So whaddya think of Brian Bass now?

OK, that’s a rhetorical question. So, like, don’t answer it.

I’m as irked by Tuesday’s painful defeat as I was accepting of Monday’s 1-0 thriller.

I’m more of a Gardenhire guy than many people, but the Twins didn’t commit to much of anything in the late innings last night — and that bothers me. The bullpen management was tentative in the eighth and in the ninth the Twins violated the baseball axiom of playing for a win on the road (not a tie) after Nick Punto led off the inning with a double, capping an incredible battle with Jonathan Papelbon.

Here’s my deal: If Gardy’s not going to use Joe Nathan in the eighth inning, then he needs to be more aggressive about handling his late-game match-ups, especially when he has a well-rested bullpen at his call.

What does that mean here? Well, if he’s going to yank Reyes after the Jacoby Ellsbury double to lead off the eighth (the right call), then he should have been thinking match-ups and/or quick hooks for the rest of the inning, too.

That could have played out by making use of lefty Craig Breslow to face left-batting JD Drew — after using Guerrier/Crain/Bass against Dustin Pedroia — and then bringing in another of the righties to face the Ramirez/Lowell/Youkilis threesome.

If Gardy’s not going to go batter-by-batter, then you’ve gotta pull Guerrier for Crain after the Ramirez home run or, for darn sure, after the Youkilis double. (How much more did Guerrier have to do to show that he didn’t have it last night?) By then, switch-hitting Coco Crisp and light-hitting Alex Cora were the only remaining players on the Boston bench. I’d much rather have Crain face Cash than Breslow (probably) face Crisp, but I’d prefer either of those match-ups to a gasping Guerrier staying on the mound.

When you have a 12-man pitching staff and you’re playing a big game after a tough loss, it doesn’t seem out of line to expect the manager of the scrappy visiting team to manage his butt off. Guerrier has come through enough times that he’s not going to be shaken by Gardy going out in mid-rally and saying, “Gimme the ball, buddy. It’s just not there tonight.”

I remember games in 2006 when Gardy maneuvered his a$$ off to get the best match-ups, sometimes as early as the fifth or sixth inning. You can go to baseball-reference.com and scroll through box scores from that season to find ‘em. Keeping Guerrier in under the circumstances seemed awfully passive by comparison.

By the way, I’m intentionally not addressing the issue of using Nathan in the eighth — bringing him in to face Ramirez with one out, one runner on and a two-run lead. My opinion is that Nathan should almost invariably be saved for the ninth inning and that exceptions — for the good of his season-long effectiveness — should be few and far between.

If I’m Gardy, last night would have been one of those few-and-far betweens.

(Well, I guess I just addressed the issue.)

If the aggressive managing failed, I would have rather listened to Gardy say that he tried just about everything to protect the lead in a big game against a tough team than hear him say that Guerrier threw “terrible” pitches to Ramirez and Cash In contrast, I liked the move that Terry Francona, the Boston manager, made when he sent up pinch-hitter Sean Casey in the bottom of the seventh — with the specific intent of getting Nick Blackburn, the Twins starter, out of the game. “We wanted to kind of force the issue,” he said in JoeC’s story.

Then, in the ninth, after Punto somehow managed to crank that bloop double off Papelbon, I would have been looking to win. That would have meant Span swinging away instead of bunting. If he doesn’t come through, either with a hit or finding some other way to advance the runner, I’m just as good with Kubel and Casilla taking their hacks with Punto on second.

I mean, if the Twins had tied the score, it wasn’t like Nathan was coming in for the bottom of the ninth — based on conventional wisdom and the way Gardy’s used him.

So half measures and Guerrier’s lack of effectiveness led to the most painful loss of the season.

It’s a good time for a day game. Before too long, we’ll have a whole new set of things to chew through.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.