Baseball is a funny game sometimes– almost as funny as its fans. The Jays wasted an excellent Josh Johnson start, losing 4-3 to the White Sox on Tuesday night, in a game where John Gibbons’ debatable, yet defensible, decisions are being blamed in many quarters for the defeat. Indeed, baseball games are often won or lost on the margins– on nearly imperceptible inches and either-or decisions with slim differences between possible outcomes.
What gets me sometimes, though, is how hung up we get on one instance or another being the misstep, the spot we can place the blame for defeat, when no such point really actually exists. In tonight’s game, for example, looming over every late-game decision that John Gibbons made, is the fact that his club– his lineup, which benefited from his argued-against decision to bat J.P. Arencibia third– could only score two runs on Dylan Axelrod, a 27-year-old 30th round pick with 79 career innings in the big leagues, who put up both a FIP and an ERA above five last year, and whose fastball so far in 2013 has averaged less than 88.
The Jays’ first run allowed was the result of a pitch in the dirt that J.P. Arencibia couldn’t handle, while Josh Johnson was in the process of striking out Hector Gimenez. The home side could have caught a big break in the fifth, when after a lead-off Colby Rasmus walk, Maicer Izturis hit a ball down the first base line that may have had eyes for a double… had it not landed in Paul Konerko’s Adam Dunn’s glove.
Yet for all the weirdness that came before it, the loss was all John Gibbons’ fault, if you ask some.
Read the rest of this entry »
