ESPN.com – MLB – Little defends not pulling Pedro sooner

ESPN.com – MLB – Little defends not pulling Pedro sooner

I find this to be an incredible story. Pedro takes responsibility, Little takes responsibility. Now Jason Varitek takes responsibility.

The bottom line is that for three years Pedro has been on a pitch count. He rarely tops 100 pitches. What Grady Little did in Game 7 was to deviate from the system. He may say that Pedro was pitching as well in the 8th as he was earlier in the game, but if you were watching the game it sure didn’t look that way.

But even if that’s the case, even if Little thought Martinez’s control was as crisp as it had been earlier and his velocity was as strong, clearly there were good reasons to take Martinez out against Matsui, who had hit Martinez hard all game (and in Game 3 as well).

Little decided to ride his horse rather than trust the game to his untrustworthy (recent success notwithstanding) bullpen. He and Pedro have taken the blame for what happened. The rest of us are on to another series of games. A World Series.

I think Little may well deserve a ton of credit for making this Boston team resilient enough to survive and thrive this year. I’m not really in a position to judge overall whether or not he’s a good manager. But he made some of the dopiest most indefensible strategic decisions possible in the series against the Yankees. And nearly everyone could see that Martinez’ was losing his bite in the eighth inning.

It’s good to see him taking responsibility, but I think he clearly shoudl have been fired even if Boston beat the Yankees. Why go into battle with a manager who can’t parse the most simple of strategic situations?

Well, the reason is because making players comfortable and helping the to play at their best may well be worth more than all the genuinely strategic decisions a manager makes all year. But that’s just a theory. Until we have some evidence, strategy wins. And Little is out (or should be).