: he benched him and refused to let him play in the field. Torre supported Knoblauch through his throwing woes during the season, but he knows he cannot count on Knoblauch turning a key double play in the postseason. That can make the difference between a loss and a win, advancing or going home. So Luis Sojo played second base. After two decent days at the plate, Sojo batted second in Game 3 against the A's. Paul O'Neill, a fixture in the third spot in the Yankees' batting order, was dropped to sixth after a bad day (that followed a bad month). Check out the Yankees' elimination-game clincher: Mike Stanton, a set-up man, was in the game in the fourth inning. (Kudos to Oakland's Art Howe, too: He got one of his best set-up men, Jeff Tam, into the game in the first inning.) Torre told Orlando Hernandez the night before Game 5, "I might need you tomorrow.'' In the fifth inning he told Sojo, "Go tell Duque to put his spikes on.'' Hernandez rushed back to the clubhouse, put his spikes on and, an inning later, was warming up in the bullpen. Torre was ready to have Mariano Rivera begin warming up before the start of the eighth inning. Jeff Nelson was an option for another out or two. But Hernandez told Torre he felt good. "I liked the way he looked,'' Torre said. So he put him in the game to start the eighth -- "to save a few outs for Mo [Rivera]'' Torre said. Hernandez, pitching on one day of rest after throwing 130 pitches in Game 3, threw gas: 93 mph. He got the Yankees one out closer to Rivera, who nailed down the final five. Rivera had saved Hernandez's win on Friday by pitching two innings, a rarity in these days of spoiled closers. "I did it because the middle of their order was up,'' said Torre about his decision to have Rivera start the eighth in Game 3. "To me, that's where the save was.'' The Yankees faced the possibility of three straight games without an off day. Was he worried that the two innings might cut down on Rivera's availability? "Nope,'' Torre said, "because this is the only game I can win right now. This is the one I'm trying to win, not the next one. I can't worry about that.'' That's where Torre smartly diverts from Baker. He manages October with a sense of calculated urgency. He seizes opportunity. Sources familiar with the Giants organization say Baker enjoys his well-insulated position in San Francisco. He is a popular figure, as well he should be. The Bay Area media, as expertly observed by esteemed Chronicle writer Bruce Jenkins, are not given to intense criticism. The Chronicle edition I saw (with quotes) after the non-Nen game did not mention Robb Nen's name anywhere in the sports section. By contrast, Valentine must defend and explain on a daily basis in August to a near-Division Series-sized media crowd how and why he divides at-bats among the mostly pedestrian outfielders Benny Agbayani, Darryl Hamilton, Jay Payton and Derek Bell. Every move is questioned, sometimes for baseless reasons. It is what managers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and perhaps a few other places -- San Francisco not included -- must accept as part of the job. How would Baker react under that day-to-day inquisition? In October, there are no free passes. Then Baker works under the microscope of the national media. He is not being second-guessed here -- how many people out there were screaming at their TV sets when Gardner came to bat? One of the many beauties of baseball is that it opens so many paths of strategy. If we grant papal infallibility to a manager strictly on the basis of his uniform we cut off those paths of interest that connect fans to the game. Some moves are so blatantly bizarre, though, that they stick with managers --- even great managers like Baker. Tommy Lasorda pitching to Jack Clark with first base open in 1985. Bobby Cox bringing in a left-handed starter, Charlie Leibrandt, out of the bullpen to pitch to Kirby Puckett, a .406 hitter against lefties, to start the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Though his moves were not as devastating as those examples, this Division Series will stay with Baker. And then there is this: Can we wait for the guy to win a postseason series before we place him among the ranks of Torre, Cox and Tony LaRussa? A player hits some balls hard for outs and some soft for hits, but at the end of the day he is what his batting average says. A manager wears his won-lost record like an ID badge. Baker's bottom line: 1-6 in the postseason, including four losses in his team's last at-bat.
Mr. October?Some numbers to appreciate about Torre's Yankees in the postseason heading into the ALCS:
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers the baseball beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his mailbag.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
