I admit, there is something a little distasteful about me sitting here acting like I’m Connie Mack, Casey Stengel and Tony La Russa all rolled into one, the day after the fact. That said, no one is more relieved today than Angels’ manager Mike Scioscia. That cat is seriously off the hook after nearly managing his team right out of the ALCS last night. While it takes some unbelievable gall for me to second guess a guy who has forgotten more baseball than I’ll know…considering that’s what they pay me to do, I’ll just go ahead do it. Besides, Scioscia hasn’t forgotten more baseball than John Lackey will ever know. And Lackey agrees with me!
How do you hook Lackey, with a four run lead, in the 7th, after he had just gotten Johnny Damon to fly out to left for the second out of the inning?!
Look, if you want to pull him after he walked Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter…great! But if you leave him to face Damon, and he gets him, how do you not let him work his way out of the jam and get that last out?! Especially, since he was set to face a struggling Mark Teixeira. He’s your horse, he dominated for the first six innings, and he was right…that was his game! Now, not only will you have to replace Lackey next year when he leaves, you almost had to replace the entire ballpark after Darren Oliver dragged his gas can to bump, soaked the infield, starting flicking lit blue tips around, and attempted to burn that joint to the ground.
Teixeira, the guy Scioscia just had to turn around, clears the bases on the very first pitch. Oliver then intentionally walked Alex Rodriguez, gave up the game tying knock to Hideki Matsui, passed the gas can to Kevin Jepsen, who then tried to burn the rest of the city down, allowing that two run triple to Robinson Cano.
Luckily, the rally monkey came out, the Angels came back, and Scioscia was off the hook. The only guy happier than Scioscia, was Phillies manager “Chuck” Manuel. And if L.A. can steal game six and force the Yankees to use CC Sabathia again, Philly fan will probably be climbing greasy lamp posts and dodging roman candle fires again!
