Soccer Dad

Heroes of Red Sox Nation

Ken Rosenthal runs down the players who made the Boston victory possible. I wondered on Wednesday, what it must have felt like to be David Ortiz. In consecutive games he delivered the victory in sudden death in front of a home crowd. It's wonderful, I'm sure do it once. It's much greater to do it twice. Wow.
Whoops, Ken Rosenthal missed one. And in both games Dave Roberts used his speed to get the tie and send the game into extra innings.
Francona used Roberts perfectly.
And to that I recall that David Pinto wondered why sabermetric organization like Boston would hire a non-sabermetric manager.

So the question I've been asking myself since reading Moneyball is, "Why don't these teams hire someone like this to manage? Why put so much control in the hands of the GM? Why not hire someone who understands your plan and has the intelligence to implement it?"

I still don't know why. But it would appear that Francona at least has some sense how to "us[e] players in situations in which there was a high probability of them succeeding."

It's funny, it was like two different series. In the first one the Yankees could do no wrong with their bats. In the second one the Yankees could do nothing with their bats. I know that their missing Giambi, but Jeter, Rodriguez, Sheffield and Matsui are as potent a foursome as any in the Majors.

UPDATE:Some other thoughts as a comment on Penny Stock.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 21, 2004 01:32 PM | TrackBack