FanPost

A Poll: Managing the Vest, Best

 

And now we’re up to 30.  Yesterday, Terry Collins summoned K-Rod in the ninth, with two outs to go and the Mets down by three.  Agree or disagree with the decision, Frankie is now that much nearer to some pricey sleeveless threads.

There do seem to be two broad schools of opinion here.  The first (if I may summarize) posits that:  "It’s not TC’s job to manage the vest.  Dealing with it is Sandy’s job."  Aside from the different argument about using your best reliever in high-leverage situations, if there were no vest, there would be no issue.  So why make it an issue in game decisions?  The manager’s job is to win ballgames.

Fine, says the second school, but it clearly is an issue, especially given our financial straits and (don’t even think of saying it out loud) the risk of losing Jose.  Wilpon capital is finite, and allocating more of it to Frankie means allocating less of it to higher impact players.   I think that’s the correct approach, too.  I’ll go further:  The manager’s job is not simply to win ballgames, it’s to maximize wins—or ringzzz, if you will.  And there’s (usually) no reason why a single season should be a constraint.  Baseball is an iterative game.  If next season doesn’t matter, why record pitch counts, or go with an unproven rookie, or let a young left-handed batter try stepping in against a southpaw rather than pitch-hitting with Hu-ever?  Managers do, and should, think about next year, and managers do and should make game-time decisions with future years in mind.  The vest is unusual—Omar was, um, unusual.   But perhaps Omar’s best decision was not mortgaging the farm when his own job status was in peril.  Compare and contrast with Jerry, who was unhingedly eager to turn Mejia into a right-now long reliever, longer term be damned.    

Assuming we can do this intelligently enough so that the Players Union does not go all Tony Bernazard, what say you?  

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