Who is Relieving Thursday?

[bill hAll Star]

Counsell ruined this series by pitching Schwarzak and Kneble Wed. leaving them unavailable for Thursday. Hader should have finished out that inning. And even been there for the 9th.

Counsell with all these moves, and then being tied when 9th and extras come to have Bandy/Susac be your best bats for the 10th inning.

 

A loss to the Pirates was only a 1game swing with the Cubs. a loss to the Cubs when ahead is a 2game swing, maybe even 2.5 technically because of w/l tiebreaker. Needed to be focused on the Cubs series in your managing over the Pirates on the road.

 

No, Counsell played almost all of it correctly. I do understand that the Cubs series is huge so maybe you'd break convention, but you pitch your best relievers first and worry about it later.

 

Same thing with bench play.

 

We have the benefit of hindsight to know that the Wednesday game was blown even with our "good pitchers" but imagine these 2 scenarios:

 

1. The Brewers blow Wednesday night with Torres and Drake, late, "saving" their bullpen for the Cubs. The Brewers then lose 10-2 on Thursday and win 9-1 on Friday so their bullpen gets rest anyways. Now take a look at that Wednesday game. Can you imagine the backlash of hindsight on Wednesday's game?

 

2. Walker is thrown out on a very close sac fly with a chance to win last night's game but Perez probably would've scored from 3rd. Sogard is barely unable to make a play on Baez's tying hit which Arcia could have made (we saw Arcia barely miss it, but if the ball was hit a foot to the left it's a play Arcia makes and Sogard doesn't).

 

You do everything you can to win the game when the chance is there and you worry about the rest later. In both of those cases.

 

The only questionable calls were leaving Thames to hit against a lefty (it ended up working) and putting Walker in at 1B. I'm assuming it's because he's a more agile 1B than Thames, but his lack of experience ended up doing us in.

 

Only Buck Showalter lives in the 80s or 90s with conventions of "saving" players for situations that probably will not even happen since you're forfeiting a close game to try to play for something later in the game or season that probably won't even happen.

[tmwiese55]

I agree with bill. I could see the argument for not pitching Swarzak Wednesday because of 2 inning outing before and knowing Knebel wouldn't be available Thursday so he'd be the 'closer' Thursday. That said, that's not what cost them this game. They didn't lose the game because Jeffress was in, he did his job. They scored on two basically IF hit dribbler types one off a pitch the guy dug out of the ground, just horrible luck.

[JohnBriggs12]

I agree with bill. I could see the argument for not pitching Swarzak Wednesday because of 2 inning outing before and knowing Knebel wouldn't be available Thursday so he'd be the 'closer' Thursday. That said, that's not what cost them this game. They didn't lose the game because Jeffress was in, he did his job. They scored on two basically IF hit dribbler types on off a pitch the guy dug out of the ground, just horrible luck.

 

Jeffress did his job pitching, but he took his time getting over to cover and that was costly. My problem was starting the 10th with Drake. No way was he going to get through both Bryant and Rizzo. Take a chance with Guerra, who was your opening day starter for goodness sake. He's got a chance. Or use Wang with 2 lefties scheduled or Hughes who was up earlier and should have had an inning in him.

[bill hAll Star]

Yeah, I don't really have an opinion on who was used in the 10th and it likely could have been done a bit better. Guerra might have been better but they must know something that we don't on him. Or Hughes. That makes some sense.

 

I guess most would say Jeffress should have taken off immediately no matter what, but you could also say in the split second decision in one's brain, a chopper like that probably seemed like the second baseman's ball. So maybe he sat there for an extra .5 seconds before he realized and that did him in.

[Pugger]

I'll say it again - until this bunch can figure out how to manufacture runs/play small ball and not depend upon the HR to score we won't have to depend upon our bullpen to pitch mistake free to have a chance to win.

[rcc]

We got our answer last night with Drake and the Cubs fans went home happy.