Managing a major league game is tricky business. You play hunches, ignoring trends and numbers, and then fail. On the other hand, you can play the numbers and miss, because baseball is a game played by humans, not PECOTA. No matter, though, if your team fails due to substitutions or suicide squeezes, the blame isn't likely to be placed far from the manager. Unfortunately for Joe Maddon, he pulled every string incorrectly with his bullpen in Game 5 and had to deal with the second guessers. Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler, and J.P. Howell were touched up for nine hits, two home runs, eight earned runs, and two walks over the course of 2 2/3 innings to close out a devastating 8-7 loss. Predictably, Maddon was maligned for the manner in which he used the bullpen after the game.
In Game 7, however, every string pulled made him look like the proverbial puppet-master. He went through five pitchers in the eighth inning, and then let the kid (we've introduced you to David Price by now) close it out by getting the last four outs. Had they lost, Maddon would have bee skewered again.
Instead, in the post-game press conference, he was now the media's darling. He had found his redemption ... someone cue up the Bob Marley.
