When yesterday’s lineup came out, fans started complaining immediately. Wally Matthews echoed these complaints in a piece he penned for ESPN-NY and it provides a good jumping off point for this discussion.
No Alex Rodriguez? No Brett Gardner? Berkman at first in place of Mark Teixeira? Kearns starting in left?
If it wasn’t for the name “Jeter” appearing where it is just about every day, at the top of the list, it would have been difficult to determine at first glance that this was a Yankees lineup card at all.
That was just the beginning of a strange day for Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who is always concerned about resting his horses and somehow—on this day, in this game, against this team at this point in the season—chose to rest three of them. (Teixeira technically got only a half-day’s rest, but still.)
Worse than that, he went and defeated his own purpose by using Rodriguez to bat for Kearns in the seventh, necessitating that he also rouse Gardner from his day of rest because he now needed a left fielder.
…So how Girardi—a manager who prides himself on the mastery of statistics and tendencies and spray charts and matchups—could choose to send out the B team against an A opponent is a mystery not even he could fully explain.
“I’m just playing so I don’t blow somebody out,’’ he practically shouted after the game when asked about his lineup. “I had talked about giving Alex a day off, and I can’t play Tex 37 out of 38 days or I’m gonna break him down. People they’re gonna question it, but I gotta think about the long haul.’‘
A few things here. First, this is nothing new. Braves fans complained for years about Bobby Cox’s “Sunday lineups” while they won division after division every year. Mets fans grumbled about Mike Piazza never playing a day game after a night game under Bobby V. Tony LaRussa often rests multiple regulars if the team has already won the first two games of a series. Every good, winning manager I can think of does some version of this. On the flip side, Willie Randolph played all of his regulars down the stretch in 2007 and the team collapsed. Joe Torre had a teams that took April and May off, put the pedal to the metal down the stretch and were spent by the time they got to October, getting blown out in the ALDS in 06 and 07 by lesser competition. The Yanks are designed to make the playoffs each year, so they play the regular season with an eye on October. I know games facing the Rays seem much more important to most fans, but the reality is they’re just another game off the schedule.
Next, are Gardner/Kearns or Teixeira/Berkman really such big downgrades that they’re going to feel in a single game? Lets take a look:
Gardner: 119 OPS+ in 2010, 98 OPS+ (3 year)
Kearns: 114 OPS+ in 2010, 85 OPS+ (3 year)
Teixeira: 132 OPS+ in 2010, 146 OPS+ (3 year)
Berkman: 115 OPS+ in 2010, 142 OPS+ (3 year)
Facing a righthander like Shields, Berkman (.860 OPS 2010/1.014 OPS career) has actually been better than Tex (.806 OPS 2010/.909 OPS career). Alex to Ramiro Pena is obviously a big drop off, but it was for 2 measly ABs. Tex was in the lineup as DH, and while they missed his glove at 1B on a few plays that didn’t decide this game. James Shields being on top of his game and having his change up working beautifully did. Anyone who watched Alex’s ABs the previous two games in Tampa knows why Joe sat him. He was visibly getting frustrated at himself and umpires and badly expanding the strike zone, swinging at pitches way off the plate. Fans asked “why not sit Alex during the CLE series? Because he was having good ABs in that series, but clearly the chase for 600 started to wear on him facing better pitching in a big series against the Rays. Right move by Joe, let Alex sit and clear his head.
As much as we may wish all that players were robots who can play everyday, the fact of the matter is that the Baseball season is a grind. You’re playing games almost everyday for 8 straight months from March through (hopefully) October, spending most of your down time working out and traveling, sometimes coast to coast. Ever take a flight from NY to LA? Can you sleep on a plane? I know I can’t. The Rays starting 5 (which have been key to their success this year) have logged 65% of the innings pitched by the team. Let’s see how those arms feel come October, particularly staff ace David Price. He threw a career high 162.1 innings last year, and should be well over 200 by the end September this year. Having enough talent on your roster to be able to rest your regulars is a luxury the Yanks enjoy that most of their competition does not. It’s a competitive advantage come October, you’d be silly to throw it away for a game in August.
Mo summed things up nicely on his Twitter last night:
Maybe the Yankees didnt rest people against Cleveland bc the options to fill in were Juan Miranda and Thames, not Berkman and Kearns.
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11 Responses to Resting players the right move
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TIQ IQ
What do you know, Steve? I’m a reporter and I KNOW that the Yankees HAVE to win and they HAVE to play every game like it’s Game Seven of the World Series. No regulars should EVER be rested! You think Damon and Matsui would willingly take days off?!
Sincerely,
Wallmike Lupicathews
More bad decisions by a terrible manager…Joe please go west next year as you will fit in well with the lovable losers.
If you think Joe Girardi is a bad manager, then you dont watch very many managers. I struggle to find 5 better, let alone enough to make him “terrible.”
I have watched plenty of managers and would NEVER hire Girard. He is the worst in game manager I have ever had the misfortune to watch. If you like him then you don’t know as much about baseball as you believe you do. He should be fired ASAP!
Most baseball people think he’s a very solid in game manager. Quite frankly, you might want to reevaluate what you think you know about in game decision making.
No one is saying to run the players into the ground. But common sense we’ll tell you when you are playing the team behind you by one game and thus far your only competition this year that maybe playing the big boys would come in handy. With series against two lesser team sandwiched around this series (Cleve/Toronto) your tellin gme that Joe could rest players during this series? Did it really have to be directly against the team that can effect the standing so much…I’m sry Im not buying it. This is a series that Joe should have rested players ahead of time to have them ready for.
Honestly, Joe said last night that he knows more than us about when his players need rest, and he’s right. I’m willing to trust him on this.
Who cares what the moron says…I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth!
It was the right move. Arod has a career 217 avg vs Shields and Gardner has done poorly as well. I agree about the quality of Arod’s ABs against Cle and then against TB. Hopefully DJ gets a game or two off in the next little while, and even Cano could use a blow.
Love the ‘Wallmike Lupicathews’ bit.
Resting players is invaluable. Some of the younger readers don’t get it, one day they will….Great analysis!
Giradi is a very good manager, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he knows what his players need.
You know, on another level, maybe this was a “psyche out” of the Rays. Picture this…. the Rays have worked themselves into a fine tuned machine looking ahead for this series (and they did play and pitch great–we had, what 15 hits in 3 games?). Then the big deciding game of the series, and the Yankees downgrade in 4 areas. What does this say to the Rays?—-we can beat you with less than our A game, we can give you this game and still beat you for the division, Ha! this is what we think one measly game means as we will win by more games than that, we are confident enough in our abilities that we are planning for the long haul, this is a Aug. 1 game, fellas, we’ll see you for the key Sept and playoff games, etc.
Now, I don’t, for a minute, think that this was Giradi’s plan, but was it an unintended consequence?
It would be interesting to hear the comments of the Rays players and coaches when they first heard of Girardi’s changes. My first thought was that the Rays might feel disrespected and play harder.
Now, I agree that the above musings are a way overthink of yesterday’s game—Girardi just wanted to rest some players and for the first time, he had backups that weren’t a big dropoff. It was just that simple.
But, also, I love that Baseball is a many layered, complex game.