Dodgers Diaries

When the 2005 White Sox won the ALCS over the Los Angeles Angels, they did it with complete games by all four of their stud starting pitchers. That left their bullpen rested and ready for the World Series, which they won in a sweep. Immediately thereafter, baseball fans came to realize that letting your starters go deep into games makes your bullpen that much better. For one, the pen is rested. For another, you only have to use the best relievers. Guys like Brandon McCarthy, Shingo Takatsu and Kevin Walker did not enter a game in those playoffs or the World Series.

Joe Torre must have been sleeping during that series, perhaps because his Yankees were eliminated a week earlier by the Angels in a tight five-game series. Because Torre seems never to have learned the lesson that a slightly tired starting pitcher is still better than a fresh middle reliever.

Friday night’s game against the Mets was exhibit X, Y and Z in the case of whether Torre or a monkey could manage the bullpen better. Torre even came out and admitted to ESPN’s Tony Jackson that he erred in removing Vicente Padilla for a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning. Padilla had held the Mets to two runs over 77 pitches, and was in a groove. His replacements were not. A parade that began with the Jeff Weaver Marching and Chowder Society and ended after anybody who doesn’t work for the Dodgers stopped watching allowed four runs, and cost the Dodgers the game. The sight of Torre ambling out to the mound three times in a single inning was enough to cause me to turn off the game.

Afterward, Dodger pitching coach Rick Honeycutt told Jackson "right now, we have a lot of different bodies down there, and we need to figure out what their roles are." He even admitted later in the interview: “Really, what your role should be is to make pitches and get people out, no matter when you're brought in to pitch. But we need to figure out when each guy can pitch."

Why pitchers, managers and pitching coaches can’t understand the second half of this quote is beyond me. Your job as a pitcher, whether you’re the ace starter, the closer, the eighth-inning guy, or the mop-up man, is to get outs. Your job as a manager is to use the guys who get the most outs most often.

Would the Dodgers have won the game if Padilla had stayed in, still trailing 2-1? Impossible to say. They didn’t get a sniff off relievers Bobby Parnell or Francisco Rodriguez. But by that time, the game was a 6-1 mountain to climb, not a one-run molehill.

-- JOHN ROSENTHAL