Second Guessing Scioscia – Week 24: Fine tuning

Welcome to Second-Guessing Scioscia, our look back at some of the questionable decisions that Mike Scioscia made in the last week. This isn’t because we dislike Scioscia, in fact, MWAH is officially pro-Scioscia. However, we do realize that he is not infallible and hope to use this series to bring light to the decisions in which he went wrong (or was at least perceived to be wrong by some). At a minimum, it will help us all come to a better understanding of what goes on during games but maybe, just maybe, we’ll get lucky and this will somehow make Scioscia more self-aware of his more chronic managerial missteps.

The Angels are pretty much just playing out the string now, waiting for the official coronation as AL West champions. Until that happens, it is all about fine tuning some areas to be ready for the playoffs. Scioscia is not immune from that either as he tries to clean up a few of his managerial blind spots. Let’s look at a few.

9/6/14 – The bullpen game redux
Wow! The bullpen game strategy worked out so well that first time. I can’t believe it. We have to do it again!

That was probably Scioscia’s reaction to the shutout that eight pitchers combined to pitch against the A’s on August 30th. If it worked that well against Oakland, surely it would work even better against the Twins. That’s probably a fair reaction to have except for the part where Scioscia decided to implement the bullpen strategy in the exact same fashion as he did the first time.

The thing about that is that Scioscia kind of lucked out the first time, lest we forget the miracle GIDP that Yoslan Herrera induced from Jonny Gomes. This time though, Cory Rasmus didn’t pitch very well. He still followed him up with Michael Roth though, which was fine since he had to be hoping to get someone to potentially eat some innings and exploit platoon match-ups. However, just like last time, Roth eventually got himself into a tight spot in a tied game.

With two outs and two runners in scoring position, Scioscia went to Yoslan Herrera to escape the jam… again. Just like last time, it was the wrong guy to call upon since Herrera is, you know, not good. This time though, Herrera didn’t even make sense situationally. His ability to induce a grounder didn’t matter since there were two outs. He also was facing a left-handed batter, so he didn’t have the platoon advantage either. He could’ve gone with Fernando Salas, who is right-handed but has a good track record against lefties. The same goes for Jason Grilli. He could’ve even gone with Wade LeBlanc, who isn’t a lefty killer, but is at least left-handed.

Nope, he went with Herrera because that was the plan and damn the consequences. Sure enough, Aaron Hicks singled in two runs to give the Twins the lead. Lucky for Scioscia though, the Angels offense was able to mount a comeback and salvage the win.

One mitigating factor here though has to be that Scioscia surely realizes that the Angels are no longer in a place where they need to win every game. Losing this game to the Twins wouldn’t have been the end of the world and maybe getting to save his top relievers from having to be used for a day if things didn’t work out makes up for the loss. It is probably a little early to be thinking like that, but you could hardly blame Scioscia if he was.

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9/9/14 – Santiago’s early showers
Can we just get over this already? I know that there is still a lot of old school machismo that mandates that pitchers always go as deep into games as humanly possible. If you aren’t throwing 100+ pitches per game, then you just aren’t trying. Right?

Wrong. Sometimes, less is more. For Hector Santiago, that is definitely the case. This is something covered in this space before. Santiago is awful when he goes through the order for the third time. As such, Scioscia is well advised to give Santiago the hook as early as possible in close games. Usually he waits until Hector gets into a little bit of trouble, but this game he had an especially quick hook, not even sending Santiago out for the sixth inning despite him having only allowed one run and thrown 79 pitches.

Santiago did get into trouble the inning before and escaped, so the signs of trouble were certainly there. More importantly though, the Rangers had some right-handed bats coming up and Santiago’s platoon splits aren’t so great (X against LHB versus Y against RHB). In particular, Adrian Beltre, who had already ripped a line drive single and crushed a solo homer off Santiago earlier in the game, was due up. This was a one run game and Scioscia was obviously in no mode to screw around and made the right choice to pull Santiago.

The only misstep Scioscia made though is that all of these early showers seem to be getting to Santiago. He is trying to say the right thing to the press, but he has also stated that it is frustrating and he is well aware that he has only seen the seventh inning once all year (actually, his quote has him saying he hasn’t done it at all, so he probably needs to tune that awareness a little bit). At some point, Scioscia is going to have to throw Santiago a bone, just to keep him happy. It also wouldn’t hurt to get Santiago a game or two where he goes deep just so Hector is ready to handle such duty if he is asked to do it in the post-season. I seriously doubt he will need to that, but it doesn’t hurt to be ready.

VERDICT: