Fredi Gonzalez Rant Thread.

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Stupidity from Fredi tonight.

Running for Gattis with Schafer in the ninth inning. It sure would've been nice to have Gattis hit in extra innings. The biggest issue is that Freeman was on third, so Gattis on first meant next to nothing there. And yet Fredi still pinch ran for him, taking our best bat out of the game and replacing it with one of our worst bats.

The guy needs to go.
 
Didn't make sense to me either but this is a recurring thing with Fredi PR for Gattis.

Maybe his knees are just shot? He was on his 4th start in a row. Always more to the story. And I do believe schafer would've broken up a dp better than Evan since he's faster and I'd rather Schafer go in sliding hard and risk his body than Evan.

Of course... it's also Fredi's fault Justin failed to score Freddie and CJ lulz.
 
nsacpi said:
He made a good point about how hard Fredi was on the pen. How often he had to warm up without going into the game. Apparently it happens more with Fredi than other managers.
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I watched a lot of Gene Mauch's managing up here in the northern clime and Fredi probably still has a light year or two to catch up with Mauch in this department.

I'm not a "fire the manager" guy, but I'm slowly coming around to the position that Gonzalez isn't up to this particular task. His bullpen use over the past month has been really erratic.

At the same time, I don't think Wren can be let off the hook here either. In some sense, he's given Fredi a screwdriver set and told him to go hang a bunch of pictures. Wrong tools for the job.
 
I personally think managers/head coaches get too much of the blame for failures and also too much credit for successes in any sport. The fact of the matter is, coaches simply don't have that much of an impact on wins and losses.

WITH THAT SAID, some coaches/managers fail to put their players into position to be successful. This is where Fredi is, IMO. His use of the bull pen and poor in game managerial decisions put the players into positions where they will struggle to succeed. If it isn't the fact that he still hits BJ second in the order, it's that he pulls the best hitter on the team late in games to "preserve his knees" (yet some don't want to move him to left field to keep his bat in the line up).
 
Last night was a tough situation to start with. Kimbrel had pitched three straight days. Hale had pitched multiple innings and over 40 pitches two days before. Varvaro had gone multiple innings and over 30 pitches the day before. Ideally you don't want to use any of those guys.

Fredi's initial bullpen decisions were fine. He brought in Avilan, Walden and Simmons. Then Carpenter. I agreed with bringing Carpenter out for a second inning.

Once Carpenter went out with the injury, I think the decision was basically down to who you want to serve as sacrificial lamb. Pick Varvaro or Hale and sacrifice that guy to have a better bullpen situation for the next day. I think Varvaro should be the sacrificial lamb in our bullpen. But the main point was not to use both. Now we have a situation where both Hale and Varvaro are not available today. I think the decision to bring Hale in was even worse when you consider the pitcher was due up first in the bottom half of our inning.

Fredi's bigger mistake last night was pinch running for Gattis. The upside here is so small compared with the downside that it is hard to believe a major league manager would do this. Gattis is going to rest today anyhow. So I really don't get that move at all.
 
nsacpi said:
Last night was a tough situation to start with. Kimbrel had pitched three straight days. Hale had pitched multiple innings and over 40 pitches two days before. Varvaro had gone multiple innings and over 30 pitches the day before. Ideally you don't want to use any of those guys.

Fredi's initial bullpen decisions were fine. He brought in Avilan, Walden and Simmons. Then Carpenter. I agreed with bringing Carpenter out for a second inning.

Once Carpenter went out with the injury, I think the decision was basically down to who you want to serve as sacrificial lamb. Pick Varvaro or Hale and sacrifice that guy to have a better bullpen situation for the next day. I think Varvaro should be the sacrificial lamb in our bullpen. But the main point was not to use both. Now we have a situation where both Hale and Varvaro are not available today. I think the decision to bring Hale in was even worse when you consider the pitcher was due up first in the bottom half of our inning.

Fredi's bigger mistake last night was pinch running for Gattis. The upside here is so small compared with the downside that it is hard to believe a major league manager would do this. Gattis is going to rest today anyhow. So I really don't get that move at all.
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It's his use of the bullpen in previous games that puts him into the situation he was in with the bullpen last night.
 
nsacpi said:
Last night was a tough situation to start with. Kimbrel had pitched three straight days. Hale had pitched multiple innings and over 40 pitches two days before. Varvaro had gone multiple innings and over 30 pitches the day before. Ideally you don't want to use any of those guys.

Fredi's initial bullpen decisions were fine. He brought in Avilan, Walden and Simmons. Then Carpenter. I agreed with bringing Carpenter out for a second inning.

Once Carpenter went out with the injury, I think the decision was basically down to who you want to serve as sacrificial lamb. Pick Varvaro or Hale and sacrifice that guy to have a better bullpen situation for the next day. I think Varvaro should be the sacrificial lamb in our bullpen. But the main point was not to use both. Now we have a situation where both Hale and Varvaro are not available today. I think the decision to bring Hale in was even worse when you consider the pitcher was due up first in the bottom half of our inning.

Fredi's bigger mistake last night was pinch running for Gattis. The upside here is so small compared with the downside that it is hard to believe a major league manager would do this. Gattis is going to rest today anyhow. So I really don't get that move at all.
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I like Varvaro more than most in here, but you're basically right. He's Cristhian Martinez Part Deux to some extent.

But let's not let Carpenter off the hook for not getting through the 9th on Sunday night. He does that and Kimbrel is available yesterday. Add to that Minor only going 5 (a gutty 5, but 5 nonetheless) on Sunday night and you're going to have a tired bullpen. It would be nice if Avilan would regain his form and maybe do a full inning every now and then as well.
 
nsacpi said:
Fredi's bigger mistake last night was pinch running for Gattis. The upside here is so small compared with the downside that it is hard to believe a major league manager would do this. Gattis is going to rest today anyhow. So I really don't get that move at all.
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I was dumbfounded when I saw Schafer running for Gattis. It actually made me think the score was wrong on the TV display or something and they needed the runner from first to score.

The move did allow Laird to bat 9th on the resulting double switch, which was important if the plan was to allow Carpenter to pitch 2 innings.
 
All I ask is that you can see the logic behind the managers decision. Certainly not going to agree with the decision.

If Gattis was the only runner on, I would have understood the decision.
 
Schafer's run didn't matter, so why pinch run?
I can't say it enough: GET BJ OUT OF 2.
He came up in some critical spots and promptly **** the bed. It's absurd.
 
yeezus said:
Schafer's run didn't matter, so why pinch run?
I can't say it enough: GET BJ OUT OF 2.
He came up in some critical spots and promptly **** the bed. It's absurd.
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Because of Shafer maybe getting a half of a second to second faster may give them a like 2% better chance of breaking up a certain double play.
 
yeezus said:
Schafer's run didn't matter, so why pinch run?
I can't say it enough: GET BJ OUT OF 2.
He came up in some critical spots and promptly **** the bed. It's absurd.
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I get zito's point, but Gattis' run doesn't mean anything there. Fredi burned a guy for a very iffy reason.
 
I also didn't like us burning Simmons for one batter the way Fredi did given the situation. But the pinch running for Gattis again was really stupid. It had nothing to do with Gattis knees and those that claim such are just desperate to defend Fredi or reaching since they know it was that bad. What's worse is it a mistake he had just made Saturday too.

This sort of stupidity and not using Kimbrel last playoffs, among other issues, is why I have a hard time seeing us even going to a world series with Fredi here. I like our talent and upcoming talent a lot, but our manager is one of the worst in MLB IMO. Plus Fredi and Wren are just a bad combo together too.
 
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