Monday, May 12, 2008

InGame Thought - Why Burn Duaner?

The Nats are up 10 to 3. They took advantage of errors, walks and hit batsmen early on and took advantage of Jorge Sosa's ineptitude in the top of the 6th. Jorge Sosa is the long man, the mop up man, a horrendous excuse for a pitcher - all of those aptly describe him. At this point the game is pretty much done. The smart move would've been to double switch Sosa into the game (removing Alou for Chavez) in order for Sosa to mop this game up. We know Willie Randolph isn't smart, though, but after he failed to double switch he still had one other way to keep Sosa in and rest the other guys in the pen.

After Sosa was torched, he simply could've let him hit with one out in the bottom of the 6th and the Mets down by 7 runs. Instead, he elected to pull him for a pinch hitter and proceeded to put Duaner Sanchez into a game that is out of reach. Why? The move is puzzling, especially with the recent doubleheader and the doubleheader the Mets have coming up next Monday in Atlanta. Why does Willie Randolph refuse to double switch, and why does he burn his better relievers in games that aren't close? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop? We may never know....

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Willie put in Sanchez and Wagner so they could bounce back from the last tim ehe ran them out there and they put the game out of reach. Sanchez is still not exactly where he would like to be, and I am sure of that, plus Sanchez hasn't gone two days in a row for a while. So, he sends him out there tonight, Sanchez puts in a strong inning, and then the test is to see if he can go tomorrow if the game calls for it. "I know that I want an 8th inning guys who can pitch a couple days in a row and still be effective. Now, you can make the arguement, what if Thursdays game is close too, well we would expect Wagner to go three days in a row if we needed him, so why not Sanchez. Point being is I think sending him out there was a move to boost confidence after he got hit around his last time out.

Unknown said...

I would just like to add that I think the moderator on this site is a bum and doesn't keep up with his Mets posts.