Game 5 ALCS: Sign Stealers @ Bat flippers Oct. 21, 2015 4:07 p.m ET

[Skin Blues]

That's one of the best parts of this run. He finally gets some much deserved respect for being a good manager all these years and should absolutely be back in 2016 regardless of whether AA heads out.

Respect from who? I have not read one positive thing about any of his decisions. Then again, I only follow the Fangraphs/Prospectus/etc kind of guys on twitter, so maybe Tom Verducci and his ilk really thought Gibby was genius in using Price in a mop up role. When people are universally second guessing moves that didn't even come back to bite him, it's a pretty clear sign that they were terrible. They can't even be chalked up to hindsight; they were just bad. Maybe he handles players well, but he is terrible at managing a bullpen.

[Fairview4Life]

Price warming up isn't as issue. He's actually going to be on 5 days rest. I agree that isn't an issue at all and it worked out. The issue is he may have come into the game with the Jays in still a favourable position which seems wasteful.

Regarding Lester. It's not like if Lester goes on short rest Hammel doesn't pitch a different game in the series. I mean, I guess they could have had Lester pitch on short, then Arrieta on short, then Hendriks on normal and then Lester on short again. That seems kind of crazy though.

Regardless, if Hammel is pitching at some point it doesn't matter what game it was then.

If Lester goes last night, Arrieta tonight, Cahill on Saturday, Lester on Sunday is still 4 days rest, which he has done very well on this year. In the playoffs, 4 days isn't crazy. I mean, the Cubs are still losing the series, because they are playing against Daniel Murphy and have Kyle Shwarber in the outfield or whatever, but trying to get one of your starters 5 days rest and pitching Hammel was absolutely not necessary. They definitely could have gone with a 3 man rotation with each guy getting 4 days off.

[Randle McMurphy]

I get what you are saying, but I think you have to live with risk to maximize your chances at winning the series and not just the game. If Price comes in and pitches in that scenario, maybe they win game 5 when they would have lost it but then they are in a much worse position to win game 6.

Obviously it can be a total non issue too. The Jays could score 10 in the 1st inning in Game 6 (I'd be down for that btw) and render having Price there pointless.

As a rule, I generally don't like managers thinking about future games when the game at hand still hasn't yet been won. Now obviously in the regular season there are exceptions to that (as you can just throw out your worst bullpen pitcher with a huge lead to hopefully save your best guys for a potentially closer game tomorrow). But hedging on the side of caution when your season is on the line is perfectly reasonable. There is no tomorrow if that 5 run lead isn't held.

I think the interesting question would have been if Price comes in does he just do a really short LOOGY session and still pitch game 6? Game 7 and put Stroman on short rest? Goes the rest of Game 5 and is out of the series?

We'll never know, but I don't see why it would have knocked him out of the rest of the series at all.

[Skin Blues]

If David Price can't recover from throwing a few pitches in the bullpen with nearly two days rest then the babying of pitchers is even more ridiculous than I previously thought.

It's not a problem if he's warming up and getting a side session in. It's a problem if they bring him in to throw 50 pitches and declare him unavailable for the rest of the series.

This "babying" of pitchers is what allows them to perform at an elite level. Relievers are babied by only going one inning, and not pitching three days in a row, because it allows them to perform at a much higher level. Same with starters being babied on 4 days rest rather than 3. This is how you get the most out of a group of pitchers. Machismo and truculence doesn't do you any good when your arm is physically fatigued.

[Fairview4Life]

If David Price can't recover from throwing a few pitches in the bullpen with nearly two days rest then the babying of pitchers is even more ridiculous than I previously thought.

It's not a problem if he's warming up and getting a side session in. It's a problem if they bring him in to throw 50 pitches and declare him unavailable for the rest of the series.

This "babying" of pitchers is what allows them to perform at an elite level. Relievers are babied by only going one inning, and not pitching three days in a row, because it allows them to perform at a much higher level. Same with starters being babied on 4 days rest rather than 3. This is how you get the most out of a group of pitchers. Machismo and truculence doesn't do you any good when your arm is physically fatigued.

So then there is no problem, since those 4 fly balls over 2 innings stayed in the park and Marco was able to get into the 8th with a big lead. Price never came in. If it was closer, and some left handed power came up, then I assume there would be no problem bringing in Price, right?

[Latrell]

LOL the Royals fans on their Facebook page are complaining about how the announcers are pro- Blue Jays.

Oh my God. It has gotten to the point where I almost don't care if the Jays lose because I just don't want to listen to these guys anymore. I am thankful when the Blue Jays make a great play because the fans drown out the monotonous rambling of these idiots. The color guy knows almost nothing about the Blue Jays. You can tell that he is reading his notes about background on the Blue Jays players. When talking Royals it is as if he has watched every one of their games this year.

Is there a reason that Rogers couldn't have used the Fox video feed and our own announcers?

They were getting mad that the Reynolds and Verducci were praising Estrada.

Goof team, goof manager and goof fans.

[Randle McMurphy]

That's one of the best parts of this run. He finally gets some much deserved respect for being a good manager all these years and should absolutely be back in 2016 regardless of whether AA heads out.

Respect from who? I have not read one positive thing about any of his decisions. Then again, I only follow the Fangraphs/Prospectus/etc kind of guys on twitter, so maybe Tom Verducci and his ilk really thought Gibby was genius in using Price in a mop up role. When people are universally second guessing moves that didn't even come back to bite him, it's a pretty clear sign that they were terrible. They can't even be chalked up to hindsight; they were just bad. Maybe he handles players well, but he is terrible at managing a bullpen.

Or a pretty clear sign that managers can't win with some people no matter what moves they make.

I don't think I've ever seen anything so silly as the criticism that Gibbons got for winning that elimination game 4 of the ALDS. Hell, you're still whining about it a week later when it all worked out. Once again, as you conveniently ignored, David Price wasn't even going to start game 5, Stroman was. Considering that, using Price to lock down game 4 and make sure the game didn't tighten up was hardly the crime against humanity that you're making it. At worst, that was Gibbons being overly cautious (which is hardly the worst thing to be when your season is on the line on that same day) and all it cost them was the ability to use Price out of the pen in game 5 (who they didn't even need).

[Randle McMurphy]

LOL the Royals fans on their Facebook page are complaining about how the announcers are pro- Blue Jays.

Oh my God. It has gotten to the point where I almost don't care if the Jays lose because I just don't want to listen to these guys anymore. I am thankful when the Blue Jays make a great play because the fans drown out the monotonous rambling of these idiots. The color guy knows almost nothing about the Blue Jays. You can tell that he is reading his notes about background on the Blue Jays players. When talking Royals it is as if he has watched every one of their games this year.

Is there a reason that Rogers couldn't have used the Fox video feed and our own announcers?

They were getting mad that the Reynolds and Verducci were praising Estrada.

Goof team, goof manager and goof fans.

They're still scarred from Bumgarner mowing them down in historical fashion in the WS and how Buck had the sheer audacity to praise that performance.

[Skin Blues]

Hell, you're still whining about it a week later when it all worked out.

It's almost like the process matters more than the results. Crazy, huh?

Even if they had decided Price was now a reliever (which is ridiculous, but OK, why not), and Stroman was our guy in the deciding game, chances are about 100% that he'll be more useful in Game 5 out of the bullpen, rather than Game 4 with the score already 7-1 and a starter that has a lot of bullets left.

Anyway... that's enough for the Gibby Troll Show today. You'll have all of 2016, at least, to continue it. Maybe we can lock up Mattingly as a bench coach for next year and slide him into manager for 2017. Fingers crossed.

[Randle McMurphy]

Hell, you're still whining about it a week later when it all worked out.

It's almost like the process matters more than the results. Crazy, huh?

Even if they had decided Price was now a reliever (which is ridiculous, but OK, why not), and Stroman was our guy in the deciding game, chances are about 100% that he'll be more useful in Game 5 out of the bullpen, rather than Game 4 with the score already 7-1 and a starter that has a lot of bullets left.

Exactly. At worst Gibbons was being overly cautious in an elimination game that they had to get (which is still better than not being cautious at all and risking that becoming a close game) and all it cost them was using Price out of the pen in game 5 behind Marcus Stroman (who they didn't need). Unconscionable stuff! Fire that Gibbons!

Anyway... that's enough for the Gibby Troll Show today. You'll have all of 2016, at least, to continue it. Maybe we can lock up Mattingly as a bench coach for next year and slide him into manager for 2017. Fingers crossed.

Whenever Gibbons ends his run as manager (which is hopefully long into the future), I'll be hoping that the era of robot managers will have come. Of course, I'm sure that still won't stop some from bitching about them.

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Estrada = lights out