Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke knew it was a mistake to pitch to Teoscar Hernandez

While making one of the most confusing decisions of his managerial tenure with the Red Sox on Thursday night, Ron Roenicke felt like he was making a mistake.

Why, then, did he choose to leave first base open and pitch to the Blue Jays’ best hitter, Teoscar Hernandez, who was riding a 15-game hitting streak in the 10th inning of the Sox’ 6-2 loss to the Blue Jays?

“Matchups, we’re looking at,” Roenicke said afterward.

Surely, Roenicke is looking at different information than we are. But what we’re looking at doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Hernandez is not a groundball hitter. He’s hit the ball on the ground just 33% of the time this year, and 37% in his career. The guy behind him, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., is a groundball machine, with a 58% groundball rate this year and 52% in his career.

Hernandez has an OPS more than 200 points higher than Guerrero this year. They’re both right-handed, though Hernandez entered with a .927 OPS against righties this year, while Guerrero had a .821 OPS off them. Hernandez has been seeing the ball well at Fenway Park his entire career, with a .948 OPS at Fenway entering Thursday. Guerrero had a .582 OPS at Fenway.

But with runners on second and third and one out, the Red Sox chose not to put Hernandez on first base, which would’ve set up the double play ball with Guerrero at the dish.

Instead, Roenicke had right-hander Phillips Valdez pitch to Hernandez, who launched a three-run, go-ahead homer on a fat changeup that caught too much plate.

It was a bad pitch, and the manager can’t be blamed for that.

But there was significant confusion on the NESN broadcast, as well as for most of us watching at home, as to why the Sox pitched to Hernandez.

“If you load the bases and put pressure on the pitcher, if he misses the first pitch or two, there’s nowhere to go,” Roenicke said. “So it puts extra pressure on the pitcher.

“Still, down deep, I would’ve rather have walked him. (Valdez) gets a lot of groundballs. That’s what you’re hoping for, a groundball, so you can get a double play. But the decision didn’t work out.”

It’s a bit confusing, to be sure. Roenicke felt that it was the wrong decision to pitch to Hernandez, but did it anyways, even after a mound visit.

Was it with hindsight that Roenicke felt like it was a mistake?

“It’s not so much after the fact, it’s just during it,” he said. “Even with the matchups the way they were, the matchups always say you pitch to that guy. Well, not always, but they say to pitch to that guy, Hernandez. But in my mind, I feel a lot better if we have a chance to get a double play and get out of the inning. So sometimes it’s right to do the things you do, and sometimes down deep you wish you would’ve done it differently.”

If Roenicke knew it didn’t feel like the right decision, why’d he do it?

One has to wonder if the pressure to manage the game with the information he’s given from the front office has too much influence on an experienced baseball man who might be better off trusting his gut.

But Roenicke went with the matchup the team felt best about, despite the publicly available information to the contrary, and it backfired.

“There were a couple things tonight I wish I would’ve done differently,” Roenicke said. “Not after the fact, but before it. So it’s one of those things, sometimes these games are hard. You go back and think about it. I already talked to the coaches about different things that happened in the game. I wished I would’ve done some different things.”

And so the Red Sox lost a game in which their starter, Martin Perez, took a no-hitter into the seventh inning.

“We need to win these games,” Roenicke said. “When we have that good of a start, we need to win them. I know it depends what happens on the other side too and who they have pitching. That makes a big difference. But Martin threw the ball great. I left him out there for the seventh and was hoping we could get him through that but it’s tough. Tough to lose these. When you’re not winning many games and you have a chance to win, you want to win these games.”

 

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/31UDVdn