Orlando Hudson’s bunt

There is no excuse for sacrifice bunting with 0 outs in the first inning. 100% of the blame for Orlando Hudson’s first inning bunt gets pinned on Gardenhire, and you cannot move me off that opinion. There are many scenarios for which the decision to bunt Denard Span over to second could have come to pass, but all of them come back and point the finger at Gardenhire.
If the sign was sent in, then it’s Gardenhire’s fault.
If Hudson made the decision on his own, thinking it good strategy, then it’s Gardenhire’s fault for allowing such poor baseball strategy to exist in his clubhouse.
If Hudson made the decision because he lacked confidence, then it’s Gardenhire’s fault for failing to recognize an insecure player at the plate and putting him in the second spot in the order.
If the whole team locks up and makes bad decisions or gets weak in the knees during the postseason, that is 100% the fault of the manager, especially one who is lauded for his clubhouse.
Orlando Hudson has an on base percentage of .338 in 2010. He gets on base one in three times he is at the plate. In situations where there was a runner on first base and less than 2 outs, he grounded into 14 double plays in 108 plate appearances. That’s a “double play percentage” of .129. He is nearly 3 times more likely to get on base by swinging the bat than he is to ground into a double play in that situation, just taking the statistics from this year. If you decide that that 13% chance of a double play is too high to risk a real at bat, that is a loser’s mentality, and has no place on a team I root for.
Here’s the part that kills me. His next at bat, he got a single and proved himself a gifted baserunner. Let’s say he DID get on base in the first inning. Mauer strikes out, Delmon Young still grounds out. Now, with two outs, Thome gets beaned and Cuddyer hits his homer. The only difference is that now the bases are loaded. Now the Twins have two more runs. As you no doubt recall, the Twins lost by two. This makes a few leaps, of course, but so does automatically assuming a double play. And all that other stuff actually happened in the game.
Poor pitching hurt against the Yankees last night, but a large part of the burden needs to be placed on Gardenhire getting outmanaged once again. And don’t even get me started on Mauer’s dive into first.