I’ll give you another example of idiotic strategy that I keep seeing without managers learning. I see Sale come in at the end of games, as he did tonight, and opposing managers keep putting lefties up to bat. I’d rather have my worst righty hitter coming off the bench to pinch hit in the 9th than a lefty hitter in my starting lineup. These lefties continue to wave at his pitches and strike out, and the managers keep putting lefties up there.
Regarding the squeeze, people can have a million reasons why it’s risky and might not work. My point is that every time I sense a situation is critical toward the end of a game and I have a strong feeling the team won’t score due to how the game is going, the team never scores. So, even if the squeeze is successful 20% of the time I say teams should squeeze (it would probably be closer to 80-90%), that’s still a lot more success than occurs. The other night, the Cubs were in a 1-1 game, so neither team was scoring. I think it was the 7th. The opponent had bases loaded, one out, in the top of the 7th, didn’t squeeze, and didn’t score. The Cubs immediately had a man on second, no outs, in the bottom of the 7th, got him to third with one out, didn’t squeeze, and didn’t score. So, people can come up with all the risks and reasons they want–the bottom line is the team isn’t going to score in those situations without squeezing. Instead of talking about all the risks involved with a squeeze, people should be talking about why these teams never score in these situations. I watched Oakland lose a playoff series to the Yankees in Giambi’s last year there because they wouldn’t squeeze. All series they left guys on third with less than 2 outs when one run would have made the difference in each game, but game after game they kept trying to score the runs without squeezing and never did. Even if they didn’t squeeze early in the series, wouldn’t one think they should have tried something different when not squeezing never worked? What’s the definition of insanity–doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?