The story of this game, as I see it, is largely composed of three curious managerial decisions by Cecil Cooper.
1) Bunting in the bottom of the third. Matsui sacrificed Pence to third with one out for Tejada. Miggy walks, Berkman goes yard (and what a blow it was – no less than 450 to dead center field). The result obviously indicates that it would’ve been better to swing away, but bunting to third base is one of the least productive maneuvers possible. The only time it’s remotely justifiable is if you’re in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game or something, and it’s a bad play even then.
2) Bunting, mach 2, with Lance Berkman in the bottom of the sixth. That’s right – bunting with the Lance Berkman, the very same Lance Berkman that nearly killed a toddler in the twentieth row of the center field bleachers. When you bunt with Lance Berkman, you turn Lance Berkman into Juan Pierre. Juan Pierre is not a good baseball player.
3) A mismanagement of Wandy Rodriguez in the seventh inning that would ultimately lead to five St. Louis runs and a loss. Pitch counts and innings only set the general parameters for how long a pitcher should stay in a game. Often, a guy just gets tired before 100 pitches, eight innings, or whatever other ideal benchmark you might set. The best way to know this is through a loss of command. Even more than velocity, command tells you whether a guy is fighting fatigue. Rodriguez hit a batter, gave up a ground ball that should have been a double play and ended up being an error, allowed a single, conceded a well hit sacrifice fly, and hit another batter. At this point, you’ve got the bases loaded, one out, and a 3-1 lead. If Rodriguez hadn’t lost his command after the Molina single, he was certainly out of gas now. However, Cecil stuck with him.
He struck out Miles, which initially redeemed the Houston skipper. This, however, was followed by a wild pitch and a single from Brendan Ryan, which scored a total of three runs and gave the Cards the lead. Rodriguez was finally removed, but a horrific error from Michael Bourn gave the Cards their fifth run, which proved to be the game winner.
Lohse pitched quite decently, despite the Berkman bomb. The bullpen was OK and nailed it down in the end.
Next, it’s off to Cincinnati, where Mitchell Boggs makes his first start on Tuesday. The Cards remain 2 1/2 back, as Chicago defeated Los Angeles 3-1.
