Quote:
Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0
I'm not going to pretend to know much about Mike Matheny and his managing. I assume it would drive me about as crazy as Ned Yost and Ned Yost's bullpen management.
I will, however, point out that a manager, in the regular season, is basically +-2 wins for his team, tops.
The Cardinals were the same fan base that hated Tony LaRussa.
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The problem with Matheny is the bizarre loyalty and the fact that he
flogs his top 3 bullpen arms.
Look at every team he's run and he's lost either his setup man, primary lefty or closer for at least 1/2 the season. It's because he refuses to use anyone else. We have a
thirteen man pitching staff right now and Kevin Siegrist has pitched 4 times in the last five games, the same Siegrist that lost 5 mph off his fastball and missed almost all of 2014 (after making 45 appearances in 100 games as a 23 yr old rook) and is only just now getting healthy again. He's been in 32 of the Cardinals 63 games so far. Care to guess how long he'll last? He broke down after appearing in 32 of 68 last season. I'm giving him another month. Walden appeared in 12 of the first 20 and has now missed 2 months.
Motte, Boggs, Rzepczynski, Mujica, Siegrist, Rosenthal, Walden - 1 pitcher over 3 years of managing this club has made it through multiple seasons unscathed and it's probably because he's never quite been one of Matheny's favorite 3: Seth Maness. Otherwise you can count on either his closer, setup man or #1 lefty missing months of the season every single year.
And again, the man feels compelled to utilize a 13 man pitching staff so he can play with a short bench (that is presently 2 catchers, Pete Kozma - worst player in baseball, and Peter Bourjos) and still go more than a week without even using a hot reliever like Villanueva.
And lets not even discuss the fact that for the 2nd consecutive season our cleanup hitter's been removed from the lineup and the team has actually
improved because Matheny wouldn't bench a struggling Craig or Adams. Instead he'd just keep sending them out there to kill rallies. It took a trade and an injury to get two negative WAR hitters out of the
cleanup spot.
Ultimately I think tactics sway anywhere from 3-5 games/season personally. Not a huge number, but not insignificant. But they matter more in the playoffs and they matter if they're getting your guys injured due to overuse.