Second Guessing Scioscia – No more benefit of the doubt

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 back everything we said about giving Scioscia the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his extra innings bullpen management choices.

Fool me twice…
Dammit, Sosh, I trusted you. In this very space last week, I bent over backwards to try and defend your questionable bullpen management in an extra innings game. I vouched for you and specifically said that I thought you were one of the few managers that had seen the light and realized that a road team saving their closer for a save situation in an extra innings game was dumb.

Nope, it turns out I’m the dumb one because it was you bending over backwards this week to show me how wrong I was in that assumption.

In the August 2nd game against the Dodgers, Scioscia had burned through almost his entire bullpen because he decided to go with a Cory Rasmus-led staff day as a spot starter for C.J. Wilson‘s vacated spot. In a stroke of bad timing, that game went extra innings, which was kind of a problem because Ramos, Alvarez, Salas, Smith, Gott and obviously Rasmus got used up just to reach that tenth inning. That left Scioscia with just two choices: Huston Street or Drew Rucinski.

Keep in mind that due up were Howie Kendrick, Adrian Gonzalez and Andre Ethier. This is easily the most dangerous part of the Dodgers order. If ever there was a time to bring in Street in a non-save situation, this was it. Doing so would mean that if the game went more innings, Scioscia would have to just ride Rucinski the whole way. Of course, if Scioscia was going to only use Street in a save situation, which he clearly was going to, he’d be riding Rucinski the whole way anyway.

Let’s not forget though that Rucinski is terrible. He’s a Triple-A journeyman who was only called up on an emergency basis, not because of merit. For this game, he was literally the worst of the 50 players in uniform. Yet Scioscia still deemed it necessary to save Street for a save situation that has a very good chance of never coming precisely because of the fact that Rucinski would be pitching.

What Scioscia should’ve been concerned with is trying to keep the game out of Rucinski’s hands as long as possible. Instead, Scioscia actively avoided Street and his best reliever ended up being the only one to not get into the game on staff day.

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About that staff day…
So the whole staff day choice was an interesting one in its own right. Scioscia found a great deal of success with this tactic in September of last season. The team even consciously made sure to stretch Cory Rasmus out to 60 pitches in the minors before recalling him to the majors, presumably because of wanting to have the staff day contingency plan available to them.

Small problem. The staff day approach worked well last season because the Angels deployed it in September and in the American League. This game was in early-August and in a National League park.

What this meant for Scioscia is that he only had six additional relievers at his disposal for the game instead of a virtually endless supply like he’d have in September. This presents a looming threat that some weird and unfathomable thing might happen like, I don’t know, just pulling this out of thin air- like running out of pitchers in a game that went extra innings and being forced to rely entirely on Drew Rucinski.

The National League component was an issue because it led to the Angels churning through the relievers so quickly. The eventuality of the pitcher’s spot in the batting order coming up to bat prevented Scioscia from using any reliever other than Jose Alvarez for more than one inning.

Cesar Ramos pitched in the bottom of the fourth and was pinch hit for in the top of the fifth despite using just 15 pitches. Joe Smith pitched the bottom of the eighth inning and was pinch hit for in the top of the ninth in a game where you’d probably want to get an additional inning out of him, even if he did allow a game-tying homer earlier.

It also prevented Scioscia from being able to do truly effective mixing and matching to exploit matchups. He burned Ramos and Alvarez early, which meant he didn’t have them available for later or more high leverage innings. That’s actually kind of a big deal since the Dodgers are a team that heavily employs platoons.

Overall, the staff day worked decently, but it required a lot of effort and planning. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it taxed a non-expanded bullpen right in the middle of a divisional race. It just makes me wonder if they wouldn’t have been better off calling up Nate Smith or Adam Wilk. Nick Tropeano would’ve been ideal, but he would’ve been on short rest since the Angels couldn’t plan for this game thanks to C.J. Wilson sort of surprising them with his pronouncement on the health of his elbow. Those starts might’ve gone very poorly but at least the bullpen wouldn’t have been worked so hard and in many ways put the Angels at a strategic disadvantage.

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Bedrocked
Another extra innings game, another questionable bullpen choice for Scioscia. Once again the Angels found themselves in a tied game in extra innings. Because it was a home game, Scioscia had already mercifully used Smith and Street. He’d also already used Gott and Alvarez, so when the game extended to the 12th inning, he had a tough choice: Salas, Ramos or Bedrosian.

Really though, it was a choice of Salas and Bedrosian. Cesar Ramos is probably better than both players, but not by a huge margin and there was a string of righties due up. That string of righties, if put down in order, would lead to a 13th inning where Lindor, Brantley and Santana would be due up. That’s the lineup segment you want to save Ramos for.

So now back to figuring out which is the lesser of two evils: Salas and his recent spate of allowing homers or Bedrosian and his extensive history of not being a MLB-caliber relief pitcher.

In Salas, you have a guy who is known to be streaky and had allowed a homer in two of his last three outings. He’d actually worked a fair amount recently as well having pitched in six of the past ten days. That might compel Scioscia to avoid him, but it actually should probably have urged Scioscia to use him in that specific inning. If this game did go several innings more, he needed a long man and Salas was too exhausted to be that long man but Bedrosian could’ve have been. Salas was perfectly suited to pitch to that string of righties before ceding to Ramos.

Bedrosian, however, is another matter. He’s spent part of two seasons in the majors and consistently failed to miss bats and the strike zone in general. In Triple-A this year, he has successfully managed to avoid allowing a homer, an impressive feat at Salt Lake, but has been very hittable in general, especially compared to his exploits at the lower levels of the minors. He, however, hadn’t worked much recently, so again, he was best suited to work multiple innings if it came to that. He also just isn’t as trustworthy as Salas and that’s really saying something.

So why did Scioscia opt to go with the guy fresh up from Triple-A? I honestly have no idea. Cam has good splits against righties in his small MLB sample, but that same platoon advantage does not appear in his extensive minor league work. Maybe Mike was just tired of losing because of Salas and wanted to give someone else a shot at breaking our hearts. In that case, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

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