Rent's gone, but in other news (ep)

Grady's brain cramps: Not just Pedro

Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
Posted: 10 hours ago

Talk about a gag gift.

Merry Christmas, Dodgers fans. That's not a lump of coal in your stocking, it's your new manager, Grady Little.

Trust me, you'll wish you got the lump of coal.

This is great news for Red Sox fans, of course. We get to join in the raucous laughter, eye-rolling and second-guessing, only without Grady Little killing our team in the process.

Plus, as an added bonus, I get to dust off phrases like "empty-faced," "slack-jawed" and "dull-eyed."

Little is the only manager I've ever seen for whom the glacial pace of baseball moved too fast. Every situation caught him by surprise. Any time he was expected to counter an opposing manager's move, it was like the shot clock was about to expire and he was heaving one up from 35 feet.

Grady has his apologists, naturally, those who think he got railroaded for one bad move. They point to his stellar minor league managerial record and his 188 wins in two seasons as Red Sox skipper.

I totally agree that Grady should not be judged solely on what happened on the night of October 16, 2003. He should be judged also on all the mindless moves he made over the course of two seasons in Boston that contributed a. to a team with the 2-3 finishers in the Cy Young balloting missing the playoffs in 2002 and b. to a team with a solid starting staff and a record-setting lineup finishing six games behind the Yankees in 2003.

See the look on Tim Wakefield's face? Expect similar from Dodgers pitchers next season. (Tom Pidgeon / Getty Images)

Yes, lets give Grady a pass — for the moment — for freezing when it mattered most. Let's instead discuss all the times he pinch ran for David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, only to have that guy's spot come up two innings later with the winning run in scoring position and some utility guy at the plate. Let's discuss all the times he failed to anticipate the other manager's counter-move. Time and time again Grady would abandon a more-favorable matchup to trigger a sequence that would result in a much less desirable pairing of pitcher and hitter. It was like he didn't have access to the other guy's roster, never mind the stats of the opposition. Or perhaps he'd forget that the other manager was allowed to make a move. It was so often bewildering. And sometimes downright scary. Like watching a foreign motorist misread a traffic signal and venture out into a busy intersection. The resulting car crash in that tragic 8th inning was, I believe, inevitable.

Let's go back to those 2003 playoffs, not the calamitous ALCS but the opening game of the Red Sox' first round series against the A's. It's the top of the 8th and the Sox are leading 4-3 and have runners on second and third with one out. Two critical insurance runs are sitting in scoring position and Trot Nixon — who finished fifth in the league in slugging percentage in 2003 — is due up against lefty Ricardo Rincon.

Now Nixon has always struggled against lefties so the inclination to lift him for a pinch hitter is not without merit. But a manager cannot make his decisions in a vacuum, even if that is all that exists between his ears. Little removed Nixon from the game in favor of David McCarty, who had hit .400 (10-for-25) against lefties in 2003. Presumably Oakland manager Ken Macha had access to this information and predictably replaced Rincon with right-handed submariner Chad Bradford. Surprise!

Righties hit just .190 off Bradford in '03 and struck out once every 3.7 at bats. Uh-oh. Runners on second and third, one out, gotta put the ball in play. Exit McCarty.

Enter Adrian Brown. In what was arguably the most critical at-bat of the season for the Red Sox, Grady Little turned to Adrian Brown. He of the 15 at bats on the year, 3-for-14 (.214) as a left-handed hitter.

Given that Macha had done precisely what anyone with a functioning neocortex could have anticipated, one has to assume that Grady either A) preferred the Adrian Brown v. Bradford matchup to the Nixon v. Rincon matchup or B) does not have a functioning neocortex.

In one sequence, Little had lost his starting right-fielder along with his .578 slugging percentage, wasted his best right-handed pinch hitter and left the team's fate in the hands of a guy who had hit .216 in his last full season in the Majors.

Brown fanned weakly against Bradford, the Red Sox failed to score, the A's tied it in the ninth and won it in the 12th. But not before Brown's spot came up again. With the score tied at 4-4, Brown was due to lead off the 11th against Keith Foulke. Little pinch hit for him with Gabe Kapler, who struck out looking. Like the rest of us, all Trot Nixon could do was watch.

The only thing that could seriously exacerbate Grady's managerial shortsightedness would be a move to the National League, where knowing what every guy on the opposing bench hits against lefties isn't just a suggestion. Double switch? Good luck.

Before we get to where all discussions of Grady's competence end up — that star-crossed 8th inning — let's talk about the last time Grady Little managed in Dodger Stadium. It was June of 2002.

Dodgers fans might remember that their team swept the Red Sox, part of Little's 5-13 Interleague record in '02.

I was at those games and here's what I wrote for the Boston Dirt Dogs website:

"Grady has done some brilliant maneuvering in this avalanche of one-run losses, moves that have resulted in such undesirable situations as Doug Mirabelli batting not once but twice with the bases loaded in an extra-inning loss to the Yanks, but his master stroke had to be sending up Brian Daubach to pinch hit against Eric Gagne with the tying run on third and one out in a one-run game. What the Sox needed desperately — the absolute imperative in that situation — was someone to put the ball in play, so Grady calls for a guy who has fanned in 10 of his 11 previous plate appearances. Did anyone in New England, anyone in the L.A. press box, anyone in the dugout think Dauber would put the ball in play there? Predictably, Dauby flails at ball four and the Sox lose.

But back to that final game in Yankee Stadium.

As noted above, some baseball people think Grady was unfairly vilified for leaving Pedro Martinez in to start the 8th inning against the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Those people are wrong. When Grady sent Pedro out to start that fatal 8th and then went to the mound and got talked into leaving his ace in to incur further damage, it was the most glaring abdication of leadership in the long, depressing history of Boston mismanagement. Worse than Joe McCarthy starting Denny Galehouse in the one-game playoff against the Indians in 1948. Worse than Don Zimmer refusing to pitch Bill Lee against the Yankees in 1978. Worse than John McNamara leaving Bill Buckner at first base in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Some astute Red Sox fans may have been shouting for Dave Stapleton to replace Buckner in '86, but in 2003 every single citizen of Red Sox Nation knew Pedro was done after seven. Except Grady Little. Not every fan might have known that opposing teams had hit .363 off of Pedro after 105 pitches that year, but they knew it was time to lift him. Not Grady.

Pedro faced five batters in the eighth and gave up four hits. Mike Timlin and Alan Embree, who between them made 16 scoreless appearances in the 2003 playoffs, just watched with the rest of us as a 5-2 lead became a 5-5 tie before Grady finally went and got the ball.

But as it turns out, the events of that miserable night in Yankee Stadium may have strangely proved a boon (not Boone) to Little. He is now measured almost entirely on that one indecisive non-decision. And there are those, apparently including Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who think Little was justified in sending his ace back out for the eighth. You know, "Dance with the one that brung ya" and all those folksyisms that so conveniently replace intelligent analysis in the heat of battle. What the debate over that 8th inning does — happily for the now-employed Grady — is obscure all the other mistakes he made in his brief and deceptively successful tenure with the Red Sox.

So Merry Christmas, Dodgers fans. Enjoy your novelty gift. The joke's on you.