Cubs 7, Pirates 6: Clint Hurdle's Bizarre Bullpen Management Costs Pirates

Yeah, you know how we’ve been hoping and praying for a big inning to break the offense out of its slump? Well, that inning (particularly JMac’s big hit) was it. And Hurdle went and blew it, so that it winds up not meaning anything, and doesn’t build any momentum for us. Just makes me want to scream.

Every day brings a new head scratcher. What the hell is the point of having a guy like Hanrahan if you aren’t going to use him with the game on the line? This is how many games now he’s been sitting in the bullpen while the barn door flies open and the horses run off?

Walk said he saw it on the AGH cam and couldn’t tell if it hit or not. He said the ump must have heard something.

You can always put someone else in in the ninth. Getting out of the jam in the eighth is way more difficult than pitching a scoreless ninth with the bases empty.

it would’ve been much worse if we’d lost the game in the 9th because Hanrahan tired out.

I guess this is the kind of thinking that causes managers to not put their best pitchers in. When people will see the light, I don’t know. But really, can you guys not see that it was not likely to ever get into a more critical situation in the game than this?

his jersey didn’t even move.

I say you go get Hammer and let him get us out of the jam. I would much rather bring in Veras up 2 in the ninth than Hammer down 2 in the ninth. If Veras blows the lead, ay least Hammer was used in the best situation the inning before, but I think you have to be willing to let other guys “close” on occasion when you really need your best guy to get you out of a jam.

if Hurdle has lost some confidence in Veras, I could see going with DCutch.

bringing in dcutch wasnt a bad idea, veras has been hit or miss recently. although he has semed to get his stuff back from the first half where he was pretty automatic.

say Aye!

you bring in your most automatic guy after you yank dcutch. thats hammer. i can live with a loss if hammer gives up a run or two or we have to bring in someone else to close it out….but not like this….

So to me the no brainer move is Veras or have Hammer go two innings.

Rigidly assigned roles are antiquated and stupid, but yet we still use them. Hurdle is not going to change that.

Ok – he’d have a better idea of Hanrahan’s limits than I do. But jeez, he doesn’t need to finish the game. It’s not, like, a rule. Just have him pitch the eighth, then bring in someone else for the ninth.

So what if Hurdle didn’t want to use Hanrahan in the eighth, or didn’t want to put him in with men on base for whatever reason? That has nothing to do with his decision to keep Veras out until the game was tied and the bases were loaded with no outs. I mean, even if Veras isn’t Johnny Venters, he’s clearly the second or third best reliever on the team (with Resop). Why don’t you have your set-up guy pitch the eighth inning before the game is blown?

Hurdle will never pitch Hanrahan for 2 innings,

Yes. Because, God forbid, a strapping, 29-year-old man in probably the athletic peak of his life, having what may be the best season of his career, should not be able to pitch consecutive innings

morale victories are what we’re after now

These two "big bats" are in reality the weak link on offense and defense.

Remind me again: How many errors has Doumit made since he came off the DL?

Doumit got two singles

He had two hits? Well, Christ, better burn him at the stake, then.

Allow me to deride you like I did in the game thread:

You call Doumit and Pedro automatic outs, when Harrison has a lower OBP than both of them.

Also — interesting that having Doumit and Pedro on the field is directly responsible for the higher frequency of home runs hit by the other team. I’m sure if Harrison started at third, that blast to Pena would have been a weak ground out.

Also — both of your ‘goats’ got hits. One has a full year of major league playing time and that’s it.

I know it’s pointless arguing with you, but logic that basic needs to be pointed out or I just feel like I’m doing readers of this blog a disservice. We don’t all think like this guy, folks.

don’t you ever get tired of saying the same stuff over and over and over?

Which, if he did, lowered him down even more in my opinion.

BRILLIANT

…is that the Pirates should start the worst players possible, in order to save their best players for some predetermined time later in the game that may or may not actually happen, and if a situation arises in the game earlier than the predetermined time for those players, they should pick from an assortment of lesser options rather than using the best players in order to have them available later in case the same situation arises again?

Count me in. I can’t possibly imagine how a starting line up that includes Ciriaco, Wood, Paul, Diaz, Jones and McKenry is going to perform, but just think of the awesome pinch-hitters we’ll have available!

but the sole reason none of this worked (bullpen management) is because our supposed 8th inning guy has been less then reliable.Hiis stats say otherwise but anyone who was watch the games knows that when veras comes in you can usually tell which veras is on the mound, good one or bad one. Hurdle lost faith in veras thus danimal coming it. If veras was more reliable this game is over because he comes in and doesn’t allow a runner into scoring position. You can put the loss on hurdle, you can put the loss on the bats going silent since the 4th, you can put the loss on jmac for giving up four. That’s the point of team sport, its a team loss, and as has been the norm recently the bucs continue to struggle to put together a complete game.

It’s not hindsight. I’ve been complaining about this type of bullpen management for 15 years. It’s just amazing that managers keep making the same mistakes game after game, season after season. There’s nothing “special” about the ninth inning. Use your best fireman when there is an actual fire — not with a three-run lead in the ninth inning.

We may have only scored in one inning, but it still counts as six runs all the same.

This isn’t on the offense. It’s on the guy who when the game was on the line elected to bring in our fifth-best right-handed reliever.

We ripped Jim Tracy a new asshole when he pulled this same stunt with Marty McLeary back in the day. Yeah, Hurdle’s a nice old duffer instead of a self-serving crapweasel like Tracy, but fair is fair.

i said in a different thread that i thought it would be karsten who would be the stopper for this team right now. he goes tonight, lets hope he can pitch us back into the win column.

…do not exist. They are a mythical beast, much like the unicorn, that are purely figments of irrational peoples’ imaginations.

David Eckstein was not good at baseball, yet he continued to draw paychecks because some people, such as Joe Morgan, felt he was “gritty” and “full of heart.”

Derek Jeter is not a “great leader”, as some would argue, unless one measures greatness by being on a roster that had a payroll some 33% than the next closest team.

Lyle Overbay brought a gigantic black hole both offensively and defensively to the Pirates. Nothing more.

but i feel like this team is desperate for a win and hanrahan may have been able to get us out of that inning. it would have been a big win and left a chance to go 4-3 on the homestand. we need to stop this losing streak.

Why bring in McCutchen in the first place? That was his first mistake. McCutchen, despite his low ERA, is not all that good. He doesn’t belong in the 8th inning with a 2 run lead. Veras should have started the inning, or at least come into the game once the first 2 batters reached. And bringing Jason Fucking Grilli into a bases loaded no out situation like that is inexcusable. I mean, really, how can anyone defend that?

Even the Bill James employing Red Sox abandoned the whole "closer by committee" or "floating roles" bullpen.

The Red Sox went without a set closer that year because they didn’t have a lights-out reliever to use as a Jamesian “Relief Ace”. Totally different situation.

Isn’t all of this hindsight?

Actually, none of it is. The people arguing against the decision have been arguing for a long time, and are not basing it on this game. Even if Hurdle’s moves had worked, I’d be arguing against it, because it was the wrong move that got away. Hopefully, having the fact that the moves were bad in the first place hammers the idiocy of it into Hurdle, leading him to make smarter moves in the future.

But hindsight doesn’t protect against not going to one of two available high leverage relievers until the game has already been tied.

And, quite frankly, people are too quick to use hindsight as a counter-argument. We’re not arguing the results — we’re arguing the execution, which has hell-all to do with hindsight.

Especially not the Resop game. He could do far worse than go to Resop and Veras in the eighth inning and Hanrahan in the ninth.

And last night he did do far worse. That’s what I’m blaming him for.

(The problem with McCutchen’s WHIP and ERA is that, especially for relievers, those can have a big luck component. As we saw last night; if you let people put the bat on the ball, some of those balls will fall in for hits.)

We know he can hit at AAA.

last night at least. I also thought that was a tough error charged against him.

Nothing left to prove there, IMO

I think he’s been looking pretty good lately. He’s had several games where the approach as been solid and he’s been hitting the ball the other way. That’s really all I’m concerned with because I know the results will come if he maintains his approach. I thought he was brought back too soon but he’s looked decent this series. I guess that’s the difference between the Braves and Phillies pitching vs the Cubs (even though we are losing to all of them).

actually, if the season has little meaning, keeping him in MLB would be the wise thing.

Bruised right hand. Given night off to rest.

Worked out OK, since GL played 1B against the righty Lopez.

With the exception of a few guys who are clearly incapable of managing against otherhanders (Jones comes immediately to mind), the obsession is overdone. Occasionally, you’ll want a lefty to face another team’s Jones, but as often as not, it is just wastage of arms, and can often kill you in an extra inning game. One thing not commented on was the clever replacing of Jones for a righty pinch hitter in what I think was the 6th inning on Meals nignt. I counted four or five subsequent at bats where a hit or a sacrifice fly by Jones would have made all the difference in the world, several of them against righties. Instead, he just sat on the bench and watched a parade of futile swings in key situations.

Isn’t it a MLB pitchers job to get outs? Why is everyone overlooking the fact that Grilli didn’t do his job and instead blamining his boss (Hurdle) for having the audacity to believe he could do it?

By that token, should we blame Hurdle if he believes that Pedro Ciriaco is a better clean-up hitter than Derrek Lee/Ryan Ludwick/Neil Walker/Andrew McCutchen and plugs him into the four-hole tonight? I mean, isn’t it a MLB hitter’s job to get hits, and if Ciriaco fails to do so, then should we just say that he didn’t do his job?

Grilli and Beimel had no business being in the game at that moment, not with Hanrahan sitting in the bullpen wasting away from lack of use over the course of the past week. You use your biggest weapon at the moment when it will do the most damage, not when the Conventional Wisdom playbook says is the right time to put it to use, because if your first wave of weapons fails, the opportunity to properly leverage your biggest weapon will be lost.

Hurdle felt getting out of the inning with Grilli & Beimel with lead intact was very possible

Bases loaded, no outs, 2 run lead for Grilli; bases loaded no outs, 1 run lead for Beimel. If he thought Grilli and Beimel were likelier to get out of that inning with the lead than Hanrahan (or at least Veras or Resop), he needs a reality check.

I mean that is what they get paid for right?

Yeah, and Hurdle gets paid to decide when to put them in, among other things.

Bottom line is nothing is going right for us right now

This is very true, but it would certainly help if the people involved made the best decisions they could and give the team the best chance to win.

Reply Fail.

Both Veras and Resop have thrown a TON this year.

Veras: 51.2 IP
Resop: 50.2 IP
Hanrahan: 49 IP
McCutchen: 60 IP
avg IP of top 20 ML pitchers: 47.85 IP

The only guy that is significantly above average is McCutchen who was the guy brought in to work the 8th.

how’s a certain pitcher feeling that day ?

Veras and Hanrahan both pitched after the lead was blown. They faced 6 batters and got 6 outs. I’d say they were feeling fine. Hanrahan, Resop and Veras are our best RP’s and only Resop wasn’t available. For the record, McCutchen, Watson and Beimel are the three worst and both McCutchen and Beimel were used before Veras and Hanrahan (though I do understand using Beimel against Pena once Hurdle made the decision to go with Grilli.

how’s a pitcher’s confidence ?

I have a hard time believing that Gilli is more confident than Hanrahan.

And the bottom line: when the manager makes a move and it works, he’s a genius; when it doesn’t, he’s an idiot.

Disagree. Many of us have been complaining about the way Hurdle uses Hanrahan for while. Like I stated above some of us also stated we didn’t like the way Crotta, Leroux and Watson were all thrown into high leverage situations right away though I believe all of them were initially successful.