Human Nature
It is sometimes said that most decisions are usually made before hand and then we find the reasons to justify that decision. I think that is what happened with the Schmidt affair.
To recap, Schmidt's turn on Sunday was pushed back to Monday, ostensibly because he was overworked by throwing 131 pitches in his last outing. So Hennessey was brought up to pitch today (and he did marvelous!, helping the Giants win their 5th in a row) and the naysayers can say, "I told you so Alou, why are you overworking him? It was senseless to have him throw that many pitches when he was relatively ineffective anyway that game."
Not that I disagree with them but that's not the real reason this was done, at least from my reckoning. Alou never admits that he did something wrong. If he worked Schmidt 131 pitches, by god, he has no problem with that, Schmidt's a strong guy, he can handle the high pitch count, even this early in the season.
However, which would you rather do, use Schmidt to pitch against a poor offensive team like the Pirates or pitch him against one of our division rivals, in fact, one (the D-backs) that is ahead of us in the standings, and instead use a minor league call-up to take on the Pirates? That would be much better use of Mr. Schmidt's abilities, throw him at our division rivals and let a prospect we can observe and give him some MLB experience tackle the Pirates, especially since we have already won the series by winning the first two games.
But how to change his spot in the rotation and push him back a day? Oh, yeah, we had him throw 131 pitches, mea culpa, we better delay his turn in the rotation a day, yeah, that's the ticket. And there's your easy reason to justify doing exactly what you wanted to do without appearing to purposefully (god forbid) pushing back our best pitcher to face a rival, which would appear wimpy.
Now about the game, what about our young'uns, Ellison, Niekro, and Hennessey? Ellison and Niekro have been hitting above and beyond what they had done in the minors and giving the Giants that extra push they need while Bonds is out. And Hennessey came in and, excepting the two Ward homers, shut down the Pirates. This is pretty exciting stuff, hopefully they can keep it up.
To recap, Schmidt's turn on Sunday was pushed back to Monday, ostensibly because he was overworked by throwing 131 pitches in his last outing. So Hennessey was brought up to pitch today (and he did marvelous!, helping the Giants win their 5th in a row) and the naysayers can say, "I told you so Alou, why are you overworking him? It was senseless to have him throw that many pitches when he was relatively ineffective anyway that game."
Not that I disagree with them but that's not the real reason this was done, at least from my reckoning. Alou never admits that he did something wrong. If he worked Schmidt 131 pitches, by god, he has no problem with that, Schmidt's a strong guy, he can handle the high pitch count, even this early in the season.
However, which would you rather do, use Schmidt to pitch against a poor offensive team like the Pirates or pitch him against one of our division rivals, in fact, one (the D-backs) that is ahead of us in the standings, and instead use a minor league call-up to take on the Pirates? That would be much better use of Mr. Schmidt's abilities, throw him at our division rivals and let a prospect we can observe and give him some MLB experience tackle the Pirates, especially since we have already won the series by winning the first two games.
But how to change his spot in the rotation and push him back a day? Oh, yeah, we had him throw 131 pitches, mea culpa, we better delay his turn in the rotation a day, yeah, that's the ticket. And there's your easy reason to justify doing exactly what you wanted to do without appearing to purposefully (god forbid) pushing back our best pitcher to face a rival, which would appear wimpy.
Now about the game, what about our young'uns, Ellison, Niekro, and Hennessey? Ellison and Niekro have been hitting above and beyond what they had done in the minors and giving the Giants that extra push they need while Bonds is out. And Hennessey came in and, excepting the two Ward homers, shut down the Pirates. This is pretty exciting stuff, hopefully they can keep it up.
posted by obsessivegiantscompulsive at 5/01/2005 08:40:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home