Category: Don’t Play Aggressively with a Big Lead

Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead

The New Era Of Unwritten Rules

Posted on by Jason Turbow

What with all the celebrations on baseball fields over recent years, you’d be excused for thinking that we’ve entered a new era of the sport’s unwritten rules. Turns out you haven’t seen anything yet.

Since The Baseball Codes came out in 2010, I’ve been faithfully documenting the evolution of this part of the sport, which has changed more in the last decade-plus than during any other point in baseball history. Yesterday put a cap on all of it.

In football and basketball, taking one’s foot off the gas late in blowout games means resting the starters. In baseball it means stop trying to score quite so aggressively via bunting or taking extra bases. The topic is so prevalent and contentious (how big a lead is enough? What inning is late enough?) that I devoted the first chapter of The Baseball Codes to it.

Yesterday, Giants manager Kapler addressed the issue and turned the entire paradigm on its head.

The setup: With San Francisco leading the Padres 10-1 in the second inning, Steven Duggar stole second base. With the lead 11-2 in the sixth, Mauricio Dubon bunted for a leadoff single—a play, he told Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer, that was signaled from the dugout.

There is an argument to be made that the second inning is too early to call off the dogs, but by the sixth, with the Padres on their fourth pitcher of the game, things were different.

San Diego was upset. Manager Bob Melvin barked from the dugout. Third base coach Mike Shildt had some words for the Giants, which led to the ejection of first base coach Antoan Richardson. (At least one positive development came from the exchange.)

Phil Garner once told me that during his days as a freewheeling manager, his approach to this kind of situation was simple: “It’s your job to stop me. If you can’t stop me, then I’m playing until I feel comfortable. And if I don’t feel comfortable with a ten-run lead, then by God I’m running.”

Until now, this was a standard response from the don’t-stop-playing camp. Kapler took it to another level.

Kapler, of course, is the famously analytical former player who helms the famously analytical Giants. Which is precisely how he approached this situation. In offering support for Duggar and Dubon, the manager laid it out for reporters after the game.

“Our goal is not exclusively to win one game in a series, it’s to try to win the entire series,” he said. “Sometimes that means trying to get a little deeper into the opposition’s pen. I understand that many teams don’t love that strategy, and I get why. It’s something we talked about as a club before the season. We were comfortable going forward with that strategy. It’s not to be disrespectful in any way. It’s because we feel very cool and strategic that it’s the best way to try to win a series. By ‘cool’ I mean calm. We’re not emotional about it. We’re not trying to hurt anybody. We just want to score as many runs as possible, force the other pitcher to throw as many pitches as possible. If other clubs decide that they want to do the same thing to us, we’re not going to have any issue with it.”

Kapler’s sentiments have merit, mostly because he’s right. Baseball is in a different place than it was when he played in the 2000s, which itself was in a different place than when Garner managed the Brewers in the 1990s. If forcing an opponent to burn through a couple extra bullpen arms gives you an advantage tomorrow, well, that’s good strategy. And if the Giants can send their division rival on to its next series with a pitching deficit, that’s even better strategy.

Even as on-field celebrations became the norm, baseball maintained one inviolable aspect of enforcement: Respect. As long as you’re celebrating with your guys and not against their guys, you’re okay. As long as you play with the notion that your opponent is worthy and that, when the tables are turned, you’re content to absorb whatever you’ve just dished out, at least nobody can call you a hypocrite.

Hell, Kapler said as much during his press conference, but there’s more to it than that. He laid out a sound statistical argument that in the modern era, with a revolving door of gas-throwing relievers at the bottom of every staff, running up the score is your best bet to assure long-term success. He also noted that Dubon is playing for a roster spot, and the more he can exhibit a well-rounded offensive repertoire, the better his chances.

You don’t have to agree with any of it, but no matter how one approaches the topic, even sceptics must admit that there’s nothing at all disrespectful about those sentiments. This is just the beginning. Welcome to the new world.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Retaliation, Swinging 3-0

Tony La Russa Endorses Retribution Against His Own Team, Minnesota Obliges

Posted on by Jason Turbow

This is how I concluded yesterday’s post about Yermin Mercedes hitting a 3-0 homer off of Willians Astudillo with two outs in the ninth inning of a game that the White Sox led by 11 runs:

If the Twins for some reason decide to retaliate tonight, or if [Tony] La Russa benches Mercedes in some misbegotten stab toward outdated honor, then we’ll be talking about this again tomorrow. More realistically, the enduring optics of one fat guy hitting a homer off of another fat guy, plus the ridiculous nature of the pitching itself, means that this controversy will not likely endure beyond last night’s news cycle. Nor should it.

Guess who’s talking about this again today—so much talk!—for every wrong reason imaginable. When it comes to misbegotten stabs, Tony La Russa has managed to lap the field.

When was the last time a manager slagged his own player to the press, gave tacit approval for the other team to retaliate, and, after said retaliation occurred, claimed publicly that he had no problem with it? More pertinently to the White Sox, when was the last time a manager did any of those things and still had his job at the end of the season?

It started when La Russa shared some thoughts before Tuesday’s game. No surprise: He was upset.

“That’s not a time to swing 3-0,” the manager told reporters before the game, according to an MLB.com report. He called it “sportsmanship and respect for the game and respect for your opponent.” He said that Mercedes “made a mistake.” He called Mercedes “clueless.” Most brazenly, La Russa also said that “there will be a consequence that [Mercedes] has to endure here within our family.”

What the fuck is that about? La Russa was intentionally vague. Could the Twins have taken it as a green light to respond? Of course they could have. Did La Russa know that his comments might be taken as such? If he didn’t, he’s a fool. More likely, that was his intent from the beginning.

With that as the background, it should surprise nobody that, with one out and nobody on in the top of the seventh in a game that the White Sox led, 4-2, Minnesota reliever Tyler Duffey threw a pitch behind Mercedes’ legs. It was clearly intentional. Was he acting alone? Was he following orders? Either answer reflects some overt thuggery. Most enduring was the impression that the most old-school guy in the building, Tony La Russa, orchestrated the entire thing against his own player.

If that actually was his goal—or even if a critical mass of White Sox players think that was his goal—La Russa should just resign now. Few people in that room will listen to him again. Not helping the manager’s cause were postgame comments in which he said things like “I don’t have a problem with how the Twins handled that” and “I didn’t have a problem with what the Twins did.” He outright excused the pitch, saying, “The guy might have just been trying to get a sinker in,” when the guy was clearly not just trying to get a sinker in.

Yes, there’s the fact that Mercedes swung through a take sign on his fateful homer, which is enough to piss off any manager, but come on—managers don’t discuss missed signs during press conferences. La Russa was angry at one thing and one thing only. By leaving things intentionally vague, he gave the Twins all the leeway they needed to respond however they saw fit. (La Russa is 76. Twins skipper Rocco Baldelli is 39, and was born two years after La Russa’s managerial debut. Somehow, they both ended up looking comparably stodgy after this one.)

For those who doubt whether this series of events will cost La Russa in the long run, know that the inevitable avalanche of doubt within the White Sox clubhouse has already begun. After the game, Lance Lynn—Chicago’s best and most veteran pitcher, who’s been around long enough to have played for La Russa in his last managerial job a decade ago—spoke out. While Lynn didn’t overtly criticize his manager, he took a clear position against the La Russa’s entrenched stance.

“The more I play this game, the more those [unwritten] rules have gone away, and I understand it,” the pitcher said in an MLB.com report. “The way I see it is, for position players on the mound, there are no rules. Let’s get the damn game over with. And if you have a problem with whatever happens, then put a pitcher out there. Can’t get mad when there’s a position player on the field and a guy takes a swing.”

And so it begins. La Russa is well on his way to losing that clubhouse, if he hasn’t already.

If there’s a saving grace for him it’s that the White Sox are 25-16, the best record in the American League. Then again, in the first game after the Mercedes Incident, the same one in which Minnesota gratefully accepted La Russa’s offer to throw freely at his own player, Chicago coughed up a four-run lead to the team with baseball’s worst record, and lost, 5-4.

White Sox players deserve to feel better about things than they inevitably do this morning.

Update (5/20): Guess who doesn’t agree with La Russa? Tim Anderson for one. Lucas Giolito for another. For players to publicly contradict their manager on the most visible point he’s made since taking over the club is an ominous sign. And it’s only the beginning.

Update (5/21): Tyler Duffey and Rocco Baldelli were suspended three games for their roles in this. The best part about it was when a guy on Twitter said, “Tony La Russa appealed the decision.”

Update (5/21): CC Sabathia has thoughts, which normally wouldn’t be worth a dedicated update but boy howdy these ones are.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Swinging 3-0

A Ridiculous Pitch In A Ridiculous Setting Leads To Another Conversation About Swinging 3-0 During A Blowout

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The stringency of baseball’s unwritten rules has been slipping for the better part of a generation now. Players care less about how to play the game than ever, at least from the standpoint of decorum, a shift that has largely worked out pretty well for the sport.

One of the stodgiest of the unwritten rules is also one of my favorites when it comes to representing the old-school mentality. Nothing says “don’t do what you’re paid to do in an ideal situation in which to do it” like not swinging at a 3-0 pitch while your team is leading big.

The idea behind the rule is actually kind of sweet. Relief pitchers called in at the tail ends of blowouts tend not to be world-beaters, and the last thing either team wants is for them to extend the game by walking guys. So when the count runs to 3-0, baseball’s code urges hitters to allow the opponent a moment to get straight with a courtesy fastball down the pipe. The war has already been won; ceding a minor point during an inconsequential battle is the gentlemanly thing to do. It is how ballplayers approached such at-bats for the better part of a century.

The argument against such behavior is simple: Ballers gonna ball. Guys get paid on stats, so why short them based on game score? Fans want offense.

Both of these viewpoints were trotted out last season when Fernando Tatis homered on a 3-0 pitch with a big lead against the Rangers. It was a thing for weeks thereafter, based largely on the fact that Tatis’ own manager publicly came out against the swing.

Yesterday it happened again, this time with wrinkles.

The event in question was Yermin Mercedes’ homer on a 3-0 pitch while Chicago led the Twins 15-4 with two outs in the ninth. Everybody, even the White Sox, were ready for that game to end.

One wrinkle came via the guy who threw the ball. Willians Astudillo is a catcher by trade (it’s the position he’d been playing in this one since the fourth inning), and at 5-foot-9, 225 pounds, might be the most perfectly round player in baseball. Astudillo had already made one mound appearance already this season, in which he breezed through the Angels for an inning in April throwing nothing but junk. This time would be different.

The righty lobbed eephus after eephus to Mercedes, none close enough for the hitter to even consider. The fourth pitch of the at-bat was mostly a batting practice meatball that Mercedes could not refrain from hammering.

Which leads one to question how much seriousness should be afforded an at-bat that the opposition is clearly not taking seriously. Does Astudillo deserve more respect for trying to help his team by performing out of his element? Or do the Twins deserve whatever Mercedes gave them for making a relative mockery of the sport? Hell, the fateful offering was the slowest home-run pitch—47.1 mph—ever measured by Statcast.

Another wrinkle: Mercedes’ manager, Tony La Russa, was the subject of an entire book—Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August—devoted largely to his deep consideration of the unwritten rules. La Russa did not appear to address Mercedes’ swing during his postgame press conference, which left the bulk of the commentary to the Twins broadcast, featuring former big leaguer Roy Smalley saying, “I don’t like it. At 15-4, I don’t like it. You’re gonna get the same pitch after this. I don’t like it.”

If the Twins for some reason decide to retaliate tonight, of course, or if La Russa benches Mercedes in some misbegotten stab toward outdated honor, then we’ll be talking about this again tomorrow. More realistically, the enduring optics of one fat guy hitting a homer off of another fat guy, plus the ridiculous nature of the pitching itself, means that this controversy will not likely endure beyond last night’s news cycle. Nor should it.

Update, 5/19: Yeah, we’re still talking about it. And for the stupidest reasons possible.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead

Is The Ninth Inning, With A Big Lead, The Time To Steal A Base? Gleyber Torres Thinks So

Posted on by Jason Turbow

After Gleyber Torres stole second base last night with Yankees leading Tampa Bay, 9-3, in the ninth, some people, including Pedro Martinez on the TBS broadcast, intoned that he was disrespectfully trying to run up the score. In order to determine whether this is actually the case, we must first identify a key component of the play: Was Torres just playing hard, was he being a boor or was he sending a message? All three options are in play.

Playing hard
Tampa Bay went 8-2 against the Yankees this season, accounting for nearly all of their seven-game division lead at season’s end. None of those eight wins were laughers, though the Rays scored the winning run in the eighth two times, and once in the ninth. Late-game comebacks are possible, and in a five-game series, every run counts.  

Being a boor
The Yankees don’t like the Rays, and the Rays don’t like the Yankees. Kevin Kiermaier said so. This dates to at least 2018, when CC Sabathia drilled Rays catcher Austin Romine with a half-million-dollar fastball, then kept up the antagonism the following season. More recently, this past September, New York and Tampa Bay traded inside pitches and HBPs to the point that dugouts emptied and Aroldis Chapman and Aaron Boone were suspended.

Could Torres have stolen the base because he doesn’t like the Rays? Of course. Did the fact that he did it against Shane McClanahan, a guy making his major league debut, serve to further roil the Tampa Bay dugout? Could be.

Sending a message
The game was tight until the ninth, when Giancarlo Stanton’s grand slam off of Rays reliever John Curtiss gave the Yankees their six-run cushion. Curtiss—who by that point had given up two singles, two walks and Stanton’s homer, five runs in all, while recording only one out—threw his second pitch to the next hitter, Gio Urshela, high and tight. Torres, batting next, got a similar treatment.

Were those pitches intentional, borne of frustration? Given Curtiss’ struggles, that’s a strong possibility. The right-hander is coming off the finest season of his short career, during which he issued three walks all year. It’s reasonable to think that walking two guys in the span of four hitters during his first-ever playoff appearance, followed by a back-breaking homer, might have jumbled his emotions at least a little bit.

It’s also reasonable to think that Torres might have taken it precisely that way.

On the broadcast, Martinez did not hide his feelings, calling the steal “a terrible mistake” and intoning the maxim about “respect the opposition because you expect them to respect you.”

For that notion to hold water, Torres’ motivation would have to fall under one of the first two headings above. If what he did was actually a response to those inside pitches, however, the idea of respect is muted. Martinez, one of baseball’s prime intimidators during his Hall of Fame career, understands this as well as anybody, though he speaks from the perspective of someone who dished out far more in this regard than he took.

Should Torres ever decide to talk about why he did what he did, then perhaps we’ll know more. Until that point, it’s mainly a matter of waiting to see if the Rays respond, and how.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead

The Day That Barry Bonds Learned To Not Bunt During A Blowout Game

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Last week, the Athletic published a terrific oral history of Barry Bonds’ time in Pittsburgh. Included in the array of stories was one that took place when the slugger was 20 years old and in his first professional season, with the Prince William Pirates of the Single-A Carolina League.

Bonds himself narrates:

“One game, we were leading by seven or eight, and I bunted and got on base. I heard the other manager over there screaming and yelling, but I couldn’t calculate why. Right before my next at-bat, Bobby [Bonilla] comes up to me and puts his arm around my shoulders. He says, ‘B.B., whatever is gonna happen next, don’t react.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘Just trust me.’

“So, I go up to the plate. I didn’t think anything of it. And I got drilled almost in the head — really high on the back or shoulder. I went down to first base. I didn’t do anything. I came into the dugout and Bobby Bo says, ‘This ain’t college, kid. You can never do that. We’re up by eight runs in the seventh inning. You do not bunt.’ I said, ‘I got that. I’ll never do that again.’ ”

Bonilla, of course, was all of 22, but in his fifth year in pro ball, so he knew whereof he spoke.

Starting in 1988, Bonds went 8-for-14 when bunting for hits over the course of his career (stats are unavailable from before that point), and once told Alex Rodriguez that he could have hit .400 if he’d adopted bunting as a regular strategy.

Bonds had about the highest baseball IQ of his generation, so the smart money’s on him not having repeated that particular maneuver early on. Later in his career, of course, the point became moot: On those occasions that he saw a hittable pitch, Bonds wanted to take advantage in grander ways than tapping it down the line.

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Let The Kids Play, Swinging 3-0

Rangers Don’t Dig Tatis’ Tater, Fuel Controversy Over How (Or Whether) To Respond To Blowout Tactics

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Yesterday, Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a grand slam and the internet lost its damn mind.

It wasn’t the homer that did it, of course, it was the response … something to do with the unwritten rules.

In this case, circumstances matter. It was the top of the eighth inning, the bases were loaded and the Padres were leading Texas by seven runs (thanks in part to a three-run homer by Tatis an inning earlier). Pertinent to this discussion, Tatis’ fateful shot came on a 3-0 pitch. The Rangers didn’t know it at the time, but the young slugger had missed (or ignored) a take sign from his coach.

With that, Rangers manager Chris Woodward removed pitcher Juan Nicasio, inserted pitcher Ian Gibault, and watched as Gibault threw a pitch behind the next batter, Manny Machado. Message delivered. (No warnings were issued, and no other pitches came close to hitting anybody.)

After the game, Woodward addressed the issue directly. “I think there’s a lot of unwritten rules that are constantly being challenged in today’s game,” he said. “I didn’t like it, personally. You’re up by seven in the eighth inning; it’s typically not a good time to swing 3-0. It’s kind of the way we were all raised in the game.”

This is the point at which Woodward, and baseball in general, tends to lose touch with its fan base. What in the hell was the manager talking about, cried the majority opinion? Why should one of the sport’s brightest young stars be expected to do anything other than bright-young-star things, regardless of the situation?

It’s complicated. The rationale starts with pitchers, not hitters. During a blowout, nobody in either dugout wants to see the pace grind nearly to a halt while a pitcher tries to finesse the edges of the strike zone, especially while down in the count. From The Baseball Codes:

The last thing a pitcher wants to do with his team down by a wide margin late in the game is walk batters, which not only suggests unnecessary nibbling but extends a game that players want to end quickly. When a count gets to 3-0 … it’s a near-certainty that the ensuing pitch will be a fastball down the middle.

At which point pitchers are expected (or were once expected, anyway) to throw something straight that will get the game moving again. For that one-pitch adjustment, hitters are expected (or were once expected) to lay off. As Sparky Anderson said in a New York Times report: “You don’t cherry-pick on the other team. You don’t take cripples. Three-oh, he’s struggling, he’s got to lay the ball in there. Don’t do it to the man. He’s got a family, too.”

Then again, Anderson said that back in 1993, which may as well have been 1893 as far as the evolution of the unwritten rules is concerned. The sport in which Anderson managed bears little resemblance to the modern game in numerous ways. A prominent aspect of this evolution is showboating, bat flips and the like, which once would have been certain to draw a pitcher’s attention but are now mostly background noise.

Swinging 3-0 is not quite the same thing, but it’s in the same ballpark.

It does happen from time to time. Last year, Twins outfielder Jake Cave swung 3-0 while his Twins led 13-5 in the ninth, and connected for a single. The next hitter, Max Kepler, saw three inside pitches and was drilled by the fourth.

Here’s the catch: The team doing the responding—the team at the wrong end of Cave’s swing—was Chris Woodward’s Texas Rangers. Woodward, it appears, is no stranger to having his pitchers mete out punishment for those who he feels cross a line, and swinging 3-0 is a prominent one for him.

(There are plenty of non-Woodward examples, as well. In 2017, Corey Seager swung 3-0 with a 5-0 lead, and before long teams were brawling on the field. In 2012, Jayson Werth swung 3-0 and benches emptied. In 2011, David Ortiz’s 3-0 swing helped lead to another fight. In the past, I’ve covered incidents from Davey Lopes, Vladimir Guerrero and Gary Sheffield. Hell, in 2001, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, fresh from Japan and unaware of this particular rule, was drilled for swinging 3-0 … and missing. Hell, Corey Kluber doesn’t even like it when guys swing hard against him, regardless of the count.)

Yesterday, the response from the Padres was less about the retaliatory pitch from Texas than with their own shortstop. On the telecast, cameras caught Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer—30 years old and a 10-year vet—telling various Rangers that “we’ll talk to him.” Sure enough, Hosmer sat Tatis down for a dugout conversation. Later, San Diego manager Jayce Tingler talked to reporters about the importance of getting signs correctly, called it “a learning opportunity,” and said “[Tatis] will grow from it.” (Prior to taking over the Padres, Tingler worked in the Rangers organization since 2007. The guess here is that he knows precisely what it will take to avoid bad blood with that team.)

But what about Tatis himself? On one hand, he’s 21 years old, in only his second season and hails from the Dominican Republic, where a freewheeling, unfettered brand of baseball is the norm. On the other, he grew up learning the major league game from his father, whose own big league career ran from 1999 to 2010, when Jr. was 11 years old.

“I’ve been in this game since I was a kid,” Tatis Jr. said after the game. “I know a lot of unwritten rules. I was kind of lost on this. … Those experiences, you have to learn. Probably next time, I’ll take a pitch.”

This is just another example of baseball needing to get a handle on outdated concepts of ballplayer decorum. Developing an entire promotional campaign—Let the Kids Play—around the idea of unfettered joy on a ballfield is fine … right up until an angry pitcher disagrees and responds to a bat flip with some questionable behavior. Somehow, Woodward’s Rangers have been involved in those fights as well.

The reason that most pitchers no longer care about bat flips is that bat flipping has been divorced from the meaning it once held. It is now seen as a joyous act, not a disrespectful one.

Swinging 3-0 during a blowout holds deeper connotations, but ultimately the concept is the same. Either we let the kids play, or we don’t. When Sparky Anderson told the Times that, as pertains to swinging 3-0, “there is a thing in this game—honor—that will always stay with me and I’ll never give it up,” he was speaking from a different era.

At some point, baseball has to make up its mind. Until it does, this cultural dissonance of blowback against young stars doing things that the public wants to see is going to continue until everybody’s so frustrated that they turn their backs altogether. This is a problem that baseball is already trying to counter; it led to Let the Kids Play in the first place.  

“I love this game, and I respect the game a lot,” Tatis said after the game. “I feel like every time I go out there, I just wanna feel respect for everybody else. … This game is hard for everyone, so why not just celebrate and have fun the way you wanna have fun?”

It was the smartest thing anybody said all day.

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Pandemic Baseball

The Minor Leagues Are For Learning Lessons

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Part 2 of what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

With Tri-Cities in the Northwest League in 1967, future big leaguer Von Joshua was 19 years old and fresh out of college, and in a game that his team led, 14-2, he beat out a bunt for his fifth hit of the game.

Two batters later he advanced to third, at which point Tri-Cities third-base coach Don LeJohn asked him what the hell he’d been thinking. Joshua had no idea what the problem might be; the only thing running through his mind was his five-hit day.

LeJohn offered a quick summary of the things a player does not do while his team is sitting on such a lead, bunting included. When Joshua came back to the dugout, veteran teammates suggested that it would be a good idea to avoid getting too comfortable during his next at-bat.

When Joshua next came up, he didn’t need his teammates’ warnings, as the other team made its intentions unmistakably clear. Abandoning all pretense of accidentally hitting Joshua, the opposing manager called one of his outfielders to the mound, simply because he was the hardest thrower on the team. The next three pitches were all aimed at Joshua’s head, at which point he charged the mound and, in his own words, “all heck broke loose.”

“I learned the hard way,” he said. “You don’t do that kind of stuff.”

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Pandemic Baseball

'I Looked Up At The Board And Thought, Oh Shit'

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Part 2 of what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

On Aug. 13, 1997, Cleveland took a 4-1 lead over the Tigers into the eighth inning, when three singles and an error over the span of the inning’s first four batters extended the lead to 6-1. The problem, as pertained to the Indians, was that both runs had scored on one play, during which their manager, Mike Hargrove, had been paying attention to something else and thought that only one had scored.

Thinking his team’s lead was still only four, he had the next batter, Omar Vizquel, squeeze in another run. The Tigers just about lost their minds, left fielder Phil Nevin screaming into the dugout about being disrespected.

“I thought, wait a minute, what is he so upset about?” said Hargrove, looking back. Then he noticed Tigers manager Buddy Bell, a good friend, staring daggers at him. “So I looked up at the board and thought, oh shit,” said Hargrove. “I was just intent on scoring as many runs as we could to put the game away, and I missed a run.”

Hargrove felt fine about playing hard for a five-run lead, even late in the game, which put him beyond the reach of a grand slam. Once that lead was achieved, he backed off of aggressive tactics.

Except that he’d called for a squeeze while his team led, 6-1.

“I went to talk to Buddy after the game, and then I talked to Phil Nevin,” Hargrove said. “I told Phil, ‘I’m not that way. I don’t have the reputation of being somebody like that. And I’m certainly not going to take one of my very best friends and rub his face in it. Buddy understood, and Phil did, as well.”

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Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Pandemic Baseball

'If They Want To Hit Me, Hit Me, But I'm Going To Play To Win The Ballgame'

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Part 2 of what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

Phil Garner: “I came up with the Oakland A’s, a great team. I was just a rookie, and we had a four- or five-run lead, a pretty good lead, in the sixth or seventh inning, and I bunted for a base hit.

“Sal Bando comes down the bench to me and says, ‘You better be ready, you’re going to get drilled next time.’

“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’

“He said, ‘You shouldn’t bunt with a lead like that.’

“I said, ‘Aren’t we still trying to win the ballgame?’

“He said, ‘Yeah, we are. But there’s the code. You don’t do that.’

“So I said, ‘What’s the difference between me trying to bunt for a hit and swinging?’

“He said, ‘Don’t argue. That’s just what it is.’

“Well, I got drilled. I got nailed. And you know what? The next time in the same situation, I’ll bunt the fucker again. If they want to hit me, hit me, but I’m going to play to win the ballgame. I did it as a player and I do it as a manager. I’m not trying to play to embarrass people, but I like winning ballgames.”

0
Don't Play Aggressively with a Big Lead, Pandemic Baseball

Ron Gardenhire Found It Quite Entertaining

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: Part 2 of what and what not to do when your team holds a big lead late in the game.

Ron Gardenhire: “I remember we were in Triple-A, the Tidewater Tides, playing against the Columbus Clippers for the International League championship. We were leading about 11-2 in the third or fourth inning. Davey Johnson was our manager. Columbus had one of those ball parks where runs are just scored, like Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out.

“I’m up to the plate. Gil Flores is on first, and Davey gives him the steal sign. We wanted to keep playing, because it’s not like the eighth inning in a blowout. We know runs are going to be scored.

“So Gil steals, and on the very next pitch I get drilled right in the head. They felt we should not be running up by more than six. He steals, I get drilled. They thought they were getting killed early on and we should not be running, and Davey Johnson thought it had a long way to go. I took a whack on the head because of it. It was Mets-Yankees—Triple-A, not the big leagues—but the organizational stuff might apply a little.

“There were fights everywhere on the field. Davey was fighting with Johnny Oates—even the managers were hooking. I got knocked out, and when I woke up there were brawls going on everywhere. It was quite entertaining.”

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