Second Guessing Scioscia – The worst inning of the season

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 (mostly) 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.

In this week’s edition of Second Guessing Scioscia we take a look at what is no doubt going to go down as Scioscia’s single worst managed inning of the 2015 season.

JUST THE WORST
The race is over, I’m calling it. Scioscia has officially turned in the worst inning of his 2015 season. There is still nearly two months of Angels baseball left, but I can’t imagine him beating his buffoonery in the 11th inning of the August 12th game against the White Sox.

Allow me to set the scene. It is the 11th inning of the Angels’ final game in Chicago. They are desperately trying to avoid being swept. This isn’t a must-win game, put it is pretty darn close. This is important to note because the severity of the situation really ups the idiocy.

Having already blown a golden opportunity to score a run in the 10th inning, the Angels are blessed to have Taylor Featherston, of all people, draw a walk to leadoff the inning. With runs so hard to come by, how would Scioscia respond? By bunting because of course.

Never mind that Taylor Featherston is a fast runner on first base. Never mind that Tyler Flowers is catching and is just league average at throwing out basestealers. Never mind that there is a reliever on the mound who has allowed 11-of-14 base stealers to steal successfully. Never mind that at the plate is Johnny Giavotella, a player who makes a ton of contact and is thus an ideal batter to use for hit-and-run or just to trust him to move the runner over on his own. Never mind that Giavotella already has two hits on the night. Never mind that earlier in the week that Johnny was asked to sac bunt and could not get it down. Somehow a bad bunter who is a very good situational hitter ends up being asked to bunt… OKAY!

Clearly giving away an out in a lineup that has been making plenty of outs on their own didn’t seem like a bad idea to Scioscia. It also didn’t occur to Scioscia that even if Johnny G got the sac bunt down successfully, which he did, it would reduce the Angels’ win expectancy by two percent, which it did. That doesn’t even factor in that the sac bunt would surely lead to Conor Gillaspie getting intentionally walked, which it did, to get to Chris Iannetta, who has been so cold with the bat in recent weeks that there are reports of glaciers forming underneath the Big A. While I am not one to give too much credence to hot and cold streaks, keep in mind that Iannetta is also just now getting his first at-bat of the game, so you get to add the pinch-hit penalty to his already microscopic odds of getting hit here as well.

This is all a very long way of saying…

Don’t worry, logic and reason didn’t just fail Scioscia for that half of the inning, it failed him in the bottom of the inning as well when he decided to bring out Jose Alvarez to pitch.

Again, context is important here. The Angels are on the road in extra innings. Twice this month alone Scioscia has been burned by preserving Huston Street for a save situation that never came. Did he learn from this? No, of course not, don’t be silly.

In past situations Scioscia has at least had the excuse of playing to match-ups. There was no such excuse here as Alvarez was being brought in to face Jose Abreu, Melky Cabrera and Avisail Garcia, three right-handed batters and far and away the most dangerous part of the lineup. Wouldn’t you rather have Street facing those guys? Apparently not, if you are Mike Scioscia.

The other wrinkle here is that Scioscia was running out of arms. He had Alvarez, Street and Cesar Ramos left at his disposal as Cory Rasmus had worked long relief the night before. Ramos probably was a last resort as well since he was (and still is) in a severe slump. Sure enough, Abreu hit a rocket off Alvarez that was fortunately caught and Melky reached base thanks to an error. This wasn’t so much Alvarez’s fault, but after an intentional walk to Garcia to put the double play in order (which was smart in this situation, so it wasn’t all bad), Alvarez was in a tight spot.

Here, Scioscia finally took a break from huffing paint and did something intelligent, though also very obvious. Street was summoned and extricated the Angels from the situation. Scioscia even doubled-down on the smart by having Street return for the 12th inning, a rare multi-inning appearance for him, but one that was more than warranted.

The only catch to all of this is that Scioscia put himself into a situation where he burnt through his remaining arms. Alvarez is one of the two guys in the bullpen with any real length in his arm and Scioscia just wasted him on getting one out. That was entirely avoidable had he just used Street to start the inning. That would’ve allowed Alvarez to enter the game in more of a scenario where he could go multiple innings, but also delay him having to face the likes of Abreu. Instead, Alvarez was toast and the 13th inning had to be handed to the struggling Ramos who struggled the Angels into a walk-off loss after facing just three batters.

WELL DONE, SCIOSCIA. You did just about everything wrong and contributed directly to the Angels losing a crucial game.

And now for the verdict. This is very exciting because I’ve never had to do this before, but this inning was so poorly managed that the standard SciosciaFace scale can’t handle it. That’s right, we are going full animated Scioscia at his low point, spilling toxic waste, leading to his own tragic illness.

VERDICT: