I'm a fan of your posts but this is just crazy talk. Why on earth would the leader of the entire team defer to his direct reports?? How does that make any sense as a leader? You take their input of course, as much as you need and at all possible times but you in no way defer to them on those deciscions. ****, might as well not have a manager, let the players and the rest of the pitching staff decide. Can you imagine what a clubhouse full of pros would think of their manager if he deferred to Miller and Murphy on EVERY pitching call? How about Crane? We lose Game 6 of the WS: Crane: "Joe, why Ort there in the 8th?" Joe: "I'm not sure, ask Murphy and Miller?"
Agreed but that's not what was posted. This tells me Joe shouldn't be making pitching deciscions as the leader of that clubhouse. "but he should be deferring to Murph/Miller EVERY TIME when it comes to pitching decisions. I'm an Ops manager for a huge mechanical contractor here in AZ. I delegate quite frenquently, daily, but I make the call and that delegate respresents that deciscion(s), vastly different term. Technically Joe is doing this already, when he turns to Miller and says "Abreu" Miller picks up the phone and respresents that deciscion.
I mean that’s not going out on a limb or anything. I would say you could have a complete opposite of Espada manager in place and I’d bet aside from the occasional smart move that we all agree with this team as constructed still ***** the bed like tonight. They just have some very inconsistent hitters in some very important places.
The Medical Team, Trainers, Chefs deserves the most criticism. 17 players on the Injured List at one point in the Season. There is a huge problem. Last Season was way worse with injuries. Those 3 Factors need to be held accountable the most.
If the Astros play .500 ball through the rest of the season, KC would have to go better than 19-9 (teams behind them even better) for the Astros to miss the playoffs. It could happen, but it would be a total collapse and probably get Espada fired.
On the everyday players side yea On the pitching side, I think it's pretty obvious what we "teach/demand" (whatever word you want to use here) gets the absolute most out of pitchers but it also puts extreme stress on them. Then add in Espada's poor use of relievers and you get injuries One thing that isn't talked about much is Espada's theory that a 4 run lead is a save situation to him. It helped lead to Hader overuse and we see where that ended up. Also when all the talk about the bullpen was happening yesterday on the broadcast, Abreu and King pitching 3 out of 4 days...it wasn't mentioned that the first of those 3 out of 4 was in a 4 run game where they didn't need to be used And on another note about Espada, the one thing that REALLY worried me when he was hired was the talk about him potentially being "too close" to the players. I think a lot of what we see with this team is a direct results of that
On Hader usage, on surface glance, his overall innings pitched numbers shows Hader is relatively in line with the field. On deeper look -- Of the top 20 MLB pitchers with most saved opportunities, Hader is near middle of pack in total innings. But he has pitched the least total games of that 20. Which points to: -- Hader actually does not pitch many games outside of save opportunities. But it seems his outings might be LONGER than the usual closer. Hader is one of the very few closers who has over a 1:1 games/innings pitched ratio. (Meaning averages a little more than 1 inning per appearance) 90% closers average a tick under 1 inning per appearance. * Ex. Hader has 48 games / 52.2 innings. Aroldis Chapman 59 games / 54 innings pitched. They're near identical in save opportunities (29 & 30) Chapman has 11 more games pitched than Hader outside of save opportunities. But Chapman doesn't pitch as long in his outings. -- Does that point to pitching Hader's arm off? Maybe, maybe no. On the plus, Hader's appearances are actually ore confined to just save opportunities than others. Meaning a little more rest in between games. But if you say it as "Give me as many total innings as Aroldis Chapman - in 15 LESS appearances", that can look like it's stretching the arm each time. That maybe it's better to keep Hader as 1 inning only & never more https://www.mlb.com/stats/pitching/save-opportunities
