Brandon Hyde 2024

[bpilktree67]

3 minutes ago, HowAboutThat said:

Ok, I want to justify my “objectively stupid” accusation:

I checked Suarez’ game logs. When Suarez is terrible, he’s terrible right away. All his recent outings were bad, but so what? Tonight, everyone was expecting varying degrees of awful, but he wasn’t terrible at all. He was great; pitching efficiently, with only 73 pitches through five innings, 6 Ks and only 2H and 2BB.
July 11 5 innings 6 hits, 4 runs, 90 pitches 2BB 4Ks.

July 5 6 innings 86 pitches, and 1 BB 6 Ks

On the other hand, July 23, in 2 innings he gave up 6 runs on 60 pitches in two innings. He was terrible, but he was terrible right away.

This isn’t cherry-picking. I could go on with other examples to illustrate that when Suarez is bad, it’s immediately obvious. Today was a good day, and when he is having a good day, he’s good for ~20 pitches more than he threw tonight.

It is irrelevant that Suarez was forced into starting tonight, or that he hasn’t started on a while, because neither of those things bothered him. He was great. There was no reason to pull him after 5 innings and 73  pitches.

Leave him in for the 6th, bring in  Smith for the 7Th, avoid Soto entirely, and maybe we can win the game.

But no. Must play precious matchups. 

He was an emergency starter that was not on normal starting schedule.  It had nothing to do with matchups but throwing 73 pitches not on normal starter routine with a side session in between outings.  I was surprised he let him go 73 I was thinking give us 4 inning and 60 pitches would be amazing.  

[ShoelesJoe]

20 minutes ago, bpilktree67 said:

Cionel is a late inning lefty not a 6th inning left hander.  So you bring in Perez then in 8th you have Soto to face those same guys then what.  If it was 8th inning then yes CIOnel first choice not 6th inning because it is lower leverage situations.  

You bring high leverage relievers into games in high leverage situations, whatever inning that may be. Tonight was a perfect example of that. By the time Hyde brought Perez into the game it was essentially over. 

[Winter]

is there anyway to see if a rookie of the year favorite and one of the hottest hitters in the game was ever pinch hit for a rookie who hasn’t had a hit in the league before?  has it ever been done before tonight?

[HowAboutThat]

5 minutes ago, bpilktree67 said:

He was an emergency starter that was not on normal starting schedule.  It had nothing to do with matchups but throwing 73 pitches not on normal starter routine with a side session in between outings.  I was surprised he let him go 73 I was thinking give us 4 inning and 60 pitches would be amazing.  

You must have missed where I said that didn’t matter. It was an emergency start. So what? He was doing great. No problems at all. If the switch from reliever schedule to starting is a problem, you only give him 30 pitches. Hyde gave him 73 which shows that not being on a regular starters schedule wasn’t an issue. 

[jcaponio]

11 minutes ago, Since1984 said:

Look at our rotation last year at this time.  GRod is a big deal, but Povich and McDermott can miss bats and a good SSS run is all that is needed.

Share your concerns too!

Povich has shown nothing so far in his big league starts and McDermott is likely out for the season. 

[LookitsPuck]

Just now, Winter said:

is there anyway to see if a rookie of the year favorite and one of the hottest hitters in the game was ever pinch hit for a rookie who hasn’t had a hit in the league before?  has it ever been done before tonight?

See, this is what I mean. It was all so odd. Hyde was out of his mind insane today.

[jcaponio]

Just now, HowAboutThat said:

You must have missed where I said that didn’t matter. It was an emergency start. So what? He was doing great. No problems at all. If the switch from reliever schedule to starting is a problem, you only give him 30 pitches. Hyde gave him 73 which shows that not being on a regular starters schedule wasn’t an issue. 

Just because you don’t think it should matter that it was an emergency start doesn’t make it true. It clearly mattered. 

[e16bball]

The pinch-hitting decisions were way more mindnumbingly inexplicable than using Soto in that situation, in my opinion.

He’s historically tough on LHHs and Horwitz is historically very bad against LHPs. With there being two outs in the inning, it was an opportunity to basically use Soto as a LOOGY and maximize your chances of getting a successful outing under his belt.

Horwitz comes up with a pretty weak single and it was off to the races from there — but at least I can understand the concept. Eventually you have to use Soto, and that’s a relatively reasonable place to do it. 

Going into that run of 3 hitters coming up with the bases loaded and saying “I’m gonna hit for Jackson, then I’ll let Ramon hit, and then I’ll hit for Colton” is just absolutely bonkers. And I’m as big a defender of Ramon as just about anybody.

Edited August 7 by e16bball

[HowAboutThat]

2 minutes ago, jcaponio said:

Just because you don’t think it should matter that it was an emergency start doesn’t make it true. It clearly mattered. 

Except it clearly didn’t matter. 

[survivedc]

Just some silly managing today. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that he was working on post season decisions, and I would be fine with that if so.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

8 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

See, this is what I mean. It was all so odd. Hyde was out of his mind insane today.

Hyde almost seemed panicked with some of the moves he was making or he took a hit of meth, lol. Just way too much over managing with the match ups. I'll cut Hyde some slack if Cowser was really hurting, but news of any injury or discomfort didn't leak out during the postgame.

Edited August 7 by OsFanSinceThe80s

[LookitsPuck]

1 minute ago, survivedc said:

Just some silly managing today. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that he was working on post season decisions, and I would be fine with that if so.

Gotta make the postseason first.

But postseason decisions isn’t defensible. Is Jackson Holliday and Colton Cowser platoon players or more than that? It’s so bizarre.

[SteveA]

1)   Soto coming in.

I do believe Hyde has shown, for several years, a tendency to make too many pitching changes and use too many relievers.

Smith had thrown 10 pitches, I realize there were 2 lefties in the next 3 batters and that's why he went with Soto.

But the more relievers you use, the higher the chance you run into a guy who has no command that particular day.   When you have a guy that does seem to, I think you at least try to get an inning out of him.     Also, the more guys you use, the more guys who are in a position, where if you use them tomorrow they are on their 2nd consecutive day, AND if they pitch the next day, are unavailable the day after.

I'm not going to say you can't use Soto there because basically he is the 2nd best lefty in the bullpen (unfortunately) and that is and that point in the game, when lefties are due, is exactly the best time to use your 2nd best lefty.   But with Smith having thrown only 10 pitches and appearing fairly effective, I just think there was no reason to make a change there.   You know you have to cover at least 4 innings of relief, and the game was close enough that extra innings was a distinct possibility too.   I think you make an effort to keep it to one reliever an inning in a situation like that unless a guy is struggling.

But Hyde always seems to err in the direction of using more relievers, and I don't like that tendency.  I never have.   I can remember many occasions where he has had a reliever pitch an effective inning with a low pitch count and removed him, and wound up using too many guys in the game IMO.

 

2) The 8th inning

His other tendency is his that he works very hard to get platoon matchups (RH hitters vs LHP, LH hitters vs RHP).   ALL managers do it to some extent, and the daily lineup thread shows that a lot of posters here would probably never do it, they even complained when Austin Hays would start vs a lefty even though he hits them well!   I am much closer to Hyde  than I am to a lot of folks here who only want to see the hot or "good" hitters and basically hate every move that deviates from that to get a platoon advantage.   I believe platoon advantages DO mean something.

But today I think he overdid it.   As others have pointed out, Cabrera has "reverse splits" this year -- lefties actually hit him better.   Now a season is a smaller sample size than a whole career... but for his entire career his stats are nearly identical vs RH and LH, less than 10 point difference in avg, obp, slugging, and OPS.   So going out of your way to replace lefties with righties against him, especially when it means taking out two hitters who have been hitting well lately, really seems overkill.   And when he actually states in the post game presser that he did it because Slater is doing well vs lefties this year, when Slater a sub-.200 average and .505 OPS... man, thatis pretty damning.

 

Two of Hyde's worst tendencies were on display tonight... he makes too many pitching changes and overvalues the platoon edge (and I am saying this as someone who DOES value the platoon edge and am quite often in favor of such moves.  But Hyde sometimes takes it to extemes and tonight was definitely an example.

I wonder how much of those two tendencies are based on dictates from above?   Do Elias & company prefer to use more relievers for shorter duration in a game?   Do they want to emphasize getting the LH/RH advantage as much as possible regardless of other factors (overall talent of hitters and pitchers, hitters and pitchers who have long term history of reversed or fairly balanced splits, ignoring who is "hot", etc)?

Obviously Hyde has put up a very good record as a manger... exceeded preseason expectations the past two years when he has had a team with any talent at all, and a very good record this year dspite some significant injuries.   I am in no way advocating firing him.   But I believe there are some places he can improve, unless he is doing what he does at the guidance or direction from the front office, in which case they think that is the way to go.

 

[survivedc]

Just now, LookitsPuck said:

Gotta make the postseason first.

But postseason decisions isn’t defensible. Is Jackson Holliday and Colton Cowser platoon players or more than that? It’s so bizarre.

I don’t think they are, but it’s more about the guys coming in for them than the guys going out.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, forphase1 said:

There won't be any as the media won't ask him anything and the explanations he will provide himself will be the same tired stuff as always.  

They actually did ask all the questions.