08 Apr 09, Dodgers

Final game of the the series. Given the Padres' grim prospects, a series win would have been huge. I was watching little bits at work via MLB.TV, but watched the 7th blow up in our faces. For those not watching, 2-2, top of the 7th, LA got two a clean single and nub single to get 1rst and 2nd with 1 out. I have never heard of Mujica, and, on the few pitches I saw, he looked OK. But, Manny is coming up and, if you had to measure leverage, this was about as critical as it was going to be all night.

Now, people can quibble about whether to keep Mujica vs. the others in the pen. I am not sure any of them would have faired better, except for the one really good guy: Bell.

I don't know what choices Black was mulling, but I can almost guarantee that putting in Bell (maybe he was getting warm, which would shut me up) was not one of them.

I think the accepted practice of having your best reliever come in "save situations" is that is a rough proxy for leverage. If it is really 1 run in the 9th inning, there is some leverage there. But, in this case, it is almost impossible to imagine a more critical out in the rest of the game.

And, predictably, the wheels came off.

Now, we did not deserve to win this game, with our little three hits, but, we are going to have to win a lot of games we did not deserve to win to have a decent season. We need to think outside of "accepted conventional wisdom" and be very, very smart about the limited assets, especially pitching assets, that we have.