Nationals Arm Race

If you let Gorzelanny bat in the 7th .. then why don't you let him finish the game? Photo: AP

I was lucky enough to be in attendance at Monday, 5/1’s Nats win over the Giants and saw Tom Gorzelanny‘s best performance of the year.

However, once again I had to question the in-game management from Jim Riggleman.  Gorzelanny was cruising along and sat at somewhere around 78 pitches through 7 innings, having only given up 2 hits.  Meanwhile Madison Bumgarner had absolutely shut down the Nationals, perfect through four and having only given up one hit through 6.  In the bottom of the 7th, Miguel Tejada blows a simple 2-out grounder that opened the floodgates and allowed 2 runs to score (I was there; it was a blatant error and the crowd actually boo’d the official scorer giving the play a hit).

Suddenly, the Nats have the bases loaded situation against a pitcher clearly on the ropes … only the pitcher’s spot is coming up.  What does Riggleman do?  He lets Gorzelanny bat, lefty-against-lefty, with the bases loaded and 2 outs.  Predictably he weakly grounds out to the pitcher to end the rally.

So, old-school types would say, “ok well Riggleman thinks Gorzelanny is going to finish the game, if you’re leaving him in to clearly end a big rally.”

But here’s what I didn’t get: Gorzelanny starts the 8th inning and ONLY THEN does the bullpen get working.  Coffey is up, Burnett is up.  Gorzelanny gets into some trouble in the 8th, giving up a hit and a walk, but gets through the inning and is sitting at 95 pitches.  You look out into the bullpen now, and Storen is warming up.  The Nats go down in the eight inning, and suddenly you see Storen trotting to the mound.

What the heck is going on?  If you were NOT going to let Gorzelanny finish the game, then why did you let him bat in the 7th?   But, by letting him bat you were tacitly telling your pitcher, ” you did a great job tonight, go get the complete game.”  Only you yank him with 95 pitches and without even going back out to start the 9th inning.

Something’s inconsistent here.  As far as I could tell, one of 3 things was going on:

1. Riggleman just forgot to get someone warmed up and was caught off guard by the Nats rally in the 7th.  Suddenly Gorzelanny was at the plate but nobody was warmed up and he had to bat.
2. Riggleman has no right-handed pinch-hitting options, only Stairs and Nix on the bench (he couldn’t burn Pudge as the 2nd catcher), so he figured neither of them would give a good at-bat against Bumgarner, so why not go with Gorzelanny.
3. He fully intended to allow Gorzelanny to go for the complete game, only he saw something during the 8th inning that told him, “hey, Gorzelanny is spent and we need to get him out of there.”

As it turned out, the team won the game.  But in my opinion you trade an inning of your starter in that situation for a chance to blow open the game.  Why else do we have a highly paid pinch hitting specialist sitting on the bench all game??  If the Nats had blown that game by not trying to get a hit in that bases-loaded situation, I would have been pretty irritatated.

At the same time … I understand the veteran mentality mentality of letting guys finish games, or letting them try to get complete games.  Its shows a level of respect and professionalism to your players.  But if that’s what you’re doing … then do it!  Don’t yank the guy after one more inning like its just another ball game.

What do you guys think?