St. Louis Sports Blog

-- You know who else I hate? Trevor Hoffman. Sure, he seems like an okay guy and all, but he apparently has a big chunk of Albert Kryptonite in his pocket at all times, which is enough to turn me against the guy. Seriously, I don't know if I've ever seen Albert behind on an 86 mph fastball before, but that was just what Hoffman blew by him to end the game. Ouch. 

-- And finally, I have to to say, Tony really screwed the pooch in the seventh, when he pinch-hit for Brendan Ryan and ended up using two hitters and still failing to get a matchup that was really beneficial. At the time, David Weathers was really struggling -- then again, when isn't he, at least against the Cardinals? -- and the Cards had him on the ropes. Pinch-hitting Skip Schumaker for Brendan there only pushed Ken Macha into bringing in a better pitcher, a lefty, and forced Tony to waste another bench player he really didn't have to keep Skippy from being subjected to the one thing at which he's truly awful: hitting left-handed pitching. 

The end result of all the extra moves: Brendan Ryan was replaced at shortstop by Khalil Greene, so the defense got worse. Skip Schumaker exited the game without doing anything, so was essentially wasted. And Khalil took the at-bat, which one could argue is somewhat worse than letting Brendan hit for himself. Not a great showing by the manager in that particular situation. I'm certainly not in any way some sort of baseball genius, but even I could see the second Tony made the move to bring in Skip that Macha was just going to go to his LOOGY. It's really my greatest gripe with La Russa; how often he makes the game more complicated than it needs to be, thinking himself into knots without actually gaining anything. 

Thus, I've come up with a rule, and I demand Tony follow it at all times: 

Stick to that, Tony, and I think we'll all be fine. 

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