Position players pitching is a joke. There are few scenarios where a position player should take the bump to kill an inning. And that is the only time such a player should do so: to kill an inning in a desperate situation.
Filth. pic.twitter.com/yDc12ejL45
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) July 28, 2018
As the Toronto Blue Jays thrashed the White Sox on Friday night, Joe McEwing — the only coach left in the dugout after Rick Renteria and Don Cooper were tossed in the first inning — decided to bring in Matt Davidson (again) to close out the ninth inning of what turned out to be a closer game than one thought. Of course — as the GOAT does — Davidson sat the Blue Jays down in order and maintained his sterling 0.00 earned run average and flawless stat line.
But McEwing’s move is more a function of Thyago Vieira‘s collapse in the fifth inning when — surprise, surprise — he couldn’t find his command. Vieira drilled two batters, gave up two earned runs and made 2/3 of an inning look excruciatingly painful. I’m sure there were some jitters involved in Vieira’s performance, but this is not uncommon for him. In fact, he’s more infamous than famous for this little gem when he was with the Seattle Mariners.
Vieira was promoted on Friday after Joakim Soria was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday and he fits the closer mold, not middle-relief. But seriously, he won’t fit any role in the big leagues if he can’t find the strike zone.
McEwing turned to Luis Avilan, Tyler Danish and Hector Santiago to soak up the later innings and then curiously entered Davidson to close out what was then a 10-2 affair. While entertaining, this is inexcusable. Davidson is not conditioned to throw off a mound and he could seriously injure himself.
I can hear all of you now, chortling with incredulous gullibility. Yes, Davidson could get hurt. Would people care given his fire-and-ice performance this season? You can answer that for yourself.
My objection lies with respecting the game. You heard me. There was no reason for McEwing to use Davidson in Friday’s game other than to avoid burning an inning with another reliever and in the bottom of the ninth, the White Sox mounted a comeback (I know, I know. I use the term comeback loosely).
Sure, the White Sox are on a 10-game stand, but relievers are trained to throw on consecutive days and coaches have conditioning schedules to match this practice. There is no reason to shirk a reliever’s innings in favor of a position player. And if the bullpen isn’t prepared for the heavy load, then the coaching staff should be scrutinized.
And don’t think that I don’t recognize the White Sox inability to get innings out of their starters. That fact is not lost on me, but there is a larger pattern in baseball to make these weird decisions as a claim of brilliance and unorthodox wisdom that is just downright nonsense. And yes, the wizard of unorthodoxy himself Joe Maddon is front and center in this charge.
Just like Golf, baseball is a game with ethics and honor. It is patently different than the NFL and NBA. No matter how much Major League Baseball tries to funnel the ratings of the other two leagues, the ethos of baseball will never match them. In fact, baseball should stay far away from the NFL given Roger Goodell’s speckled tenure as commissioner and the looming health crises with CTE the league continues ignoring. But that’s neither here nor there.
I understand the general public’s frustration with unwritten rules in baseball. If you never played the game beyond little league and high school, I wouldn’t expect you to understand. This doesn’t mean you can’t learn and respect the philosophy behind this code of ethics, but they exist for a reason. At its core, these rules govern a communal understanding of fair play and honor.
I can hear the laughter again…”honor?”
Yes, honor. All professional leagues have them. It’s why starters are swapped out when an NBA team is up by 50 points and the same in the NFL. In fact, don’t we hear reports every year of a high school football coach that let his team run up the score on a hapless opponent and is promptly shamed by the public? I remember a recent episode in my neighborhood where Mike Trout‘s alma mater smoked their opponent by nearly 40 runs — an egregious episode of unchecked competitiveness.
And don’t feed me this nonsense about stealing bases when a team is up by 10 or more runs as the only way to compete. Stealing bases in an aggressive tactic to try and win. You can compete without taking extra bases and avoid insulting a team. In fact, haven’t we heard the sabermetric argument to turn Major League Baseball into a slugfest by killing the bunt, shifting more and focusing on launch angle?
Increasingly, baseball has turned into a feast or famine show of home runs and strikeouts. The nuances have been drained from the game and the true value of what made baseball entertaining in the first place, with it. Fans are missing the risk/reward decisions that managers make from pitch to pitch. The idea of a sacrifice bunt has been completely distorted into a philosophy of clinging to outs as if taking hell hacks and striking out at historic rates is more entertaining than putting the ball in play and forcing the defense to make plays.
NEWS FLASH: Baseball is a game predicated on the risk/reward dichotomy.
So, should major-league ball clubs stop competing when they are losing by 10 or more runs? Instead of making a mockery of the game and trotting unprepared position players to the mound, why not institute a 10-run rule? If managers like Joe Maddon (we can include McEwing to make it fair) are going to close their bullpens down 10 runs what’s the point in continuing the game? As fans — besides the novelty of watching Anthony Rizzo lob the eephus pitch like it’s slow-pitch softball — are you going to pay the exorbitant prices to watch someone do something they aren’t trained to do?
Moreover, what if Rizzo gets hurt? What if Kris Bryant hits the DL because he has a shoulder injury that impacts his swing? …wait…that already happened and Bryant is one of the few players on the Cubs roster that hasn’t pitched.
It’s fun now, but eventually, the sheen of this silly and dangerous practice will fade and fans will AND ABSOLUTELY SHOULD let the team know about it.
