Kansas City 2, Houston 0
W: Crow (2-1)
L: Ambriz (1-3)
The bright sunlight revealed much more than just a game today. I don’t know if both teams took some extra turns at the bar last night, but this was a sluggish, phoned-in affair from the start. Wild early, Harrell threw 51 pitches in the first two innings before making a correction and shutting down the weak Royals offense through seven.
Across the way, 2011 PCL Pitcher Of The Year Luis Mendoza was far more than the feeble Astro bats could deal with, mustering four hits and a walk in seven innings. Houston did actually get runners on, which is more than the Royals did after the second, but the customary 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position tells you what you need to know about how brutal this team is at the plate.
A casual observer might earmark a special place in Hell for Chris Carter’s ineffectiveness with the bat – a .220 average and 90 strikeouts in 61 games – but there’s oh so much more damnation to go around.
90 strikeouts in 205 at-bats, by the way, extrapolates to 239 whiffs in 544 AB over 162 games. I guess I’m going to have to go back to my sabermetrics library and find out why strikeouts are such a lovable little out or it’s stroke time, baby, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Harrell had needed only 48 pitches for the last five innings, but Porter declined to send him out for the eighth even though he was clearly cruising. “I wasn’t going to send him back out there and put him in position to get the loss,” Porter said. “You send him back out there, now he’s at 115 or 116 pitches with men on base. Now, you’re going to bring somebody else into the game and he’s in position to get a loss. He did a great job. It’s a positive start for him and we got him out of the game on a good note.”
So now we are coddling the delicate psyches of millionaires, expecting them to fail and spending more effort in making sure they get a little Happy Time every fifth day instead of getting them to do their goddamn job like the rest of us? What the fuck, Porter? Take out a tough gamer in the middle of a great stretch because you expect him to fail in order to bring in someone, anyone from the bullpen who is nearly guaranteed to blow up?
Cue the entrance of The Immolator. Ambriz pops in and throws the flaming rag onto the pile of tinder. Getz singles and easily steals second. With two lefthanders following and Porter unconcerned about Ambriz’ sense of failure, he doesn’t walk Gordon, doesn’t bring in a lefty – no, he lets The Immolator give up another single to center.
Getz then scores the only run necessary for KC on a horrific throw by Crowe, who not only ignores the cutoff man and the trailing runner moving into scoring position but he also flies the throw so far up the 1B line that Salvy Perez’ grandma could’ve chugged home for the winner.
Carter was also responsible for the most glaring example of lackadaisical play, allowing Hosmer to advance from first to third on Perez’ single to left when he failed to hustle or recognize what was happening right in front of him.
This was a frustrating loss, after Harrell had pitched well enough to win. Porter succeeded in keeping Harrell out of the losing column, but taking a position with a lower expectation of success than the status quo in order to let players feel some sense of accomplishment instead of failure is a doomed strategy, at least when it comes to this bullpen. All it tells me is that he doesn’t have the confidence necessary to keep players playing, and that he’s sold out to shuffling the deck, chasing short-term successes in some kind of statistical circle jerk. Maybe Porter is the guy for a team of chumps and kids, but this doesn’t give me any confidence at all that he’ll be the right manager for a team with real talent.