Why Managers Matter

Baseball, more than any other sport, can be won or lost by the manager. Sure football and basketball coaches make bad decisions, but baseball when boiled down is a game of individual match ups. Baseball is a chess match, managers use pitchers when they have a significant advantage over a particular hitter. This is why there are lefty specialists, their jobs are to get out a lefty hitter and that's it. Much like a goal line back in football or a 3 point specialist in basketball, left specialists should only be used in small durations when the flow of the game demands it. Tonight in the Yankees loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, Yankees manager, Joe Girardi, made a surprising decision in the bottom of the 7th inning that cost his team two runs.

In a 6-2 game Girardi left in lefty specialist Clay Rapada in to face Evan Longoria after Rapada walked Carlos Pena. Longoria ended up hitting a ground rule double (a fan reached over the fence and snagged the ball thus reversing what was called a home run) to move Pena to third. Girardi left in Rapada to face Matt Joyce who promptly singled to left field driving in both runners and putting the game effectively out of reach. 

Now why would Girardi leave in Rapada, especially when Cory Wade was already warmed up? As noted earlier Rapada is a lefty specialist and rarely faces right handed pitching. Rapada has only faced a total of 95 right handed hitters all time and has just absolutely horrid numbers against right handed batters. For his career right handed hitters bat .359 against with 6 home runs, three times as many as left handed batters have against him. He issues 8.5 walks per 9 innings and has a 8.4 strike out percentage. In fact he didn't strike out a single right handed batter last year. With these less than impressive numbers one would think a number savvy manager like Girardi would know better, but instead he left him in against one of the best hitters in the game with very good numbers against lefty pitching. Last season Longoria had a wOBA of .392 against lefty pitching, compared to a .356 wOBA against right handed pitching. Even during an off year like Longoria had last year he still managed to hit 10 home runs against lefty's and had a .310 isolated power. He has a career .549 slugging percentage against left pitching and a .942 OPS. In a game all about match ups Girardi left in a pitcher who cant get out right handed batters in against a batter who kills lefty's, this decision may have very well cost the Yankees the game. 

Now World Series aren't won or lost in April, but it is troubling to see a manager not utilize his advantages when the time comes. Tonight's game was won at the managerial level, especially on the Rays side. Joe Maddon proved once again why he is the best manager in the game. Time and time again the Rays shift picked up huge outs on what would usually be hits. The shift saved a couple runs in the 8th and got the last out in the 9th. This game was an excellent example of how much of an impact a manager actually has on the game.