Roger Kahn, the sportswriter who wrote the classic Dodgers chronicle The Boys of Summer, was once quoted as saying that Walter Alston "was 20 years of bad managing." Alston won seven pennants and four World Series while running the Dodgers on the field and was eventually added to the Hall of Fame. Being a manager can be a thankless business. Don Mattingly, Alston's eventual successor, is finding that out now.
Maybe God hates Don Mattingly, but you don’t have to
The Dodgers manager gets burned by pitching decisions in each of the first two games, but that doesn’t necessarily he mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Meanwhile, the series is tied at one game apiece.
Stephen Dunn
Having played for approximately one manager for every two weeks he spent with the Yankees, he probably knew that already; if you can treat Yogi Berra like the last janitor hired then anyone is a target. It seems fair to say that whatever his talents as a skipper, the great first baseman is not going to go down in history with John McGraw as one of baseball's great in-game tacticians. Still, sometimes a manager is damned regardless of what he does. In the first two games of the 2014 NLDS against the Cardinals, one of which the Dodgers lost in ugly fashion and the other a hard-fought, one-run victory, Mattingly was confronted with no-win scenarios and got burned twice, even when the call each time was completely defensible.
In Game 1, Clayton Kershaw was pitching a more-or-less typical Kershaw game going to the top of the seventh and the Dodgers had a seemingly impregnable 6-2 lead. In the seventh, the Dodgers and Kershaw came apart in a big way. Here's how we recapped the sequence in the immediate aftermath:
- Single
- Single
- Single
- Single
- Strikeout (to Pete Kozma, so a single using batter-adjusted metrics)
- Single
- Strikeout
- Double
In the midst of that sequence, with two outs and the bases loaded, Mattingly had to choose whether or not to hook Kershaw, the Sandy Koufax of the New Millennium. Matt Carpenter was at the plate. He is a left-handed hitter, Kershaw a left-handed pitcher, so all of your basic, bonehead platoon considerations were taken care of. Left-handed hitters have a .187 career average against Kershaw. Carpenter had hit Kershaw shockingly well (.321, 9-for-28) in his career, but there is another consideration here: This is Clayton Kershaw. The math shouldn't be the same for him. The math shouldn't apply at all.
I once spoke with Ed Figueroa, 20-game winner for the 1978 Yankees, and asked him if he was bothered that his career was so short, and it was presumably because he was pushed so hard. He threw almost exactly 1,000 career innings in his first four full major league seasons, completing 54 of 133 starts. After that, he was never healthy. Figueroa said no, it didn’t bother him; he wanted to be out there. Besides, he thought, whenever the manager came out to the mound for him, he thought, “Who out there is better than me?”
I was tempted to say, "Goose Gossage." I didn't, because the actuality was less important than the attitude. Given Mattingly was not going to ask Kenley Jansen to get a 2.1-inning save, his choice was to stay with Kershaw or go to someone like Brandon League, Brian Wilson, J.P. Howell. And again, this was Clayton Kershaw. Figueroa's question really did apply: "Who out there is better than me?"
You know what happened next. Carpenter doubled to empty the bases, the inning went on and on, and Mattingly was left with enough egg on his face to make a frittata for four. His call wasn’t right, but it also wasn’t wrong. As I wrote regarding Giants-Nationals Game 2, so much about the way you’re regarded in baseball is contingent, and for managers that must be particularly painful because your reputation rests on what other people do after you’ve made up your mind about what they should do but won’t necessarily achieve.
On Saturday night, the scenario repeated itself. Zack Greinke had dominated the Cardinals, not only pitching seven scoreless innings of two-hit, seven-strikeout baseball, but also going 2-for-3 at the plate and scoring a run. He had thrown 103 pitches and had topped out at 118 pitches this year, so assuming Mattingly had been lifting him throughout the season when he needed to be lifted, he didn't have a lot of ammunition left. The Dodgers were up 2-0. Greinke is a right-hander. Oscar Taveras, a left-handed hitter, had been announced as a pinch-hitter for the pitcher to start the eighth. The two hitters after him, Matt Carpenter and Jon Jay, were also left-handers. Greinke is a very good pitcher, but he's not Kershaw. Left-handed hitters have hit .268/.320/.424 against him over his career, .246/.283/.344 this year. He was better against lefties than righties, but you can't rely on that.
So what would you do? Stick with the former Cy Young guy or go to the pen? Mattingly replaced Greinke with Howell, his spot lefty. Howell has held left-handed hitters to .219/.303/.315 in his career. He’s given up 12 home runs to them in 772 plate appearances. They hit one home run with a .170 average in 104 plate appearances this year.
Taveras singled. Carpenter hit the ball 411 feet to tie the game. Jay singled. That was it for Howell. Brandon League came in and got the next three outs, but there was Mattingly, egged again, victim of the professional organic free-range chickens of doom (who hate you). This time, he had quiche for 20.
J.P. Howell's awfully bad day (Harry How).
His decision wasn’t right. It wasn’t wrong. It turned out wrong. Since success is contingent, the secret of success is to limit the number of scenarios in any given situation in which the universe can screw you. This is known as slanting the odds, or what Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey meant when he said luck is the residue of design. It’s hard to see how, in either situation, Mattingly left those avenues that were within his control open those aforementioned chickens. They got him anyway.
Fortunately for Mattingly, one of his best decisions (and Ned Colletti's), to keep faith with the inconsistent and occasionally cranky Matt Kemp, came to the team's rescue in the bottom of the eighth. Kemp led off the frame with a home run off of Pat Neshek, a seemingly nice guy and decent reliever who ran a little hot streak to the All-Star Game this year. The Dodgers were up 3-2. That's all they would get, but thanks to Jensen, that's all they would need. The series is tied at one game apiece.
Still, there will be those who want to roast Don Mattingly, believing that the series is tied in spite of him. Turn on your radios. They’re saying it now. And the thing is, of course it’s happening in spite of him. To a large extent it happens in spite of every manager. Earl Weaver was 1-for-4 in the World Series, 1-for-6 in the playoffs overall. The Great McGraw himself won 10 pennants and just three World Series. It’s not easy, even for the best of them.
The Dodgers are still alive. The series is a best of three. Mattingly is undoubtedly not perfect. If you think you’re better than him, you’re wrong.
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