Bernman wrote:How many managers you think have a Cy Young candidate for back-to-back seasons and don't throw him 4 days later w/ their team's playoff lives on the line?
Maybe 5% of them. The opposing manager threw their #1 back out there in spite of him being inferior to Burnes, but to 1 fan here we're not supposed to question the minority reporter, or the majority reporters if they were our skippers instead.
There is a right and wrong decision here obviously. If you throw out the anomaly seasons or halves, Burnes has half Lauer's ERA. The larger sample stats showsLauer isn't fit to carry Burnes' jock. Counsell even admitted that by yanking Lauer in the 4th inning. You think that's happening to Burnes off just loading the bases? He would have went 7-8 unless the wheels or his arm were coming off.
The bats let us down previously, but not really in this one. 4 should be enough to win a playoff game, especially when your ace is ready to go. But Counsell didn't press that advantage because he was playing for tomorrow, when you need a win today.
1. How did Morton fare on short rest?
2. Say Burnes could've toughed it out and just go shorter innings...I am going to say something that may dredge up a nice conversation.
You need to understand statistics and probability. This is the same as Matt LaFleur's FG decision which was literally a wash vs. going for it. You need a FG and a TD in some order and you need to win two baseball games, one of which is pitched by Corbin Burnes. Statistically it is the same or arguably better in the way MLF and Counsell chose...but there is a human fallacy that most people want to see the "good" part first in the order of results when in reality it does not matter which order was chosen in either case.
Somehow in our dumb human pea brains, seeing Burnes + 1-2 innings from Woodruff win game 4 and then likely lose game 5 with Lauer and maybe a few innings from Woodruff on the mound against Fried who has been every bit as good as Morton feels better.
In reality it is no better.
We needed to win 2 games and the order did not matter if our goal was to advance to the 2nd round.