Second Guessing Scioscia – Chess or checkers?

Welcome to Second Guessing Scioscia, our look back at some of the questionable decisions that Mike Scioscia made in the last week. And, boy, there are some questionable decisions to be reviewed. In the history of this column, we have never once struggled for content. However, we aren’t anti-Scioscia. The official MWAH stance on Scioscia is pro-Scioscia overall. But his in-game tactics need some help and we are here to provide that help by nitpicking incessantly and grading them with our patented SciosciaFace grading system.

This week we focus on just one game where Scioscia managed the hell out of the one inning. HE MANAGED SOOOO HARD! He was going to outmanage Brad Ausmus if it was the last thing he ever did. To Scioscia, it must have felt like he was involved in a brilliant game of chess. For those of us observing at home, he might have actually been playing checkers. Let’s find out who was right.

The Price is right, right?
In this episode, our hero, Mike Scioscia, is seemingly trying to match wits with Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, a manager not exactly known for his mental acumen, and overcome Detroit’s distinct advantage of having David Price on the mound. This is a noble pursuit for our dear manager. However, when taking a closer look at the moves he made in the bottom of the eighth inning of this tied game, one can’t help but wonder if Scioscia’s opponents even realized that they were engaged in this contest of wills.

The first salvo from Scioscia was his curious decision to use Kirk Nieuwenhuis as the pinch-runner for David Freese, who had drawn a leadoff walk. Pinch-running is very appropriate here, but opting for Nieuwenhuis over the indisputably faster Featherston certainly caused eyebrows to be raised. The speed difference alone made this maneuver odd, but the fact that Featherston was clearly going to have to enter the game in the ninth inning to take over at third base for Freese made it even odder.

Now, trying to put myself in the mind of Scioscia, I think I understand what he was trying to do. This is a tied game and the Angels only had a 67% win probability at this point. There was a good chance this game was going to extra innings. If that were the case, Featherston, easily the worst hitter on the roster, would be stuck batting behind Trout and Pujols. That’s definitely something to avoid, but it also means you are planning to fail. If we are truly worried about failure, Scioscia would have to have realized that if Detroit retired the next three batters, he’d be forced to put Featherston in for Alfredo Marte, meaning Featherston would lead off the next inning. This is also less than ideal. Either way, Scioscia is potentially ending up with Featherston hitting in a spot he’d rather not have him hit. But the choice he made ensured that he did NOT use his best available baserunner.

The next questionable decision by Scioscia was to have Kole Calhoun sacrifice bunt with runners on first and second and nobody out. I know we normally decry all sac bunts as evil, but from a run expectancy standpoint, this is basically a push. Factoring in context, it is also left-handed Kole Calhoun facing left-handed David Price. I like me some Calhoun, but this is a bad, bad match-up for him. As much as it pains me to say it, this was probably the smart move.

Where things start getting more suspect is what Scioscia did in the wake of that bunt and the subsequent intentional walk of Grant Green. Alfredo Marte was due up and the Tigers were faced with the choice of potentially replacing Price with right-handed Joba Chamberlain. From here, I believe what we see is Scioscia trying to bait Ausmus into bringing Chamberlain into the game so that Scioscia can pinch-hit with Matt Joyce.

As Marte got ready to bat, it quickly became clear that Ausmus wasn’t going to give Price the hook. Scioscia countered by replacing the right-handed Marte with the equally as right-handed Carlos Perez. This is the worm on the hook. Scioscia wants Ausmus to see an opportunity to bring in Chamberlain and get Scioscia to burn Perez as an asset. For Detroit, that might well be worth having Joyce come in as a pinch-hitter since Joyce is a GIDP and strikeout threat and also generally not good this year and because it would leave the Angels with just one player left on the bench for the duration of the game.

Alas, Ausmus didn’t bite. Now Scioscia has to pay for his attempt at strategy, assuming I’m not reading too much into it to begin with. Marte is not an established big leaguer, but he had already faced Price three times and gotten a single off of him earlier and put the ball in play in both of his other at-bats. Now he’d get to see him for a fourth time. This is the times through the order penalty in action. Scioscia, however, flushed that penalty down the drain. In so doing, he imposed a penalty on the Angels instead because there is generally considered to be a pinch-hit penalty, which essentially means that a hitter coming up cold isn’t going to be at full strength. Combine those penalties and Scioscia just went and handed a nice little advantage to David Price who already has enough advantage as it is. Perhaps that is a worthwhile risk to take though if it means getting Price out of the game, only it didn’t work because Price remained on the mound.

Where Scioscia saves some face here is that Perez was a better right-hander for the job at hand, which is to just get that runner from third home. Marte is a high strikeout player, an outcome the Angels very much want to avoid, so bringing in the less strikeout prone Perez is preferable, if not for the aforementioned penalties. Both players pose GIDP threats, perhaps more so with Perez, but it is hard to say since neither player has much in the way of batted ball profile data. So, yes, in a vacuum, Perez is probably a better choice than Marte. But is he a better choice when you apply the pinch-hitter discount to Perez and add the times through the order bonus to Marte? I’m not so sure.

After all of these crazy machinations, basically none of them really came into play. Nieuwenhuis’ speed was never needed and Perez hit a pop fly. Johnny Giavotella saved the day, seemingly making Scioscia’s epic display of overmanaging look like a stroke of genius. The moral of the story? Never manage.

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