Coop, You're Blowing It

At the risk of sounding like a whiny bitch, I'm going to criticize Coop's management decisions yet again. I'm justing to limit myself to the bottom of the ninth inning. As we rolled back from commercials, my stomach turned to see Dave Borkowski atop the mound and I thought "Jesus, does Coop just want to lose this game?" Brocail had just sailed through the 8th inning in which he had faced Duncan, Glaus, and Kennedy. Kennedy is somewhat a schlub, yes, but the other two are by no means easy outs, and Brocail just looked automatic. However, I guess Coop didn't mind that TLR was going for the win so much so, that he left his starter in to amass over 120 pitches this start to go the Complete Game. Coop just simply countered with sending out the 6th inning/mop-up guy, from last year...brilliant. As JD and Brownie rolled off Borkowski's stats and the camera's panned around, I kept waiting to hear/see a Carlos Lee defensive replacement. Lee was 8th up in the 10th if we made it and the game HAD to make it out of this inning for our bats to even factor back into the game. Alas, Coop chose to take out Brocail for a worse pitcher AND left Shamoo out there to try to keep the game tied.

Now some of you might be thinking, "Stephen, this is a little harsh" and maybe even, "Carlos Lee isn't that bad at LF." So I'll give you this, Carlos Lee is the second worse LFer in the National League. That's right, you just about cannot get worse than he is.

We all know what happened, but I'll give you a little visual courtesy of FanGraphs to drive the point home:


That Skip Schumaker single, which was preceded by some absolutely piss poor pitching by Dave Borkowski, allowed Carlos Lee's "defense" to lose the game for us. Look at the impact of that single. Think about that single to left that Carlos couldn't handle the hop on/get to at all because he's to BIG to be quick or agile enough to make the play. Then consider that Jose Cruz Jr, was just sitting on the bench. It's rare that management decisions win or lose games, my SB% article is a clear example of how manager's decisions can help or hurt their teams chances of winning, but the impact isn't a hugely significant amount. Yesterday, Cecil Cooper set this team up to lose, while TLR was doing everything he could to get his team win. Instead of being 1 over .500, we go into today's game a game under .500. Instead of having an opportunity to pull even with the Cardinals with the series sweep, we're simply trying to win the rubber game. All of it, chaps my ass. Something has got to be done about the train-wreck we have lumbering around in left-field. Evan and I will once again present our Modest Proposal as a possible solution.

Sphere: Related Content