Tomorrow doesn’t matter if you’re dead today

Ready for some fun, kids?� Let’s play “You’re The Man­ager.” � Base­ball man­agers make very impor­tant deci­sions that their years of expe­ri­ence in base­ball can give them insight that an out­sider like you or me can only dream to have.� But let’s pre­tend, shall we?

Player A has eleven home runs, an OPS of .863, and is already in the game.

Player B has six­teen home runs, an OPS of .927, and is on the bench.

Eh — not much dif­fer­ence.� If look­ing solely at that, you’d take the player that’s in the game and leave the other player on the bench just in case.� Let’s look deeper.

Player B is a for­mer MVP.� Player A has never received a MVP vote.

Well, awards are rewards for past per­for­mance.� What’s to say Player A won’t get MVP votes this year?� And it’s not like Player B is even a reign­ing MVP.

Player B has fin­ished in the top 4 of the MVP race every year of his career, likely due to his career .330 bat­ting aver­age, 266 career home runs, and 1.037 career OPS.� Player A has a career bat­ting aver­age of .283 and has never fin­ished a sea­son with a bat­ting aver­age higher than .310.� He has 77 career home runs and a .791 career OPS, albeit in 242 less games.

Wow — a career .330 hit­ter?� Top four every sea­son?� That’s pretty impressive.

Player B’s most sim­i­lar bat­ters through his age (thanks B-R) are Jim­mie Foxx, Frank Robin­son, and Joe DiMag­gio.� Player A’s most sim­i­lar bat­ters through his age are Carl Everett, Shea Hil­len­brand, and Mil­ton Bradley.

Ew.� Keep in mind this is purely sta­tis­ti­cal though — if you think of things in com­mon with Everett, Hil­len­brand, and Bradley, it’s not their stat lines.

You know, maybe we’re look­ing at this too much in the past.� Base­ball is about now — the hot hand, the live bat.� How about their last 40 games?

Player A: 4 HR, .289 BA, .807 OPS
Player B: 8 HR, .338 BA, 1.012 OPS

Um… their last 25 games?

Player A: 3 HR, .268 BA, .804 OPS
Player B: 1 HR, .337 BA, .893 OPS

Um… their last 10 games?

Player A: 1 HR, .241 BA, .729 OPS
Player B: 0 HR, .400 BA, .917 OPS

Yeah.� So back to “You’re The Man­ager”.� Bot­tom of the 9th, two out, bases loaded.� Down by one run.� Der­rek Lee is on sec­ond, who has decent speed, so a base hit will prob­a­bly get the win­ning run home.

If you’re the man­ager, who do you send up to the plate?� If you’re Tony LaRussa, you send up Player A, and you watch as Player A hits a fly ball to right field that is eas­ily caught to end the game.� You lose, as Player B remains on the bench.

Per­haps Tony LaRussa was act­ing under mis­guided loy­al­ity, since this was an All-Star game and one of those play­ers was from his team, the St. Louis Car­di­nals.� All-Star man­agers often stick to what is famil­iar to them.

Except that it was Player B who was on the Car­di­nals, not Player A.

For those who haven’t fig­ured out by now, Player B is Albert Pujols, while Player A is Aaron Rowand.� Rowand, play­ing cen­ter field and 0–1 with a strike­out since com­ing in for Ken Grif­fey a few innings ear­lier, was sched­uled to be the 8th bat­ter in the NL lineup when the 9th inning started, and prob­a­bly didn’t think he’d be bat­ting when the first two NL bat­ters were retired, leav­ing two outs with none on.� Then Dmitri Young, hit­ting for pitcher Trevor Hoff­man, got an infield base hit, fol­lowed up by a two run home run from Alfonso Sori­ano.� Now it’s 5–4, with two outs and no one on.

J.J. Hardy walks.� Jim Ley­land has enough, and pulls Seat­tle closer J.J. Putz for Ana­heim closer Fran­cisco Rodriguez.� Rodriguez walks Der­rek Lee.� Rodriguez walks Orlando Hud­son.� Rodriguez wets himself.

So now you have the bases loaded.� It’s the bot­tom of the ninth.� Since Lee has some speed, any­thing out­side of an infield sin­gle will prob­a­bly get him in from sec­ond to win the game.� A walk ties the game, and brings up Freddy Sanchez, who isn’t a hor­ri­ble hitter.

So the ques­tion is who you’d rather have up to bat — the per­son more likely to get the base hit, or the per­son more likely to take advan­tage of the fraz­zled Rodriguez and take the walk to tie the game.

We’ve already stated that Pujols (Player B, for those not fol­low­ing) was the bet­ter career hit­ter, the bet­ter hit­ter the last few months, the bet­ter hit­ter the last month, and the bet­ter hit­ter over the last ten games.

Aaron Rowand has 29 walks this sea­son.� Albert Pujols has 53.

So if you’re Tony LaRussa and you want the base hit, you go to Pujols.� If you want the walk, you go to Pujols.� If you want the guy you’re famil­iar with for the last six+ sea­sons, you go to Pujols.

But appar­ently, if you’re Tony LaRussa last night, you go with Aaron Rowand.

LaRussa jus­ti­fied keep­ing Pujols on the bench by say­ing that he needed him in case the game went into extra innings.� That’s a good strat­egy if you’re tied at the moment that deci­sion needs to be made.� You know, if it’s cur­rently pos­si­ble to go into extra innings.� But when you’re down by a run and it’s the bot­tom of the 9th inning, extra innings isn’t the most likely of situations.

But not using your best hit­ter in a do-or-die sit­u­a­tion is the equiv­a­lent of bring­ing a knife to a gun­fight because you’ve only got one bul­let, and you might have a gun­fight tomorrow.

Tomor­row doesn’t mat­ter if you’re dead today.

MLB.com’s game wrapup quoted Pujols:

“Maybe he was sav­ing me for next year’s All-Star Game,” Pujols jok­ingly said.

Yeah, that “jok­ing” didn’t last long:

“It’s the All-Star game. He can do what he wants,” Pujols said Tues­day night. “He does what­ever he wants. If I wasn’t expect­ing to play, I wouldn’t have come up here.”

What’s that, Albert?� Did you just ques­tion man­age­r­ial mas­ter­mind Tony LaRussa?

“If he wants to get upset, he can get upset,” La Russa said. “What­ever he wants to do, he can do. It’s Amer­ica. That wasn’t the most impor­tant thing tonight.”

So keep­ing every player happy wasn’t the most impor­tant thing tonight, play­ing every­one wasn’t the most impor­tant thing tonight, and win­ning wasn’t the most impor­tant thing tonight.� Was there can­cer research going on in the on-deck cir­cle that hasn’t been announced to the media?� Was it a dying child’s wish to see Aaron Rowand bat twice in the All-Star game?

“Once we lost (Miguel) Cabr­era and (Freddy) Sanchez, he [Pujols] was the guy we were going to use to pro­tect our­selves in case we kept play­ing because of Albert’s ver­sa­til­ity,” La Russa said. “I think we had the right guy at bat.”

I missed when Freddy Sanchez got hurt, appar­ently, because he was still in the lineup, and would have bat­ted after Rowand.

Now defen­sive issues aside, had Rowand been taken out for Pujols and Pujols walked or taken an infield hit, leav­ing the game tied, then Freddy Sanchez (still alive) could have got­ten out the fol­low­ing at-bat, putting the game into extra innings.� Pujols would have then had to move to left field, with Alfonso Sori­ano shift­ing over to cen­ter, leav­ing the National League with a less than desir­able out­field defense.

How­ever, under the sce­nario that LaRussa pic­tures, Pujols ends up at third base, a posi­tion he hadn’t played reg­u­larly since his rookie sea­son, and at all since 2002.

So why is Freddy Sanchez gone?� Is LaRussa think­ing too far ahead of him­self, plan­ning on pinch hit­ting for Sanchez with Pujols in the fol­low­ing at-bat?� Con­sid­er­ing that Sanchez is arguably a bet­ter hit­ter than Rowand too, it seems like a severe case of either over-management, or just plain drop­ping the ball.