Huh?
I don’t want to be too critical because we won the game, but I really don’t understand what Francona was thinking on this one. Why would he decide to rest 2 of his regulars, Damon and Mueller, on a day when his starting catcher already has a scheduled day off, and on top of that his starting right fielder is on the DL?
Admittedly, this wasn’t as bad as the fiasco a month ago when he rested Damon, Renteria, Manny, and Tek all on the same day and we only had Adam Stern to play CF. At least this time we had Kapler back to fill in for Damon and we still had most of our other big bats in there. And Graffanino is a respectable option to fill in for Johnny at the top of the order with his .380 OBP.
The lineup wasn’t actually all that bad, but I still think it was a little crazy to have 3 regulars out of the lineup (and 4 subs in the lineup, because we don’t really have a regular in right field with Nixon out) on the last game of a 3 game series where we’ve only scored a total of 3 runs in the first 2 games and are trying to avoid being swept.
What makes it even worse and what’s even more baffling to me is why he started Alex Cora at 3b and Tony Graffanino at 2b. Graffanino has logged about 150 games at 3b in his 10-year big league career, while Cora had exactly 3 innings, which came a few weeks ago.
It was almost as if he was asking for a sweep. Somehow it managed to work out. Joe Mays was terrible in the first inning and the offense was good enough to take advantage of it early and then again late. This allowed us to overcome the 2 errors that Cora (predictably) made at 3b and of course we were also helped out by Shannon Stewart’s bonehead play in the first inning.
The last time I complained about the lineup, we lost the game and I said that I would have written about it even if we had won and just added that he was lucky to get away with one. Well, this time that’s exactly what happened.
Admittedly, this wasn’t as bad as the fiasco a month ago when he rested Damon, Renteria, Manny, and Tek all on the same day and we only had Adam Stern to play CF. At least this time we had Kapler back to fill in for Damon and we still had most of our other big bats in there. And Graffanino is a respectable option to fill in for Johnny at the top of the order with his .380 OBP.
The lineup wasn’t actually all that bad, but I still think it was a little crazy to have 3 regulars out of the lineup (and 4 subs in the lineup, because we don’t really have a regular in right field with Nixon out) on the last game of a 3 game series where we’ve only scored a total of 3 runs in the first 2 games and are trying to avoid being swept.
What makes it even worse and what’s even more baffling to me is why he started Alex Cora at 3b and Tony Graffanino at 2b. Graffanino has logged about 150 games at 3b in his 10-year big league career, while Cora had exactly 3 innings, which came a few weeks ago.
It was almost as if he was asking for a sweep. Somehow it managed to work out. Joe Mays was terrible in the first inning and the offense was good enough to take advantage of it early and then again late. This allowed us to overcome the 2 errors that Cora (predictably) made at 3b and of course we were also helped out by Shannon Stewart’s bonehead play in the first inning.
The last time I complained about the lineup, we lost the game and I said that I would have written about it even if we had won and just added that he was lucky to get away with one. Well, this time that’s exactly what happened.
posted by Bob at 8/07/2005 07:44:00 PM
1 Comments:
Could Francona be trying to boost everyone's confidence in the new guys? I don't know...
Stewart tossing the ball into the stands after two outs is one of my favorite plays of the year. I actually started clapping, it was hysterical.
-CC
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