That’s Why They Make the Big Bucks

The game everyone’s talking about from last night is the near-no-hitter—so called because only eight innings were completed—by the Angels, who lost the game to the Dodgers—which is why the no-hitter was only eight innings: the winning Dodgers didn’t need to take their bottom-of-the-ninth at-bats. Got that?

Most people are focusing on the injustice of the fact that MLB doesn’t recognize eight-inning no-hitters, or that the Angels office is so weak they can’t even beat a team that doesn’t collect a hit. I’m more interested in Mike Scoscia having the managerial cojones to pull Jeff Weaver during a no-hitter.

One of the angles on this story, of course, is the AL manager facing an NL decision: had this been played in Angel Stadium, Scoscia wouldn’t have needed to make that call (since Weaver wouldn’t have been hitting). Instead, he made the tough call and lifted his pitcher for a pinch-hitter in the seventh, the kind of call no manager wants to make, the kind of call that leaves announcers speechless and fans stunned.

You don’t pull a pitcher with a no-hitter, they’d say. Heck, you don’t even say no-hitter, not if you’re a player in the dugout, not even if you’re a superstitious announcer. And when Chone Figgins grounded out for Weaver with a man in scoring position, it’s easy to play second-guesser and wonder how Scoscia could have done such a thing.

Well, it’s just as easy to understand his decision. His Angels hadn’t scored since the eighth inning Wednesday, a span of sixteen-plus innings, and they’d already stranded runners in scoring position in the third and sixth innings. Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers had been looking hard to beat, having given up three hits thus far, striking out seven. His Angels were fighting off Oakland in their division, three-and-a-half games back.

Still, it’s not a choice that makes Scoscia happy, and it doesn’t build the confidence of Weaver, who (like his brother Jeff) can be either brilliant or awful. In six of his starts, he’s given up one or no runs; in seven of his starts, he’s given up four or more runs. He stands at 7-8, with a 4.08 ERA and 1.27 WHIP.

And, of course, the fans in the stands want to see a no-hitter, no matter whether Major League Baseball recognizes it as official. And even though reliever Jose Arrendondo didn’t give up a base knock, either, a combined no-hitter isn’t as good as a solo effort, with the rising tension in the stands and the cheers for each successive out, cheers that usually begin right around the seventh inning—the inning Weaver never saw.

But in the team-oriented world of baseball, where long-term trends have to be considered more than short-term choices, and one’s personal stats should always be subordinate to the team’s record, Scoscia’s choice was the right one. He wanted to give his team a chance to at least tie up the 1-0 game, and he had a better chance of this with Chone Figgins (.301/.406/.341) than Weaver (0-4 for the season) at the dish.

We can’t blame him that it didn’t work out; baseball is a game of percentages, and the hard fact of the game is that those percentages fail far more often than they succeed. What a manager has to do is to remove himself from the emotion of the moment and take a cold look at the numbers and facts. That’s why we have managers, and why player-managers have gone out of style—you need the guy who has the nerve to pull a pitcher with a no-hitter, or call for a squeeze play, a pitch-out, or a steal.

That’s why they make the big bucks.