Series Thread: Rangers Open the Season by Hosting the Cubs for Three Games March 28-31

[saddles]

 

[Uncle Siggy]

Urena could have pitched 5 innings today. Why not let him do that?

20 games in the next 21 days I suspect could be one reason...

 

[saddles]

20 games in the next 21 days I suspect could be one reason...

That kind of use of the "long" man didn't start yesterday, though.

 

[Nightcrawler]

After only two games, Seager and Heim should have been in the game unless they were injured which I doubt.

I think Bochy approached the last game of the series with a long game mentality. He was resting lots of guys and keeping several others on the sidelines at all costs. I get that it’s a long season, but I think he was ok with just winning the series and not getting the sweep.

he seemed to be testing the depth of the bullpen and the lineup. Probably figured with the Astros losing so much that we could spare 1 game.

 

[saddles]

New thread us up

 

[Uncle Siggy]

That kind of use of the "long" man didn't start yesterday, though.

It's called managing a BP. Just enough work to keep them sharp (Urena and Rodriguez hadn't pitched yet) but not too much work that you wear them out or make them unavailable for 3-4 days. Rays then Stros coming in to town the next 7 games, they can relax when they play Oakland afterwards...

 

[saddles]

It's called managing a BP. Just enough work to keep them sharp (Urena and Rodriguez hadn't pitched yet) but not too much work that you wear them out or make them unavailable for 3-4 days. Rays then Stros coming in to town the next 7 games, they can relax when they play Oakland afterwards...

You are focusing on the micro. A point can be made either way about a lot of individual decisions. I was using this one incidence to point out a macro change. I tried to make that part clear, but maybe I didn't do that well enough. Overall, you see less guys used as a long man for 4 or 5 innings than you used to several years ago.

Yes, it is called managing a bullpen. It was also called that several years ago when managers let long men go longer.

A lot of things have changed about bullpen use over the years and some managers do things differently than other managers even within the same season.

A case in point is how Johnny Oates used both Kevin Gross and Gil Heredia at times during the last half of the 1996 playoff push. Heredia went 6 innings one night.

It seems the term 'long man" has become a misnomer for the most part over the last few years.

You mention relaxing when we play Oakland, but nothing about what I said earlier has anything to do with relaxing.

 

[gregrey972]

Eovaldi is pitching like the ace we need him to!