Sunday, August 05, 2007

I loathe Matt Wise

and to a lesser extent, Ned Yost for putting Matt Wise into the game.

In case you missed it, the Brewers blew 6-1 lead in the top of the 9th and went on to lose 8-6 in extra innings.

The bullpen manufactured their most spectacular collapse this season - which, considering their performance this season, is saying something.

Scott Linebrink entered the game in the top of the 8th after Carlos Villanueva had runners at 2nd and 3rd with no outs. Linebrink proceeded to strike out the side. His spot in the rotation came up, so we pinch hit (with a 5 run lead) - got nowhere and sent MATT FREAKIN' WISE in to close out the game.

You know, the Matt Wise that in his appearance in Tuesday's game threw 10 straight balls before Yost finally pulled him out of the game.

My question here is this: WHY PULL LINEBRINK?! We've heard since just before the trade deadline how tired our bullpen is. The man has been off all week attending the birth of his child. He's as fresh as they get. We don't need a hit. Put him at the plate and send him back out for the 9th.

Even if the argument can be made against this idea in principle, you cannot successfully argue to me that the better option was pinch hitting (for an out) and then sending Matt Wise out there.

Let's take out the guy who just pitched lights out to get you out of a jam in favor of the guy who's done nothing but put us in jams. WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THIS?!

Finally, using everyone except Chris Spurling in this game before we go on a road-trip didn't exactly seem to solve the problem of a tired bullpen. As our bullpen blew 4 late-inning leads in seven tries on the last road trip, this seems like the most illogical thing Yost could have done.

In light of resting more guys and Wise's extreme suckage, I just cannot wrap my head around taking Linebrink out of today's game.

Article here.

1 comment:

Matt said...

Can't really fault Nedly for putting Wise in there. Matt needed to work on finding the strike zone, and with a five run lead you'd have believe Yost (and everyone at The Keg) felt comfortable with him on the mound. After all, if he got in trouble, Yost could bring in Coco. Which he did (and did) and the rest is history.

Linebrink was going to be needed in hitter friendly Colorado. Good idea to keep his pitch count down when we had a five run lead.

BTW, I enjoy the blog.