“It just uhh … didn’t go our way.” That was how Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson responded to a reporter asking if he regretted not bringing in Andrés Muñoz during the seventh inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. That’s certainly an unsatisfying explanation for a decision that will live long in the memories of Mariners fans, as high-leverage managerial decisions that go wrong in the postseason tend to. But what was Wilson supposed to say, exactly? More importantly, what should he have done differently, and why?
The point of pitching management is to make the opponent’s best hitters look their worst when it matters most. Everyone knows this. I was not yet in kindergarten when this came out. But I do have some small disagreements with that Baseball Prospectus Basics piece. As it states, before the invention of the closer, managers used “firemen” to try to get out of jams their other pitchers got into. Basics refers to this as a better thing; coming into a clean inning and getting three outs with a cushion just is not that hard for a relief ace to do. But this misses something: Saving your best reliever until you have some kind of mess on the field is actually quite passive, and using a closer is comparatively aggressive, when you think about it—rather than waiting for a pitcher to get into a mess, you get ahead of things, predicting that the late innings will be high-stakes, and you put in your best reliever before the mess even shows up. This is correct! It is much better to be a little early than a little late.
