THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

We were talking about this the other night, down at channel 5, watching Albert Puljos round the bases after his grand slam that crushed the Reds: the phrase in baseball called “by the book”. This compilation of strategy or codes or whatever it is that fuels managers and drives fans crazy sometime. “By the book”, is there a book? When was it written? Who wrote it? Can you find it at Barnes and Noble or do you have to order through Amazon?

Stacking your line-up with left handed bats when the other guy is throwing a right handed pitcher. Why? Alternating lefties with righties in your batting order. Says who? If the other guy sends up a left-handed batter late in the game, why do you have to go to your bullpen to bring in a left handed pitcher? Where is that written? Did Moses bring down from the mountain an eleventh commandment?

I get the feeling that most major league managers go ‘by the book’, and the numbers. Numbers dictate everything in baseball. You walk into Dusty Baker’s office, or Tony LaRussa’s office, even the great Joe Torre’s office and he’s got every stat imaginable at his finger tips. How does Albert Puljos hit right handed pitching. Answer: great. How does he hit left handed pitching: answer, great. How well does Rick Ankiel hit Bronson Arroyo, Nick Massett, Francisco Cordero. It’s all there. Numbers. How well do right handers hit off Arthur Rhodes. If Rhodes is in the game and LaRussa sends Khalil Greene up to pinch hit, does Baker bring in a righty to face him? Or does Rhodes have a decent track record when facing Greene?
This is what living in the intel Pentium processor age has given us.

Makes you wonder what Casey Stengel, or Sparky or Billy Martin would have done with this. My guess is, throw it out the window. But that’s only a guess.

I was working in Tamp years ago and met up with Sparky at the 1984 World Series. His Tigers were in the process of beating the Padres in that particular series. I told him, I had just run the numbers into a computer that we had at the television station, his 1984 Tigers against the 1975 Reds. Six game series, I told Sparky, your Tigers win in six. He told me to get a new computer. Actually, what he said was, ‘no computer ever won a baseball game’.

Which gets me back to this thing we were talking about the other night at channel 5, me Vogel, one of our directors and whoever else happened to walk by. Puljos had just hit that grand slam home run, and I raised this question: why not just walk the guy? Ok, the bases were loaded. You’re conceding a run. But you’re up three with one out in the eighth. There’s not another bat in that Cardinals line-up that could beat you. Walk Puljos and take your chances.

We were split, 50-50- on that. One side thought I was nuts (which I might point out is confirmed at channel 5 on a daily basis) the other half thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Seems to me, years ago, Jack McKeon did something similar with Mark McGwire, not with the bases loaded, but intentionally walking McGwire, and putting the go ahead run in scoring position.

So what’s wrong with taking the bat out of Puljos’ hands and playing the percentages. In fact, I looked it up. In modern day baseball, 20th century and up until now, only three batters have been intentionally walked with the bases loaded: Nap Lajoie, of the old Philadelphia A’s (Hall of Famer, I might add), former Chicago Cub Bill Nicholson and Barry Bonds. Bonds got a bases loaded free pass in 1998. The Diamondbacks had a 8-6 lead on the Giants in the ninth. Arizona manager, Buck Showalter ordered his pitcher to intentionally walk Bonds with the bases loaded. It made the score 8-6. Took the bat out of Bond’ hands. Next up was Brent Mayne. Line out, game over. I kind of wish Chris Spier, the Reds’ bench coach had that information, so he could’ve whispered it to Dusty Baker. A little refresher course for Dusty, who was managing the Giants at the time.

Am I wrong in suggesting that it might have been something for Baker to consider? Does it really fly in the face of what your supposed to do as a manager? In football, the first thing a defensive coordinator does when he begins to game plan for an opponent, is figure out how to neutralize the other team’s best offensive player. Is baseball that different? Rule number one, in any team sports is don’t let the other guy’s best player beat you.

Am I wrong in thinking this way? Please, tell me. If you were Baker, would you have intentionally walked Puljos? I don’t think he was wrong for not doing it, because that’s what ‘the book’ says. And in this day of replays, sportscenter, columnists, blogs and yes, sports talk radio, a manager takes his professional life in his hands by going against ‘the book’.

Stats and tendencies, match-ups and advantages drive baseball managers in this day and age. But sometimes, like any job in life you have to go with what your ‘gut’ tells you. My gut tells me walking Albert Puljos Friday night was the way to go. I had no skin in the game, so it makes my position a lot less important than the way Baker played it. Dusty went by the book. I’ll bet if you asked him today, just you and him, no cameras, microphones or anyone else within earshot, bet you if you asked him ‘should you have walked Puljos in that situation’ and become only the 4th manager since 1900 to do something like that, I’ll bet his answer today would be, not a bad idea.