Originally Posted by harrumph
Fellow Tigers fan, strongly disagree with everything you said.
Managers just don't have much influence on the way any one game pans out. Over the course of an entire season, a manager might be worth a couple wins, but in any one game, there's just way, way too much variance for his decisions to be decisive. In hindsight, it might look like this call was good or that call was bad, but in baseball, pretty much anything can happen at any time. There's no such thing as a sure thing.
Before the series, people were losing the minds worrying about how Ausmus was going to use the bullpen. He was too reliant on Chamberlain, way too loyal to Nathan, and he never used Soria, the best reliever in the pen! Well, he went to Soria in crucial situations in games 1 and 2, and Soria blew up the Tigers' entire season. Does that mean Ausmus made the wrong call? No. Does it mean Soria is a bad pitcher? No. Put any reliever into the game, odds are he'll get three outs before he gives up a run. Even a below-average pitcher (which Soria is not) against a great team (which, sorry, the Orioles are not) would have about a 2% chance of allowing four of five hitters to reach base. His meltdown in game 1 was just dumb luck.
In game 2, yeah, I'd have left Sanchez in for sure. But if he'd gotten shelled (which, in the big scheme of things, is about as likely as Chamberlain getting shelled—neither was very likely at all), I'd have looked like an idiot and people would've wanted my head for leaving a fragile pitcher still recovering from injury in the game when I had a bunch of well-rested arms in the bullpen.
The one thing in the series I just can't defend is sending Holaday up there to bunt in game 3. Figuring Castellanos was going to get walked one way or the other and seeing how incredibly weak the bench was at that point, I just don't think there's any world where a sac bunt is the right play there. Still, did it cost us the game? No, probably not. Bless his heart, but Bryan Holaday swinging away at 0-0 and Bryan Holaday swinging away at 0-2 really aren't that different.
To get a little bit back on topic: managers don't influence the game much. Going with this lineup over that one or this reliever over that one might change the team's odds of winning by a few percentage points—all those decisions over the course of an entire season might add up to a few wins, but in any one game, you're mostly just rolling the dice. What's more important is a manager's role in the clubhouse, how well he's liked by the players, whether they feel they're treated fairly, etc. Jim Leyland was not a good tactician. His lineups were terrible, he called for bunts way too often, the way he had the team run the bases gave me fits, etc. etc. I still loved the guy, and so did his players. That's what counts.
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