I’m a Cardinals fan specifically, and a baseball fan in general. Since Arch City is a St. Louis-centric blog, we’ll focus on the Cards fan in me. The Cards fan in me is hurting. Well, the short term fan is. The long view fan in me has some questions about what to do next, but we’ll keep him under wraps for the moment.
I’m sure the question of why Mike used Michael Wacha on a million days rest in the bottom of the ninth inning in a tie game has been asked over and over, so I won’t ask it here.
My question is about the move everybody expected Mike Matheny to make: Pat Neshek in the eigth inning.
Via Baseball Reference, I found out, that after an awesome first four months, things started going south for Neshek in August before the wheels fell off in September/October:
| Month | Innings Pitched | ERA | WHIP |
| March/April | 12.2 | 1.42 | 0.711 |
| May | 12.0 | 0.00 | 0.333 |
| June | 8.0 | 1.13 | 0.625 |
| July | 10.2 | 0.84 | 0.844 |
| August | 14.2 | 3.07 | 0.886 |
| September/October | 9.1 | 4.82 | 1.393 |
Add in the fact that Michael Morse hit righties better than lefties this year (.293 vs. RHP, .248 vs. LHP) and you have an ominous set of conditions.
Now, I accessed this data relatively quickly. In today’s day and age, you’d think teams would have data like this readily available at all times, whether it’s printed out or they have an IT guy travelling along, stationed either in the dugout or in the locker room, just waiting to be utilized.
Mike probably gave his standard answer when asked about Neshek, which was probably something like “He’s our eighth inning guy” bull****. That, in my mind, is the worst thing he could possibly say. In this situation, given this data, Neshek should *not* have been your eight inning guy.
If Mike Matheny can’t learn to be more flexible, to use the data available to him, he should be fired, no matter how many playoffs he makes, as he won’t win the world series without being extremely lucky.
As always, thanks for reading.
3 comments
Great, Doug, data to back up the mistakes. It’s funny how he relies on data when it’s convenient but then does his gut thing on deals that change games.
Numbers don’t lie. I’m sure MM has seen Money Ball.
Your point is a valid one, I personally don’t understand why Wainwright who was only at 97 pitches didn’t get to come out and face at least the first batter. We knew the pitchers spot was coming up and that the Giants had nothing but right handed pinch hitters, Waino could’ve at least pitched to one batter and been pulled when the lineup rolled over to the left handed batters at the top of the order. What you are saying though is that a lefty should have been brought in, so lets look at the left handed options. Randy Choate, who in the previous two games did not look comfortable on the mound at all, and then Marco Gonzales, who in game 4 gave up 3 earned runs facing what? 4 Batters? Neshek’s stats above are misleading because the months of September and October are combined. He’s postseason was not bad at all NLCS and NLDS combined reads as such; IP: 6.2, H: 3, R: 2, ER: 2, BB: 0, SO: 6, HR: 2, ERA: 2.90. People have got to stop trying to make Mike Matheny a scapegoat and look at the bigger picture, which is defensive miscues and bullpen walks are what killed St. Louis in this series. The Giants took advantage of nearly every error and walk that the Cardinals gave up.
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