Friday, July 1, 2011

Three is Not the Charm

One of the reasons the Cubs cannot manage to win three games in a row has got to be Mike Quade. At least Quade has admitted that he lost this game because he left his starter Randy Wells in the game too long.

However, he hasn't admitted the tendency he has shown all season long to manage in a very stubborn way, especially in his use of his pitching staff. Today he went in with the idea of getting seven innings from his starter and he was going to get it no matter what was happening on the field. So when Wells, who was sailing along through six innings with a 4-2 lead, lost it in the seventh, Quade could not seem to look at what was happening on the field. He might have taken Wells out after the home run or after the subsequent base hit or certainly after the walk to Dunn, but he chose to do nothing. So he lost the game.

Now personally I kind of like Mike Quade, but he is just in over his head here. It used to be thought that a manager maybe won half-a-dozen games and lost half-a-dozen games over the course of the season based on his in-game decisions, but Quade is on a pace to cost the team way more than that. I can think of only a handful of games that his decisions have won and quite a few his decisions have lost. And that is not counting the really weird lineups and batting orders that just plain make no sense most of the time.

No comments:

Post a Comment