The fiasco with the bullpen was bad enough, but Tony La Russa really blew it in the ninth inning. Tom Verducci explains:
In the seventh inning, either Pujols called his own hit-and-run play and didn’t swing, or Craig saw a sign that wasn’t there, or the moon was in the phase of Aquarius, but somehow the Cardinals gave up a runner at first (Craig was thrown out), which immediately allowed Washington to intentionally walk Pujols. It gets worse. In the ninth, trailing 4-2, Craig was on first base with no outs while Rangers closer Neftali Feliz had a full count on Pujols, who represented the tying run. La Russa ordered Craig to run on the pitch. Pujols, after two foul balls, chased ball four — a 99 mph fastball off the plate — swung through it and Craig was thrown out for double play.
Here is La Russa’s explanation in full:
“Yeah, I trusted Albert could put the ball in play. In fact, the two swings that he fouled the ball off with the second baseman going over, the hole was there and all of a sudden it was first and third and nobody out and the last pitch, the guy has a very live arm and it sailed on him and he missed. I liked sending him and having a chance to open that inning up, and it didn’t work.”
Think about what La Russa is saying here. Pujols represents the tying run, and yet La Russa is talking about him as if he is Nick Punto. He is thinking about Pujols — who two days earlier joined Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson as the only men ever to hit three homers in a game — hitting a groundball through the right side of the infield with Kinsler covering second base. A groundball to second base with Pujols finally getting a chance to swing the bat as the potential tying run! Do you know how many opposite field singles Pujols had this year in 651 plate appearances? Eleven. Less than two percent of his plate appearances. And that counts all opposite field singles of any kind, including line drives, not just seeing-eye ground balls through the vacated second base hole.
Do you know how many times Pujols hit a homer this year? Thirty-seven — or more than three times more often than he hit opposite field singles.
Really, my head hurts trying to figure out what La Russa did to this game but mostly how he tried to explain it away. It was like being stuck in a gigantic corn maze. Blindfolded. At midnight. After getting spun around 38 times. Every explanation led to another turn that led to another dead end or false exit. The bottom line is he lost the game having a matchup he didn’t want — a left-hander pitching to red-hot Napoli — and he lost his last opportunity by getting a runner thrown out who, while down two runs, didn’t mean anything. I’ve never seen a game even close to this one and I hope never again to have to try to explain one like it.
Watching the game, I was stunned to see Pujols swinging at that last pitch, trying to protect the runner. One swing and the game would have been tied. This is a classic case of a manager over-thinking a situation. Earl Weaver would have sat back and let his horse take his swings.
