Dusty Baker Fails at Losing After Edwin Encarnacion Bails Him Out

You will probably not hear as much about the first three pitches that Edwin Encarnacion saw last night. You will hear a lot about the last one though. That's because Encarnacion, with two men on base, facing a 1-2 count against Arizona closer Brandon Lyon, turned on a ball and launched it over the left field wall for a walk off home run. Yay! Reds celebrate! Woo!

Well, here's the problem. Encarnacion actually failed to do his job and got partially booed by the Cincinnati crowd. How could he fail when he hit a game winning home run, you ask? Well, Dusty Baker sent him to home plate and told him to bunt. Yes, that's right. With runners on first and second, Dusty wanted a player who had never successfully laid down a sacrifice bunt in his entire career to do so in the bottom of the ninth inning instead of taking a swing and trying to score some runs.

'It doesn't matter how you win 'em,' Baker said. 'That first one always seems like the toughest one.'

As pointed out in the 'Haus discussion of the would-be-debacle turned walk-off-win, if Dusty would do any sort of due diligence he would find out that his team is more likely to score with runners on first and second and no one out than second and third with one out. And clearly, it does matter how you "win 'em", because if you're not being smart in your attempt to win, or giving yourself the best possible competitive advantage, you will win less.

But clearly, Dusty doesn't believe in that type of "math stuff"had no interest in having Encarnacion clog up the bases. And in doubly super unhappy news, Corey Patterson hit a home run, meaning, clearly, that Jay Bruce just isn't needed at the major league level right now.