Thread: Buck Showalter

is 100% to blame if Baltimore does not win this game or comes up one game short for the playoffs. His blatant refusal to use Jim Johnson for more than three outs has led to the Yankees drawing walk after walk against Pedro Strop. And now he has turned to Darren O'Day. Meanwhile Johnson continues to sit.

He's temporarily saved as Adam Jones homers in the bottom of the eighth.

And now Mark Reynolds puts two more on the board. It's fun to see an Orioles crowd going nuts. Still a stupid move by the likely Manager of the Year.

Yeah but he has his team hitting HR.

I was saying "Damn Yankees" in the top half of the 8th inning.

But the Orioles have impressed in the bottom half.

Nice that you guys are in fantasy land. Joe Torre was a great overuser of his bullpen and needed new bullpen pitchers every year or two. Look how many arms he burned out. The overuse of relief pitchers is a very high reason for team collapes(look at Atlanta last year). By the end of August the Atlanta bullpen was gassed and they faded out of contention in September.
Jim Johnson may be one of the pitchers that can only be used for 20-30 pitches a night. If used more, he may not be available for a day or two, that would be worse than losing any one game(and he may win this one anyway)

You can always find moves of any manager to second-guess, you've got to give Buck a lot of credit.

He brought a winning attitude to an organization that allowed a culture of losing to fester for years.

I think managers often get a lot more credit/blame for their teams' success/failure than they deserve. But this is one case where the manager has clearly made a difference.

Though it is pretty bizarre that only 4 teams in baseball have more wins than the O's, but only 10 have a worse run differential.

Originally Posted by beckmt

Joe Torre was a great overuser of his bullpen and needed new bullpen pitchers every year or two. Look how many arms he burned out.

If only Torre hadn't ruined Mariano Rivera's arm during his time as Yankees' skipper. I may be going out on a limb here but I think that Rivera guy could have really been something had he stayed healthy.

Originally Posted by one_eyed_jack

Though it is pretty bizarre that only 4 teams in baseball have more wins than the O's, but only 10 have a worse run differential.

Nothing more than dumb luck. It won't happen again.

Gotta love what is happening with the Orioles, though. What a playoff atmosphere last night. Stands were full. Crowd was so excited == a sea of black & orange.

For anyone who may have "checked out" on the Twins (per thread in Twins Talk), this was a good example of how much fun it can be to check in somewhere else. And its probably the only good thing about the Twins being so bad. When the Twins are winning, I tend to focus only on their games. The last 2 seasons, I've watched a lot more baseball from other teams -- and its a lot of fun -- even without a "dog in the hunt".

Originally Posted by beckmt

The overuse of relief pitchers is a very high reason for team collapes(look at Atlanta last year). By the end of August the Atlanta bullpen was gassed and they faded out of contention in September.

Wrong. Simply wrong. The Braves OPS'd 20 points lower than any other month of the year in September, the starters put up an ERA 40 points worse than any month of the season, and the relievers only had an ERA 17 points higher than the next worst month. The whole entire team collapsed, not the bullpen. If anything, the bullpen performed as close to expectations according to previous performance in 2011 as any other part of the team. The media loved that story, but it wasn't true. The Braves best reliever by ERA, Eric O'Flaherty finished with a 0.98 ERA and in September, he threw 14 IP with no earned runs. Venters had a poor showing, and Kimbrel had a couple of bad games, but the bullpen overall was not the issue in September for the Braves.

The Orioles win just about every one run game they are involved in. I would think that is a pretty good indication that the bullpen is being managed fairly well.

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Originally Posted by one_eyed_jack

Though it is pretty bizarre that only 4 teams in baseball have more wins than the O's, but only 10 have a worse run differential.

Nothing more than dumb luck. It won't happen again.

lol... Yes it will... Not often... but... It will happen again.

Originally Posted by Riverbrian

lol... Yes it will... Not often... but... It will happen again.

Heh, it will definitely happen again... I meant "it won't happen again to the Orioles/Schowalter anytime soon".