This is a new one. I'm certainly biased as a Giants fan, but this still catches me off guard. From Andrew Baggarly of the Mercury News:
Bruce Bochy, The Philadelphia Phillies, And The Unwritten Rules Of The All-Star Game
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(Bruce) Bochy expects the fans to have plenty in their lungs for him tonight. It’s been theorized by the media and fans here that Bochy intentionally pitched Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee for multiple innings in the All-Star Game to wear them down.
It used to be that the gripe fans had about the All-Star Game was that their favorite players didn't get to play. I know that I was a little disappointed that Ryan Vogelsong didn't pitch, but he'll be there next year for sure, so I didn't think too much of it.
So there's a vocal minority of Phillies fans who are claiming that Bochy pitched Halladay (19 pitches) and Lee (25 pitches) for more than one inning out of black-hearted strategy. But the last All-Star Game starter who didn't go two innings for either league was Jake Peavy in 2007. Before that, it was Chris Carpenter in 2005. The guy who starts the All-Star Game almost always goes two innings. It's an unspoken tradition. Halladay was going to pitch two.
Lee finished the third inning of the All-Star Game having thrown 13 pitches. He is, again, one of the best pitchers in the world. A star, if you will. People want to watch him. And there’s a pretty decent chance that either the Phillies or Giants will care who has home-field advantage in the World Series. Is it more likely that Bochy was intentionally grinding Lee down (which wouldn’t explain why he removed Lee mid-inning after hits started falling), or is it more likely that he was trying to win the game with his best players?
The moral of the story isn’t that Phillies fans will complain about anything -- that’s just the subtext! No, the moral of the story is that no one cares about the All-Star Game anymore. Fans are actually complaining that their players played. It’s still the best All-Star Game of the four major sports, and it holds a little place in my heart, but no one really cares anymore. They care who makes it, but once that little “AS” appears next to the player’s name on Baseball Reference, the bubble wrap comes out.
It’s disappointing, but predictable. But as to the larger question -- Was Bruce Bochy looking for an edge by stealing an extra 10 to 20 pitches out of Halladay and Lee? -- it’s paranoid to the point of comedy. If he were that evil, he’d just put packets and packets of Ex-Lax in their Gatorade bottles. He has better things to worry about.
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