A classic game sees plenty of managerial moves and a series of wild reverses, but in the end the home run solved all arguments about who was best -- at least for one night.
The greatest temptation every manager needs to face and defeat in the postseason is the need to impose himself on the action. The roster of 30 managers will always compose a spectrum of "activist" to "inert" in terms of how many buttons they try to push during the 162 regular-season games, but it does seem as if there is a greater understanding today that the bulk of their job is done in setting expectations (clubhouse management) and filling out the lineup card (distributing playing time) and all the "strategies" that the old-time skippers so relied upon have been de-emphasized due to being counterproductive.
Don't worry, bunting fans. We'll always have Ned Yost.
In October, the men in the dugout are so desperate to influence the outcome, to in effect be players again, that they start making moves. Teams that didn't bunt or pull starters in the fourth or pinch-hit for the right fielder in the third inning from April through September become controlled by frantic coaching octopi. Writing about the Yankees for many years, I often referred to this as the moment that the generally conservative, rational Joe Girardi was replaced by manic, over-caffeinated Coffee Joe.
Not all Coffee Joe moments are necessarily bad. In the top of the fifth inning of Game 2 of the NLCS, Giants manager Bruce Bochy saw a chance to change the game that he might not have taken in the regular season. Jake Peavy had thrown only four innings and 76 pitches, but while he had allowed only two runs, he hadn't been sharp either. With the visitors trailing 2-0 against Lance Lynn, runners on second and third with one out, and the pitcher due to bat, Bochy went to the bench and pinch-hit with Joaquin Arias. Now, Arias is a fairly terrible hitter, averaging .263/.283/.323, but he doesn't strike out much and all the Giants needed was the right grounder to score a run and get back in the game.
It worked. As brilliant managerial decisions go, it wasn't Connie Mack detaching Howard Ehmke from the A's so he could scout the Cubs to the point that he could personally destroy them in a surprise World Series start, but it's something. In the regular season, other considerations might enter into it -- the starter's ego, how well Peavy had pitched overall as a Giant, how much the bullpen had been used in the preceding games. In the postseason, impulsivity rules.
Mike Matheny, who also hooked his starter early, has had his own Coffee Joe moments, among them his ongoing love affair with Randal Grichuk despite the latter's obvious limitations: He can strike out from the player parking lot and he has no track-record of hitting same-side pitching. The former first-round pick has obvious ability, but the strike zone has remained an obvious mystery to him, level after level. Heading into Sunday night, Grichuk had gone 3-for-20 with a home run, a walk, and eight strikeouts. Benching him in favor of the more promising Oscar Taveras (despite the latter's failure to capitalize in an extended regular-season trial and Matheny's ill-concealed impatience with him) was an easy first-guess, and yet he was out there again in Game 2.
Grichuk made Matheny look good, driving in the Cardinals' second run and making two key defensive plays. Later, Taveras came off the bench in the bottom of the seventh to pinch-hit a game-tying home run, so Matheny managed -- the word is used pointedly -- to have the best of both worlds. Luck? Design? Probably luck. Still, sometimes fortune favors the stubborn or the panicked as much or as it does the well-reasoned decision.
Photo credit: Jasen Vinlove - USA TODAY Sports
The literally tie-breaking "on the other hand" there is Bochy's fascination with hard-throwing reliever Hunter Strickland. Strickland came up late in the season, made a huge impression with his stuff, and pitched his way onto the playoff roster despite having just seven major league innings on the back of his baseball card. Bochy has gone to him again and again. He got a scoreless inning from him in Game 2 of the NLDS, one that saved the 18-inning game for the Giants. Otherwise, he's been a full-out Irwin Allen disaster movie, with four home runs allowed in four innings pitched, including a go-ahead shot to Matt Adams in the eighth. That the Giants were able to tie up the game and send it -- momentarily -- to the bottom of the ninth doesn't negate just how dangerous it is for the Giants to rely on Strickland.
The Giants got to enjoy their late comeback for about as long as it takes to change sides given that Kolten Wong took the second pitch he saw from Sergio Romo and hit it into outer space. Game over, series tied 1-1. Maybe it's just a Giants reliever thing -- Romo allowed a career high 1.4 home runs per nine innings this past season.
And that brings up the most important thing to be taken from all these managerial maneuverings, good or ill. It's the same lesson that the Royals have been inadvertently reinforcing throughout October: No matter what else you can do on a baseball field, whatever little things you think you do that will help you win, it is still far, far easier, a far more reliable path to winning, if you can hit the ball over the wall. Mike Moustakas has shown that. Kolten Wong, Matt Adams and Matt Carpenter -- who also homered in Game 2 -- have demonstrated it for the Cardinals. Offense may be down from the bloated early 2000s, but we still dwell in the country of the home run, and the slugger is still king. Even the two teams that finished last in their respective leagues in home runs need the big blast to carry the day.
The series remains wide open. The Cardinals will have to survive what might be the loss of Yadier Molina, and the Giants will have to overcome the crushing loss of a game in which they did everything but pull rabbits out of hats to stay in it. Game 2 was, in many ways, a classic -- a great game and a reaffirmation of the basics of baseball. The World Series will have nothing on Sunday night, no matter which team advances.