Gardy Let Nathan Pitch the 12th
Ron Gardenhire’s decision to leave Joe Nathan in for the 12th, after Nathan had thrown the 10th and 11th, has fueled second-guessing of epic proportions locally. My own baseball conversation circle (and most of the media) seemed to think that Gardenhire had pulled a Dr. Porkenheimer-sized boner by having his closer come out for a third inning. This is one of those things that becomes a part of the culture of the fan and team. Forevermore, anytime Gardenhire gives fans a reason to criticize him (an inevitability for a baseball manager), people will pile on the tale of last night’s events, told by the shorthand “Gardy Let Nathan Pitch the 12th”.
It’s too bad, really, because I think Gardenhire made a smart, bold decision that a lot of managers wouldn’t have made. The problem is, he followed up a smart decision with what appears to be an incredibly dumb one.
Nathan was highly effective in disposing the Yankees in the 10th and 11th. In fact, he was perfect, with 4 strikeouts in 2 innings, including the last two hitters of the 11th. There was speculation that Nathan, a converted starter, was tiring in the bottom of the 11th (his second inning) because he typically only throws an inning at a time. Nathan ended up going into some long counts with his last couple hitters, but he did still strike both of them out. I think you’d be hard-pressed to get Ruben Sierra to believe that the 95mph laser he couldn’t catch up to for strike three came from a fatigued guy. Since that was the last pitch Nathan threw before the 12th, I don’t think it’s anything close to obvious that Nathan was tiring.
But even if Nathan was tiring, so what? Gardy’s alternatives were JC Romero and Jesse Crain. Unfortunately, Romero’s been getting lit up like the Electric Cowboy for most of the last month. This, immediately after setting a team record, since broken by Santana(!), for consecutive scoreless innings, with 36. Gardy’s confidence in Romero was low, and no Romero observer over the past month could credibly protest that. Crain, on the other hand, has been generally effective during his brief time with the team. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a rookie.
If Ron Gardenhire, a guy who spends a fair amount more time with his pitchers than me or anybody else who attacked Gardenhire for the move, felt that a possibly tiring Nathan was better than a flammable Romero and a green Crain, that’s good enough for me. Send him out, Gardy. Go for the jugular. Make them prove they can hit him.
Nathan started by striking out John Olerud. Two outs to go, and Gardy’s starting to look like a genius. But then FOX shows the Twins’ bullpen, formerly active, now silent. That’s…curious. Is it empty because both Crain and Romero are ready? Or has Gardy just decided this is Nathan’s game one way or the other? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.
Then the wheels fell off.
Next batter is the #9 hitter, Miguel Cairo. Cairo’s having a fine season, but in a loaded Yankee lineup Miguel Cairo is an out you must get. Nathan starts him off with a ball, finishes him off with a ball, and threw two balls in between. And none of the pitches was particularly close. Yankee Stadium goes nuts. Crap. This is exactly what Twins fans couldn’t bear to see, another miracle Yankee comeback and another opportunity lost.
There now seemed to be little doubt that Nathan was gassed. The Olerud count had been another long one, and now four straight balls to the #9 hitter. He was all over the place, and Nathan typically (and as recently as three hitters ago) has pinpoint control.
And that’s where Gardy’s strategic evening went downhill in a big way. Maybe Crain wasn’t ready, though that seems unlikely and would be Gardy’s fault anyway. More likely is that Gardy decided he didn’t want to bring a rookie or Romero into a screaming Yankee Stadium with runners on base.
That’s all fine and good, but what happens if Nathan does get into trouble? If you didn’t feel comfortable bringing Crain or Romero in to start the inning, you probably aren’t going to want to bring them in with runners on and the crowd pumped. And you sure aren’t going to want to bring them in when there are two runners on base. So, the outcome of Gardy’s decision was that if he started the 12th with Nathan, he had to pretty much stay with him through whatever happened.
Gardy bet the farm that Nathan could get through it, and when it didn’t happen, there was either no backup plan in place, or some inflexibility in changing course. The first decision is defensible. The failure to get Nathan out after the Cairo and Jeter walks probably is not.
"Gardy let Nathan pitch the 12th" is probably going to go down in Twin Cities sports lore with the Herschel Walker trade and "Denny ran out the clock". But the problem isn't that Gardenhire let Nathan start the 12th.
It's that he tried to let him finish it.
I Underestimated Al Franken
I wrote several months ago about Al Franken, how I felt that a lot of his impact was overstated because he was, for the most part, preaching to the choir. I minimized Franken in a few other ways as well, though generally expressed support for his agenda and humor. I did all of this, mind you, without having read his book Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. This was a serious mistake on my part. Jane’s brother Jon’s copy of the book is now in our house, and it took me about, oh, 30 seconds of reading to start laughing out loud. And then I kept laughing out loud about every 30 seconds after that. I knew Franken was going to skewer FOX, Coulter, O’Reilly, et al with that quaint notion of truth, and do so while cracking wise all the way through. But I just didn’t appreciate how goddamn funny Franken is. Funny not just in overall concept, chapter ideas, etc. Damn near every paragraph has a laugh or read-out-loud line, and some have several. I’ve only started the book, but it’ll be finished in no time flat. Which is more than I can say for…
The Other Books I Am Concurrently Reading
I have gotten more serious about reading in the last year or so, but I have a problem with starting the next book before I have finished the last one. I don’t do this every time, especially when a book really grabs me, but it happens enough that I at times can be reading two or three or more books at a time. By any objective measure, I am now reading the Franken book, in addition to the Walter Isaacson biography of Ben Franklin, in addition to former 49ers coach Bill Walsh’s book Finding the Winning Edge. I’m solid on the Franklin biography so far; I’m just choosy about when and where I read it. Franklin lived a long time, was brilliant in many distinct ways, and was fond of talking and writing about himself, which means there is a lot of material to cover there. The Walsh book is similar, in that Walsh coached for a long time, was brilliant in a few ways, and also thought very highly of himself. Unfortunately, where reading about Franklin is interesting, reading Walsh’s tome on the corporatization of everything football is akin to attending a Successories motivational conference. I chose to read the book to learn more about how coaches structure their teams and run a practice, and that’s all in there, but by the time you get around to it you feel like you’re succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning. I’m sure I’ll finish it someday, and then I’ll impress you all with my knowledge of how to humorlessly assemble a special teams coaching staff and game plan. Then we’ll see who’s bored!
We B Jammin’!
I’m in my corporate cafeteria on my lunch break as I write this. There is an ice cream fundraiser going on for the United Way, sponsored by my company’s Industrial Business division, which explains the unfortunate name of today’s ice cream festivities: The IB Piggin’ Out United Way Ice Cream Giveaway. I always love it when 50 year-old white people laugh and make jokes about how hip they are for using faux hip-hop slang. Let’s see…I can see approximately, oh, 80 people in my field of vision right now, and the demographic breakdown is something like 77 white people and 3 Indians (or Pakistanis). And of course, to call this a “giveaway” is something of a misnomer, since you can’t get any ice cream until you give a donation to the United Way. On the bright side, they do have malts, so I shouldn’t say anything bad.
10:50:01 PM 
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