Let me start by saying I am a Rocco Baldelli defender. Most of the work a manager does is never seen by fans. The job is primarily about managing the locker room, building relationships, and dealing with the exceptionally large egos of professional athletes. By all accounts, Rocco is one of the best in the game at that aspect of the job. I also believe he is good in games in most cases, making the right decisions 90% of the time and putting the team in a position to win.
In general, being the manager of a baseball team is a tough gig. You get all the blame for the losses and none of the credit for the wins. However, I believe last night’s loss lies firmly on the shoulders of Rocco, which is especially confusing because he made some good moves early in the game! Pinch-hitting Christian Vazquez for Matt Wallner against the lefty was risky, but boy did it pay off.
But the bad was very bad. The Twins had a two-run lead heading into the seventh when he sent Bailey Ober back out to the mound. Let me be clear, Ober has been throwing as well as anybody in baseball over the last three months, and he’s even been good facing batters three times, but this San Diego lineup is so loaded that it didn’t make a ton of sense. But with his low pitch count and some recent bullpen blowups, I don’t blame Rocco for trying to get one more inning out of his de facto ace.
Naturally, that immediately failed. Ober gave up a bad luck bloop double to Jake Cronenworth and then left a hanging slider up for Manny Machado, who deposited it into the centerfield seats. Tie game. Rocco turns to his best reliever, Griffin Jax, to finish the inning and get back to the dugout still tied, which he does.
Using Jax there makes sense. Bogaerts and Merrill had been killing the Twins this series and wanted to take the wind out of the Padres’ sails. The Twins rallied to score two in the 8th inning thanks to the aforementioned Vazquez appearance, and then Rocco made the most baffling decision of all: turning to Steven Okert.
Okert’s numbers are not as bad as they seem, but the decision to use him in this spot made no sense statistically. The Padres had Tyler Wade (lefty), Luis Arraez (lefty), and Jurickson Profar (switch) due up in the 8th, so if you look exclusively at that, you can see the logic. However, if you use just an iota of brain power, you can see Okert was set up to fail.
Wade is a complete zero offensively and was in the game exclusively for defense. Regardless of who pitched the 8th for the Twins, the Padres were always going to bring in Donovan Solano to pinch hit. Arraez, meanwhile, has seen a steep decline in overall offensive performance but is essentially platoon-neutral at this point in his career. Finally, Profar, the All-Star, has an OPS near 1.000 against lefties this season. There’s no scenario where going to a lefty, let alone one who hasn’t been that good this season, made sense.
Okay, maybe it was because the bullpen was overworked? Not really the case. I know they were trying to save Jhoan Duran for the 9th when he would likely have to face Machado and Bogaerts, but Profar has been just as good (if not better) as those two this season. It’s the old adage made famous by Buck Showalter’s bullpen mismanagement of the 2016 Orioles. Showalter didn’t go to Zack Britton, the best reliever in the game, at any point of their 11-inning Wild Card loss, saving for a traditional save opportunity. Well, the opportunity never came and Britton sat on the bench the entire game despite being one of the best players in the sport.
What about the next relievers? Jorge Alcala had an all-time blow up in his last outing, so I understand wanting to protect him a bit. Cole Sands, however, hadn’t thrown in a game since Saturday. Sands’ emergence as a bullpen weapon has been a big reason why the loss of Brock Stewart hasn’t hurt the Twins as much as fans feared. The coaching staff saw lefties due up, went to their rested lefty, and didn’t think about anything beyond that.
Of course, the players on the field didn’t exactly help their manager out. They ran into three outs on the bases, including twice that would have placed runners at third base with one out, but instead were the second out of the inning. The ownership group didn’t do the Twins any favors either, with their stingy spending limiting their options at the trade deadline.
Again, I will reiterate that I think Rocco Baldelli is really good at this. There is always the chance that someone like Sands or Alcala wasn’t feeling 100% and that is something we will never know from the outside. However, I also think you have to call out bad management when you see it.
And when the division race is this tight between three teams, every win matters right now.