What if I told you that in the seventh inning of a terribly important game, tied at one run apiece, a manager’s first choice among his relief pitchers was the one who:
Is that something you might be interested in?
Monday night in a terribly important game, when Don Mattingly needed a reliever to keep the game scoreless, he summoned Scott Elbert, who has thrown the grand total of 4⅓ innings in the major leagues over the last two things, plus those other things up there.
It just seems … odd, right? I’m not saying Elbert didn’t belong on the Dodgers’ roster. I just wouldn’t expect him to take a significant role in such a spot.
Now, let’s see if we might divine Don Mattingly’s rationale here ...
One, Elbert’s a lefty and the Cardinals had a couple of left-handed hitters coming up: Jon Jay and Kolten Wong. Two, this was nearly the bottom of the order: 6-7-8, and probably a pinch-hitter if anybody reached base.
Afterward, Mattingly said of his choice, “We haven’t had a lot of success with the lefties and wanted to give ‘em a different look.”
Just one problem there, though. Well, two problems, actually.
The first is that the Cardinals’ first hitter in that inning was not a lefty; their first hitter was Yadier Molina, who bats right-handed. Then again, Molina a) has not been particularly good against lefties in his career, and b) Elbert hasn’t struggled against right-handed batters in his career. Granted, he doesn’t seem to be throwing as hard, which just might be the result of three elbow surgeries in two years.
The second is J.P. Howell, the Dodgers’ No. 1 lefty reliever all season, has not pitched enough against the Cardinals in this series for anyone to think there’s something wrong with him, or that the Cardinals somehow have him figured out. Howell had faced six Cardinals, and retired two of them. The other four beat him like a bad dog, but four hits in the course of a couple of games just isn’t enough to trump a couple of lifetimes of baseball.
R L L ? L R R R L
That question mark is for the pinch-hitter, who was likely to be Oscar Taveras (L) or Peter Bourjos (R). Neither is a strong hitter. At least not this season.
In the event, of course, the righty (Molina) doubled, after which the first lefty (Jon Jay) sacrificed and the second (Kolten Wong) hit a home run.
It’s Wong’s blast that will be remembered. But the moment Molina reached second base, the Cardinals already had roughly a 70-percent chance of winning the game. With the benefit of hindsight (obviously), I will suggest that Mattingly should have summoned one of his right-handers to face Molina, and gone from there. Maybe you bring in Elbert or Howell to face the lefties, or maybe you don’t. But with Dan Haren in the bullpen, you can burn some of your relievers for match-ups and let Haren take over in the 10th or 11th, on the off-chance it goes that far.
Of course, the real problem is that Mattingly doesn’t trust any of his relievers except Kenley Jansen. And it’s hard to blame him. Among the veterans making the big money, the guys with high strikeout rates also have high walk rates, while Brandon League hasn’t given up a home run all season but doesn’t strike anybody out. You might argue that the Dodgers’ best non-Jansen relievers are rookies Carlos Frias and Pedro Baez, but Frias hasn’t pitched in this series and Baez gave up a homer in his only appearance. During their brief time in the majors this season, both were used almost exclusively in low-leverage situations.
This isn’t a managerial failure so much as an organizational failure. The Dodgers had six months to build the metaphorical bridge to Jansen, and didn’t do it. None of those four veterans – League, Howell, Brian Wilson, and Jamey Wright – managed to strike out more than twice as many batters as they walked. Which, in this Second Era of the Pitcher, seems almost impossible.
Of course, a few days ago it seemed impossible that Matt Carpenter would homer in three straight postseason games. So now it seems that almost anything is possible.
