Quote:
Originally Posted by Rams Fan
See, I don’t really think he did, though. DJ mentioned Whitley, but has he proven himself to be capable of handling that situation?
I would’ve left McFarland in. I didn’t like any alternative other than that.
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No, he didn't.
And you're absolutely right regarding Whitley - to whatever extent he'd proven anything, Shildt played a key role in coaxing that out of him after an awful start to the year. Again - Kapler did the same thing with Doval in San Fran (who had a very similar season to Whitley early and like Whitley had turned things around into September) and Doval lost the game for him. This idea that Shildt had some magic bullet is just asinine.
The problem with leaving McFarland in is that he's pretty defenseless against righties at this point in his career. He doesn't throw hard enough to get it inside on them so he has to nibble. Then you look at Taylor who even in off years hits lefties extremely hard and you've got a real matchup disadvantage there.
Meanwhile Taylor's bat has been extremely slow most of the season and righties can either throw it past him or knock the bat out of his hands. Reyes and his fastball was actually a really good matchup for an aggressive hitter who struggles against high velocity righties, especially with the movement Reyes gets on his fastball.
You want someone to blame - how 'bout you blame everyone's sweet baboo, Yadier Molina? Reyes stayed on top of his first slider to get a swinging strike. Then he backed up his second slider and it frisbeed for a ball. You could see him open up and slice around the pitch as he delivered it. When Yadi sees that Reyes slider isn't consistent because he's released it two different ways, he has to take note of that.
He didn't. He called for a third slider to a guy with a slider speed bat who'd just been able to get his bat slowed down by seeing two consecutive sliders. Then Yadi boxes the throw down when Belligner steals 2nd. At that point he has no business going back to the slider - he needs to attack Taylor because now he knows Taylor's going to be looking for something to hack at in an RBI spot and with Reyes late movement, even a pitch that runs out of the zone (as most of Reyes do) is going to coax soft contact.
Reyes was a fine matchup call for Taylor. Not exactly what I'd have done, but eminently defensible. Then Yadi failed to execute on the SB attempt and did a poor job with pitch selection against a hitter who you just cannot throw 3 sliders to when you're obviously able to overmatch him.
But hey - fire Shildt. Terrible manager or something.