Tonight, we saw the birth of a new era. The #Yosted era is dead. Long live the #Soshted era!
What bloody trainwreck. In a game where there was barely any offense, Scioscia somehow managed to interject himself into every situation, and not in a good way. Sadly, this is exactly what I feared he might do.
The ginger elephant in the corner for this game was Scioscia’s incessant sacrifice bunting, specifically the ill-fated Kole Calhoun attempt. It was such an absurdly stupid decision, I literally did not believe it was happening even as I watched it.
0-0 pitch: Oh, surely Calhoun was just bluffing to draw the infield in. Scioscia would never bunt with one of his best hitters.
1-0 pitch: Hmm, Calhoun showed bunt again. That’s strange. Oh well, disaster avoided because there is obviously no sane person that would bunt a 2-0 pitch.
2-0 pitch: He just bluffed bunt again. OK, stay calm. Maybe he was told to take until a strike was thrown, so he faked the bunt attempt to keep the infield in.
2-1 pitch: WHAT’S GOING ON?! STOP IT RIGHT NOW! DON’T DO THIS.
3-1 pitch: @#$@#%#!!!!!
A 3-1 bunt from a very good hitter who is a very poor bunter. That might have been the single worst sac bunt decision I’ve seen in my life. I’ve defended Scioscia quite a bit in the past, but after that, I’M OUT. Done. You’re on your own, Sosh.
Of course, that wasn’t Scioscia’s only #buntfucking of the night. In the seventh and the ninth, he had Erick Aybar lay down a bunt to advance the runner to second. Neither was a good idea, though I could be talked into supporting the bunt in the ninth. But what made them especially ill-conceived is that in both instances, the batter that came to the plate was Josh Hamilton and in both instances he was facing a tough lefty reliever. With how rusty and generally lost at the plate Josh looked earlier in the game, him making an out was inevitable.
But we’re not done yet. Again, in both instances, C.J. Cron was up next and a right-handed reliever was brought in to face him. He doesn’t have much of a platoon split, but still, the Royals have the advantage now. In either case, Scioscia could’ve pinch-hit with Efren Navarro to regain the advantage. In so doing, he’d also bring to the plate a better contact hitter, which matters when all you need is a lousy base hit, not a mammoth homer, which is Cron’s specialty. Cron is a better hitter overall than Navarro and had good at-bats in both instances, but I’m not sold it was the right call.
Let’s go back to Hamilton though. He is getting, let me check, yep, all of the hate after his abysmal game. He had one ball go over his head, leading to a run. I’m not convinced that was actually catchable, but he came close enough and looked uncertain enough in his route that the question could be asked. Then he did this:
Again, I’m not sure that if he’d not fallen down and properly got set under the ball to throw that he could’ve prevented the runner from advancing to third, where he’d subsequently score from on the next batter, but at least he could’ve made an effort to throw the runner out.
Hamilton rounded out his night with some truly terrible at-bats, two of which came in high leverage situations. He almost looked like a guy who hadn’t really faced live pitching in three weeks. One could certainly question the wisdom of having him in there.
From Scioscia’s standpoint, you want to take a chance on Hamilton’s upside, but there is also so much downside as well. With Jason Vargas on the mound, Scioscia could’ve used that as an excuse to have Collin Cowgill start the game and then had Hamilton work against live pitching on the side that day with a goal of having him pinch-hit. Then ease him back into the lineup in Game 2. Ultimately, I think he had no choice to go with Hamilton in this game, but he’s at least going to have to think about it real hard the rest of the series.
In fact, Scioscia needs to think real hard about a lot of things before the rest of these games. Between those two lucky Aoki catches and Trout losing the ball in the lights, luck played a huge role in this game. When you are intentionally hurting your own cause with dumb decisions, you eat into your margins for error. Once those margins are all gone, luck comes and bites you in the ass and you find yourself down 0-1 in the ALDS.
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