When I turned on Tuesday night’s A’s-Rangers game, the A’s were losing, 10-2 in the seventh inning. I left to do a quick podcast, and when I came back, the A’s were losing, 10-8. A few minutes later, the game was tied, and by the time Khris Davis launched a three-run moon shot that disintegrated in the ionosphere, I was a giggling idiot. More so than usual, even. It was a fun game to watch from a distance.
Does Joe Maddon need to calm the heck down with his position players pitching?
The A’s came back from a 10-2 deficit in the seventh, and the Cubs are using position players to pitch in 7-1 games. This is silly, right?
Photo by David Banks/Getty Images
It must have been a ludicrously fun game to watch intently. I was following it from the NBC Sports Bay Area studios, where there are plenty of A’s partisans, and I could hear the whoops and yelps with every walk, homer, and run. When Stephen Piscotty hit his game-tying home run in the ninth inning, I could hear post-game analyst Dallas Braden scream from hundreds of feet (and several rooms) away.
The A’s are ridiculous, and Tuesday night’s game would make any fan jealous. There’s nothing in sports that’s better than a comeback against insurmountable odds. But after appreciating the A’s and their silly season for a few seconds, my thoughts turned darker.
All I could think about is that beneath the fun, hip exoskeleton, Joe Maddon is a soulless actuary.
The connection goes like this: On Monday night, the Cubs were losing 7-1 in the top of the eighth inning, and Maddon brought in a position player to pitch. It happened to be exactly after the play that sent the Cubs’ win expectancy from 1 percent to 0 percent, according to Baseball-Reference, so it’s possible that Maddon was playing the numbers. It was still strange to see Anthony Rizzo’s goofy grin from the mound while the Cubs were still kinda sorta in the game.
If you’re a fan of baseball history, you might know about the last time the Cubs came back from six runs down in the eighth. It was a couple months ago, and it sure was a good thing that Maddon didn’t have Rizzo pitching in that game.
So, yes, Maddon gave up on a game in which the Cubs were down by six runs with four outs to go, which seems both wise and strange. This is a mostly an academic exercise because Rizzo (and the other position player who pitched, Victor Caratini) didn’t allow a run and the Cubs didn’t score another run. They were going to lose 99 times out of 100, if not 999 times out of 1,000, and Maddon saved his bullpen. He’s the genius, and I’m the dope whining about something on the internet.
More position players are pitching than ever before, and there’s a simple explanation why
The conclusion?
While baseball is cyclical and this could go the way of the stolen base, there’s very little risk to go with the measurable reward of keeping your bullpen fresh.
That argument is exactly what Maddon used when he was asked about the optics of giving up on a 7-1 game.
Yesterday was connected to Saturday, most specifically. Having to come out of the break and playing five games in four days and a day-night doubleheader impacted Monday’s game.
In the first Cubs game after the break, which was a day earlier than almost everyone else in baseball, Kyle Hendricks was pulled in the fifth inning, and six relievers combined to hold the lead. The doubleheader didn’t do them any favors, and the bullpen was moderately taxed. Here are all the batters faced from the Cubs relievers in each game after the All-Star break:
Steve Cishek had a day off after appearing in both games of a doubleheader. Carl Edwards was definitely fresh. Strop probably could have gone if needed, but remember that Brandon Morrow is on the DL.
With four outs to go, a normal manager probably would have used Edwards. Maddon chose to use position players in a mostly hopeless game to save one of his better relievers for the next game, though.
The Cubs did not win that next game, and Edwards didn’t pitch. They used Cishek to face seven batters, Chavez to face three, and the newly activated Eddie Butler to face nine. The immediate benefit of punting with a six-run deficit was Edwards getting an extra day of rest. It’s not inconceivable that will pay dividends in October.
All he had to do was make it harder for his team to have a rousing, once-every-decade comeback win like the A’s had.
Leave it to Maddon to make me think he’s less fun for having his position players pitch.
Before writing this, I had several headlines already in mind. “The A’s are a ridiculously fun baseball team and Joe Maddon is trying too hard” was one. “The A’s are proof that Joe Maddon is being too cute” was another.
After writing this, though, I think I changed my mind. The trend of position players pitching probably isn’t going away soon. Bullpens are the heartbeat of the modern game, for better and very much for worse, and managers’ careers can be defined by how well they manage them. We might stop seeing stars like Rizzo pitch after a comebacker gets someone hurt, but the general idea of giving up on a game to keep a bullpen fresh is here to stay.
Well, let’s just update that:
Maddon has used five position players to pitch since the All-Star break. And, you know what? Part of the reason Edwards was fresh enough to be used in that 7-1 game was because Maddon used three position players to absorb innings in a blowout earlier in the week.
However, if we’re being honest, the A’s probably aren’t going to win the World Series this year. That’s not a slight against them, just a nod to the 1/8 odds they’ll roughly have if they even reach the postseason. Most teams won’t win the World Series, and they’ll need something else to convince their fans that baseball is worth watching.
The A’s got something to convince their fans, and it was a single game that they’ll remember for years. Remember that time the A’s came back from that huge deficit in the eighth will be a powerful force for anyone who can answer “yes,” and the wonder of the Game Without a Clock will be reinforced for a huge swath of people. Making that kind of comeback harder — signaling to your team to focus on tomorrow — seems like a great way to avoid this kind of historically fun game.
At the same time, the odds are against these two scenarios ever colliding, so maybe it’s more likely that the fans will have more fun when Carl Edwards is slightly less gassed in the NLCS and pumps a fastball by Eric Hosmer*. And if you’re busy being hyper-pragmatic about bullpen usage and pitching position players in non-blowouts, there’s still a chance that the silliness will still come to you. Especially the NL teams, who will be playing with a de facto DH, after all.
* the second half is gonna be wild, y’all
So I hate to do this, but I started with an idea that Maddon was screwing with his team’s chances to have a memorable comeback, and I’m ending with the belief that he’s probably doing the right thing. The more position players pitch, the less exciting it is, and a little piece of me is dying away, but I also understand the strategy behind it. Keeping bullpens fresh is more important than waiting for that A’s-like comeback that might not happen for another decade.
Joe Maddon doesn’t hate fun. He’s just trying to reallocate the fun to a likelier date. In today’s wacky bullpen-dependent game, I don’t blame him. Even if I hate the idea that we might miss out on a comeback like the one the A’s enjoyed on Tuesday night.
Because, friends, that was a very, very, very fun baseball thing, and I’m going to keep being overprotective of games like that.
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