Tony La Russa Must Go<P>
You Think The NLCS Was Bad, Try Being a Cardinals Fan For The Past Five Years
And it restoked my anti-Tony La Russa fires. In last night's game, FOX announcers Tim McCarver and Joe Buck spent most of their time second-guessing La Russa, and then second-guessing the many second-guessers, and so forth. McCarver is an old-school baseball guy, and so is La Russa, so Tony could've pulled Bob Uecker from the stands to pinch-hit for Jim Edmonds and McCarver would have found a way to vehemently defend the move. Joe Buck admirably played a mellow devil's advocate, because Joe Buck is the man.
McCarver played by and got used to a whole different set of maxims and attitudes than baseball is played by now, as did La Russa, and both men will pig-headedly defend these maxims to the death, because they're too narrow-minded to adapt.
Example 1: On Sunday, Darryl Kile started on three days' rest. In McCarver's time, and when La Russa started managing in 1979, this would've been done without a second thought. Bob Gibson could start five days in a row, if needed, and still strike out 25 Tigers per game without batting his mean-looking eyes. Nowadays, it's a big no-no, and for good reason. Joe Buck pulled out no end of statistics that prove with modern pitchers on three days rest come gaudy ERAs.
Are modern pitchers wimpier than those of the past? I don't think so; what people forget about are the zillions of pitchers of the past who were superb for a very short period of time before their arms blew out from overuse. It got to a breaking point in the '80s, when pitchers were throwing so hard and thus torching their arms at such a rapid rate that even old-school baseball men started to notice a correlation. Thank the gods of strict pitch counts and strict five-man rotations for saving our young pitchers from certain ruin.
And the McCarvers and La Russas of the world may acknowledge the new reality, and may use it as a factor in their decisions, but they'll never give it the importance it deserves. Because, see, in their day, things were different, and they can't get past that.
The only real defense for putting Kile in Game 4 and Pat Hentgen in Game 5, instead of the other way around, was that La Russa wanted to possibly have Kile ready for a Game 7. Hold on there, partner. You have to win this game first. You're overthinking things.
Example 2: That was just one of many ways that La Russa outsmarts himself. This was also on display in his handling of Mark McGwire. In the eighth inning of Sunday's game, down by four, two outs, two men on, lefty John Franco pitching, La Russa pinch hit for J.D. Drew with Craig Paquette while Mark McGwire on deck. He was counting on Paquette to get on, and then have McGwire do his thing.
Hold on there, partner. When you're in the eighth inning of a crucial game and down by four runs with two out, can you afford to even look in Craig Paquette's direction? Why would anyone pick Paquette over Drew anyway? Has it been lost on La Russa that Drew is a terrific hitter?
Maybe he was saving McGwire for the game-winner, but you've got to ensure you'll get the get-back-into-the-gamer first, and you do that by putting in Mark McGwire and his .500+ OBP this season against lefties. Of course, Paquette lived up to his sub-.300 OBP against lefties and made an out, because that's what Craig Paquette does best.
La Russa reminds me of an early-'90s "Simpsons" episode in which Mr. Burns manages a company baseball team including ringers Wade Boggs, Ken Griffey Jr., Don Mattingly, etc. After he hits nine home runs in nine at-bats, Burns lifts Strawberry for Homer, because Strawberry and the pitcher are both left-handed. "It's called playing the percentages," says Mr. Burns. "It's what smart managers do to win ballgames."
In short, La Russa is overthinking again. I could even understand pullng this stuff in a regular-season game, but this is the postseason, for crying out loud. When you're hanging by your fingertips from the peak of Mount Everest, you don't keep a few fingertips in reserve for next time. It's all really much simpler than La Russa's making out to be.
Knowing La Russa, though, there's some lame reason for all of this, like Paquette hitting 4-for-10 against Franco in his career or something. La Russa has all of these obscure numbers memorized, and it's almost never worthwhile. Again, it's a symptom of overthinking things so much that the obvious gets forgotten.
Whenever you hear those types of numbers, do me a favor and ignore them. The first thing that everyone should learn about the proper use of statistics is a concept called "sample size." That is, a sample size has to be large enough for the statistics to mean anything. Ideally, you use a formula on statistics to discover whether it is significant or not, but I can tell you right now that 10 at-bats is not a significant sample size. Neither is twenty. I don't care if Craig Paquette went 10-for-20 against Franco in his career and McGwire went 0-for-20. Both are meaningless statistics, because they don't cover enough at-bats. The element of luck is too much of a factor.
At any rate, it's all kind of moot, because the way the Cardinals were playing, they deserved to lose. And all of these individual moves are debatable -- I think they were dumb, but there are mitigating factors. I recognize that. The greater issue is that La Russa is no longer a good manager, and while his performance in this NLCS only hints at it, his entire performance with the Cardinals proves it.
The Real Reasons That Tony La Russa Stinks
Get comfortable, this is going to take a while.
Firstly, La Russa has always shown an unwarranted amount of affection for his substitute players. Look at the Cardinals' lineup and you'll undoubtedly be shocked to discover that Paquette, a man who has never, in his long career, shown any hint of ability to be anything besides a 25th man, managed to garner 384 at-bats. In those at-bats he managed a .294 OBP and a .245 average.
Granted, that was partially because he was filling in for injuries. But it's also because La Russa likes to start him every so often to take advantage of La Russa's book of invisibly minute percentages based on insignificant sample sizes.
Shawon Dunston also got much more paying time than his .278 OBP warranted. And keep in mind that these stats were compiled in situations where La Russa was playing the percentages (or at least his set of imaginary percentages). Just think if these guys played in less supposedly favorable situations percentage-wise.
This is Point 1 in the La Russa Intractable Strategy. His entire managerial strategy is so set in stone that general managers have to shape their teams specifically to fit his narrow mind. La Russa likes to play all the lefty-righty games, starting different players depending on who's pitching.
This is a great idea if your bench players are ever worth starting. But when your bench players are Craig Paquette, a washed-up Shawon Dunston, Thomas Howard (.211, .255 OBP, .391 SLG), Placido Polanco (don't be fooled by that .317 BA -- his OBP was only .347 and his SLG was .418), etc., then you have to make sure your stunning group of starting players, including the brilliant but underused J.D. Drew, gets in as much as possible.
My theory is that La Russa puts so much stock, as do most baseball announcers, in the "little things" that they forget the big things. The little things include whatever extra steps Craig Paquette is able to make on the basepaths because he's been in the majors so long. The big things include the fact that J.D. Drew has an unbelievable raw ability and Paquette does not. The big things aren't called "big" for nothing.
But more important than this is the fact that La Russa has never shown any ability to manage a starting staff. When he's had success he's been lucky enough to come across a few of that rare commodity, the workhorse starter. When he fails it's because he treats a bunch of non-workhorses like workhorses and throws up his hands with wonder when they break down. He has no apparent ability to distinguish who needs lots of rest and who doesn't, and not even an apparent awareness that such differences exist. This is Point 2 in the La Russa Intractable Strategy.
Let's go back a bit to explain this one. When La Russa won in the late '80s with the A's, he won with older workhorses Bob Welch and Dave Stewart. La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan have always been able to revitalize older pitchers like this and turn them into winners.
When the duo started with the Cardinals in 1996, they had on the farm the foundation for a superb pitching staff for years to come. Their names were Alan Benes and Matt Morris, and their potential was unlimited -- that is, until La Russa got to them.
See, the fact is that almost no pitcher in recent history has been able to have a long career after being heavily used as a youngster and a rookie. Especially power pitchers. Look at the greats: At the age of 23, Roger Clemens had eased into the majors, with 133 innings in 1984 and 98 in 1985. Nolan Ryan took until age 25, in 1972, to log more than 152 innings in a season.
On the other side of the fence are Bret Saberhagen and Dwight Gooden. Saberhagen had 235 innings at the age of 21 in 1985. Gooden was 19 in his rookie year, 1984, when he pitched 218 innings. Now they're oft-injured shells of their former greatness, but if you had asked someone in the mid-'80s what their Hall of Fame chances were, there would be no question where they were headed.
Granted, no one could have predicted that Morris and Benes and would "Saberhagen it" so quickly, but it was definitely in the cards (again, no pun intended -- darned pun-friendly Cardinals). Morris pitched 217 innings in his rookie year of 1997. He was 22 at the time, a power pitcher, and if he had been eased into the majors like Clemens and Ryan, his arm wouldn't have blown out the very next year.
Same deal with Alan Benes. In his rookie year he was 24, which you'd think is old enough to log the 191 innings that he pitched. But keep in mind that minor league schedules are short, and college schedules are shorter, and nothing can prepare a pitcher for the wear and tear of a grueling major league season except the majors itself. Benes was just young enough to get his arm subtly damaged from overuse, and it took him a few more years than Morris to fall into Tommy John surgery.
More important than inning totals, though, are pitch counts in individual games. What killed these youngsters was really that La Russa left them in so long you'd think that he mistook them for a grizzled old Dave Stewart.
So the Cardinals suffered three years of atrocious pitching while Mark McGwire smashed home runs. Finally, in 2000, management realized was that the only way La Russa could win is with a bunch of 30-year-olds who can take abuse, so they brought in Andy Benes, Kile and Hentgen. Hentgen himself is a Dwight Gooden-esque victim of overuse, and proved it this season by putting in a mediocre performance in which he got terribly tired as the season wore on.
But it worked, basically -- the Cardinals' brain trust bent to La Russa's narrow needs. La Russa went on to put so little thought into his starters that it was almost farcical -- they used only six starters all year, only using the sixth because Andy Benes went down.
But every time 20-year-old phenom Rick Ankiel took the mound this year, I cringed. He fits the profile of a La Russa casualty to a T -- brilliant power pitcher, extremely young (20 when the season started), uses way too many pitches to get through batters.
Thankfully, someone had his best interests in mind, namely his usually-detestable agent, Scott Boras. Early on, once Ankiel started logging more than 100 pitches per start, Boras stepped in and reminded the Cardinals that he had an agreement before the season started that Ankiel would be held to a strict pitch count, lest he face a Kerry Wood-ish fate.
The rest of the season, Ankiel would often top 100 pitches, but not by much. Still, I think the lesson from Ryan, Clemens, Saberhagen and Gooden is that, as Earl Weaver said, "rookie pitchers belong in long relief." Now I'm just holding my breath and hoping that Ankiel's complete collapse in this NLCS isn't a harbinger of things to come.
I'll promise right now that if La Russa destroys Ankiel the way he did Alan Benes and Matt Morris, I'll turn in my Cardinals fandom until they get rid of Tony once and for all. More as an act of sanity-preservation, frankly, than protest.
OK, what do you think? Anyone who gets through that whole article should be given a forum to respond. And keep in mind that I'm a Midwesterner, so I already feel guilty for being so mean.
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