Could Gardenhire use more patience?
October 8, 2009
Yogi Berra is credited for saying “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.” Perhaps we here tend to be too mental.
It is easy for most of us arm chair managers to sit and criticize managers and players, so after watching yesterdays game, it was decided that some time to cool off would be in order before remarking on manager Ron Gardenhire’s decision during yesterdays game.
Watching some of the Twins post game shows, it appeared most analyst were making an argument that his decision was the right one. What decision is that? The decision to remove Duensing from the game in the 5th inning.
Duensing pitched well and if you look at the ball placement of the hits he did give up, he was working the plate like a veteran.
Here is a reap:
In the first inning gave up a hit to Derek Jetter on a pitch that was kept low and inside.
In the third inning Melky Cabrera took a low outside pitch and ended up with a single on what would have likely been a ball. Derek Jetter then took a belt high inside slider on the yard to tie the game.
In the fourth inning, Jorge Posada took a 4-seam fastball that was in the upper inner corner and drove it to short right field for a hit. Two batters later Nick Swisher took low slider (good pitch except Swisher likes them) and drove it down the third base line to score a run.
In the fifth his only mistake was to let Jetter walk. He followed the walk up with two outs and was abruptly replaced by Fransico Lirano after 4.2 innings. Of course as anyone who watched the game knows, Lirano gave up a two run home run to the very next batter.
Duensing had 79 pitches in 4.2 innings with 59 of them being strikes and 3 strike outs. The only walk he had was to Jetter who already had two hits in the game. So why did Gardenhire take Duensing out?
Watching the post game they showed a graphic that showed the Yankees were 2-9 during the first trip through the order and then 4-9 during the second trip. What they didn’t say is that of the four hits during the second trip, only one was off of a ball left up. All the other pitches were on the corners or out of the strike zone.
Earlier in the year, some arm chair coaches were wondering if Gardenhire wasn’t leaving his pitchers in too long. Perhaps Gardenhire was worried about leaving his rookie out there too long or perhaps he saw something in Duensing that we couldn’t see on the television, but either way, the decision to remove Duensing stings a bit. We will have to see how Gardenhire manages his pitchers for the rest of the series as he has made some poor choices in the recent week in the opinion of many arm chair managers out there.
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