Three-game series force an interesting tug-of-war for big league managers. On one side is the obvious urgency of such a short series, but on the other side is the fact it\u2019s not just one game. There is at least some future to consider.<\/p>\n
So, which side wins? Wild Card managers this year have been pulled almost uniformly to the aggressive side: pinch-hitting early, going to their bullpens often, and trying to maximize each moment as if it alone will decide the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are all-hands-on-deck games,\u201d Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. \u201cIt\u2019s the American League Wild Card Series. Every pitch, every at-bat, every mistake, every big swing seems to count as two. And so we were going to be aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hinch pinch hit for All-Star Riley Greene to create a right-on-left matchup in Game 2, which didn\u2019t work. Cubs manager Craig Counsell used an opener and then pitched to Manny Machado with a base open in Game 2, and neither of those worked, either. Red Sox manager Alex Cora pulled starter Brayan Bello after 28 pitches and then asked reliever Garrett Whitlock to throw a season-high 47 pitches. Those moves, also, didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
\u201cFelt like at that point kind of like we have to do this,\u201d Cora said of his early hook on Bello. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel good because you want the kid to go out there and get his experience and pitch deep into the game. I felt at that moment we needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n
In such a short series, managerial choices feel amplified, and they\u2019ve certainly been scrutinized. Yankees manager Aaron Boone was heavily questioned for his lineup decisions and the removal of starter Max Fried in a Game 1 loss. Guardians manager Stephen Vogt has made risky decisions in the name of maximizing offense (which worked in Game 2 but not so much in Game 1). The Padres\u2019 tendency to bunt came into question in their Game 1 loss.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot to debate and consider \u2014 if you\u2019re into that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t put a manager\u2019s cap on,\u201d Machado said.<\/p>\n
Hard to blame him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-game series force an interesting tug-of-war for big league managers. On one side is the obvious urgency of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-185550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}