Send Bobby Valentine, Buck Showalter To Corner

What the heck were they doing? Both Bobby Valentine and Buck Showalter running out of pitchers in their recent 17-inning Boston Red Sox-Baltimore Orioles game was flat-out ridiculous. In the 2012 major leagues more than half of the roster is made up of pitchers. Teams run out of position players during extra-inning games all of the time, but pitchers? It should never happen.

Just like punishment in school Valentine and Showalter should have been sent to neutral corners to sit there and ponder their futures while wearing dunce caps. Anyone who thinks otherwise should think a little bit about the fact that this was the first time since 1925 that position players finished a game on the mound for both teams.

Showalter and Valentine both come off as managers that like to show off how smart they are. Well, they both out-smarted themselves this time. The Orioles ended up victorious, 9-6, after Adam Jones pummeled Red Sox outfielder Darnell McDonald for a three-run homer. Yes, the Sox have been having problems with their bullpen, but I don’t think McDonald is the answer at closer, and not just because he’s 0-1.

“I really focused on just trying to come in and throw strikes,” McDonald said. As opposed to what, experimenting with his screwball on the outside corner and hoping he could fool Major League hitters?

If the Red Sox want McDonald to become a pitcher he should go to extended spring training and hang out with Mark Prior, but the only time it is acceptable to deploy a position player in a game that counts in the standings is when the team is essentially waving the white flag because it is trailing by something on the order of 10 runs in the late innings.

Both sides of the diamond mismanaged their staffs for this game. Combined, 18 pitchers visited the mound. This is all a symptom of pitching habits change in recent decades. Instead of four starters in a rotation working on four days rest, there are five starters working on five days rest. No one is expected to throw a complete game and if it happens, it’s almost by accident.

So the manager already pretty much knows in a nine-inning game he is going to use two or three pitchers. Then there are the pitchers on the staff who have morphed into extreme specialists. The closer only comes in when his team is ahead. The late-inning set-up man is only relied on for one or one-plus inning.

Right there it is pretty much pre-determined that the manager is asking for trouble if a game goes into extra innings. Then things snowballed because this was no 10-inning or 11-inning baby. Seems to me the same sort of thing got Major League baseball in a jam a few years ago at the All-Star game, requiring that everyone go home with a tie game.

Commissioner Bud Selig was none too happy about that development and tried to make certain it didn’t happen again. Well, it happened again in a regular-season game because of the bumbling of two managers.

One of the few who could feel good about the night was the Orioles’ last pitcher of the evening. Designated hitter Chris Davis took over and threw two scoreless innings–his first pitches in any kind of game in six years–to make up for his day at the plate. Davis went 0-for-8 and struck out five times. It may not have made a lot of sense, but he redeemed himself by heading to the clubhouse with a 1-0 record.

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