Where there's smoke

We've touched on Cecil Cooper's....er...."unorthodox" (read: silly) managerial moves before (specifically: here, here, here here, and here). He made another last night that could have changed the outcome of a fairly important game, as far as late May divisional games are concerned. Top of the seventh inning, two outs, Hunter Pence is on second base, with the Astros down 3-1. Pence followed Carlos Lee's bomb with sharp single to center but is in danger of being stranded and letting a rare scoring opportunity go by the boards. Roy has pitched pretty well. He overcame some early wildness, to give up only one run over his previous five innings of work. Now, with Cards starter Kyle Lohse on the ropes, Cooper leaves in Oswalt to hit for himself. We all know Roy is a competitor who after throwing only 79 pitches to that point was well within the sensible range of being left out to throw another inning. However, two things make me question this move. The first of which is the fact that Roy has had groin problems recently. Why test it in May? Any shot, and I mean ANY shot this team has to compete for a playoff birth is going to hinge on the right arm and healthy groin(s)of Roy Oswalt. As far as in game management in concerned, unless your starter is throwing an absolute gem at that point, it is probably best to not look a gift scoring opportunity in the mouth.

Another important issue that seems to be rearing it's ugly head is a lack of communication between Oswalt and Cooper. We saw a couple weeks ago that both men may not be on the same page. I'm not trying to insinuate anything at this point, but this is something to keep in the back of our collective mind. AM 790's Craig Roberts cited an unnamed team official who, when asked by Roberts if anything was amiss with the Oswalt/Cooper relationship, said (paraphrasing) "that's not something I'd like to get into at this point." That's never a good thing to hear. A lot of this probably has to do with Roy's struggles thus far. Both seem to be reasonable, team first guys, which gives me confidence this whole episode is nothing blown up into something.

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