Piniella Did Not Lose the Game by Replacing Zambrano With Marmol
The second-guessers -- Phil Rogers, Jay Mariotti, Gordon Wittenmyer, Melissa Isaacson, Rick Morrissey, Mike Downey, Mike Imrem, and Barry Rozner (talk about group think) -- were out in full force this morning after the Cubs' 3-1 loss in Game 1 of the NLDS. All of them consider Lou Piniella's removal of Carlos Zambrano to start the seventh inning in favor of Carlos Marmol to have been the cause of the Cubs' loss.
The real cause, of course, was Brandon Webb's mastery of the Cubs' hitters, the particular angle of some line drives off Cubs' bats, and Marmol's inability to locate his pitches in the 7th inning. But not to the aforementioned writers, who have created a new Zambrano in their mind, some unstoppable force who would of course not allowed any runs going forward. Either that, or they just could not come up with another angle on this game.
In making their judgments, they ignore the information Piniella had to go on when he made the decision, namely, that Marmol is a better pitcher than Zambrano over a 1-2 inning stretch. And more so after Zambrano has already thrown six innings. Zambrano entered the 7th inning in 19 games this season. In those 19 games, he faced 73 batters and allowed them to hit .274/.384/.484. Marmol, on the other hand, was just about unhittable in the 7th and 8th innings this year: 567 OPS allowed in the 7th; 466 in the 8th.
In other words, Piniella's move is not just defensible because of the need to have Zambrano pitch well in Game 4, it is defensible because Marmol was the better option at the time. It is a good thing that Piniella does not take his cues from the Chicago sports punditry.
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second guessing
In 100% agreement here, so I guess we can start our own little group thinktank.
I guess two things are easy to forget: 1) just how awesome Marmol has been this year, and 2) how 24 hours ago everyone would have been thrilled to get six strong innings from Zambrano, who of course has been less than awesome over considerable periods this year.
Really, I think those line drives you mention were the biggest factor. Webb is an extreme groundball pitcher, a little less so this year but he still had a 2.70 groundout/flyout ratio. Yet the Cubs had quite a few line drives off of him last night, but other than Zambrano's double couldn't seem to get them to fall. Not an extraordinary number of line drives, maybe, but more than Webb is used to giving up.
I actually thought they did a decent job against him, but it just wasn't their night. Hopefully that evens out tonight.
re: second guessing
Brian, I could not have said it better myself. Removing Zambrano had little to do with the losing the game, if anything at all. It was just Arizona's night. Heck, I didn't even know Ojeda was capable of hitting a ball out of the infield. That should say it all right there. Marmol had a rough outing, but even the best of them do. Hopefully, he doesn't let it carry over into his next outing.
more second guessing
A couple of comments here in the bottom of the fourth:
1) One of my pet peeves is when broadcasters are unable to explain what is happening on the field. I bring this up because the Diamondbacks' Augie Ojeda led off the inning with a bunt attempt up the first base line. Derrek Lee fielded the bunt, and dove towards Ojeda in an attempt to apply a tag. Ojeda ran around the tag, and was called safe at first base. Piniella came out to argue that Ojeda should be out since he ran out of his baseline.
Commentator Ron Darling at this point says that the umpire is explaining the rule to Piniella. However, neither Darling nor play-by-play man Dick Stockton bothered to explain the rule to the viewing audience.
Here's the deal, though: baseball is a very easy sport to watch. Man pitches a ball, man swings at the ball, man runs bases after ball is hit. This is not a sport that we really need anyone to tell us what is happening. In fact, once you acquire a very basic understanding of the game, it's quite easy to follow 90% of the game without any sound at all. So what good are broadcasters who are completely unwilling and/or unable to explain the few things that are not self-evident? This is something that I would consider basic competence.
2) The rule, as per the MLB site (scroll down to Rule 7.08(a)(1)):
I think Lou had a valid argument.
3) Irony strikes when Lou, a day after taking heavy criticism for pulling his starting pitcher too early, leaves his starting pitcher in too long. Ted Lilly had the kind of night that so many were afraid Zambrano would have last night (further irony), and he had little business hitting for himself with a man on in the top of the fourth. He struck out, and then was unable to finish the fourth inning, giving up two more runs in the process. Meaning that the decision to let him hit resulted in pretty much the worst possible scenario.
I thought Piniella made the right decision last night in pulling Zambrano, but I can't defend this one.
RE: more second guessing
1) I thought that really strange, too. Listening to it, my first thought was, "Darling doesn't know the rule."
the rule
Honestly, I wasn't 100% sure what the rule was, myself. So I looked it up. But, I'm not a professional broadcaster.
I'm not sure how much access broadcasters have to the internet during a game, but I'm surprised that there wasn't someone available to look this up on the production team. I thought they had people for stuff like this - there's always someone around to feed broadcasters stats during a game - but we never did get clarification on something that took me 2 minutes or so to find.
Agreed
I also agree that it was not Piniella's removal of Zambrano that lost the game, but the talent of Webb and the lack of hits we had against him. Piniella made the right decision by pulling Big-Z in the sixth inning despite what many fans thought. Zambrano told Piniella that he could pitch one more inning but we need him for Game 4 and Piniella knew that. He went with his bullpen, it didn't quite work the way he wanted, but he still has confidence in them. Like Piniella said...end of story.