bizarro wrote:Kerb Hohl wrote:bizarro wrote:
The bigger narrative is many pitchers are struggling. That’s undeniable and it has hamstrung the team. The top end talent is sparse. BUT, you know: though I still despise him, Tony f’ng Larussa had pitching feel for dayzzzzz. He was a master in this regard. Counsell is rigid and severely severely lacks in feel. Intuition. Magic, call it what you will. This is why he is The Wizard of Whitefish Bay.
The question I have for you guys is do you think we have a 95-100 win team that is just held back by its manager?
He’s not infallible but I think that it’s important to note that we have basically the 2nd best record in the NL with a starting pitching rotation purchased from Goodwill or Dollar General. So either Stears is already a hall of fame GM held back by an idiot manager or...maybe they’re both doing pretty well?
Ask a Cardinals fan in some random season in the early 2000s and I’ll bed they’d want to punch LaRussa for some perceived stupid pitching decision.
There must be an organizational directive on Hader or Counsell gambled and lost on saving Hader for different games. Soria was cruising...1 pitch away from getting out of a clean inning like 8 times.
I think it’s a both and. I think Stearns has made some really good moves and has stuck pretty damn well to his asset accumulation and protection and non-overpay strategy. He’s had obvious gaffes - Schoop being the most notable recent one. However, as i stated above, I firmly believe - as I have watched countless times this season - Counsell has poor feel in the pitching department. His stubborness re: Knebel was dumbfounding. His use of Albers when it was a near guarantee he’d give up runs. His continued use of Williams and Jennings in high leverage situations when they have repeatedly failed and have had prolonged slumps (if someone offers up another meaningless Jennings vs lefty ba stat i will vomit). I absokutely knew Jennings would tank last night just as he jas five or six consecutive outings. Why was Guerra even pitching today? This is last year’s version of Guerra nearing a two month stretch. We saw the same thing with Drake/Ducky this season and much of last season. It’s a both and scenario. Not enough good talent. Prolonged pitching slumps. And, a manager who knows not how to change the tide and use his pen properly or integrate proper starter to pen transitions.
Baseball is a long game of ups and downs with a lot of imperfect things players. While it may be clear to everyone that someone like Drake sucks, there are 40 man considerations and the expectation that some players will regress positively as well.
Guerra pitched today with a very short leash because they needed one more turn of the rotation but they now have a full bullpen behind him with the expanded rosters. I think the hope was that they’d get 3-4 innings that weren’t that bad.
I guess if people think Counsell is this stupid then that means we have a 95-100 win team in talent so that is probably a good thing.
Hader and Jeffress are top 15 relievers in baseball in innings pitched. Hader is 10th and like 4-5 guys in front of him are starters cloaked as relievers that are garbage men or Rays starters that sometimes come in in relief and pitch 4-5 innings.
So these guys are being used plenty. I’ll grant anyone 1-2 times that Counsell should have and could have used those guys and didn’t. But those people have said that 10-15 times...so either their arms would be falling off or we’ve had blown other, better opportunities using them.
They have to use guys that appear to be struggling like Jennings, Guerra, and Knebel because they have an imperfect roster. They can’t kick all of these guys out of top roles or demote them because they’ll run out of players. So use them in appropriate leverage (medium) and be forced to use them in high leverage only after Hader/Jeffress have been used in high leverage and hopefully you’ve won those games.
