I also notice there were no trades in here. Does this mean you're branching out some in topics? This long long long form writing style seems quite compatible with mine, so if you plan to continue to write historical pieces like this, hit me up. We can collaborate on something sometime down the road.
We've all been in the advanced metric baseball bubble for so long that everybody knows that the manager's role is dreadfully unimportant. Local media and fans will act like the manager is the most important hire an organisation can make. It isn't. A good manager can get you (maybe) five wins extra over the course of a whole season. Five wins is a lot (5 WAR players aren't cheap), but managers are like Mike Trout on the Angels. They cannot make or break a team.
However, when you find yourself in a situation like this, all of that rhetoric actually becomes truth, and we see what a poor managerial decision can cost you.
Like you said, this could've been one of the biggest days in the history of the Kansas City Royals. Even as the team got much better this season and went on their playoff run, everybody still would've remembered Memorial Day 2023. They would've remembered it forever, but not now, because Matt Quatraro messed this up. Badly.
I have nothing against Matt Quatraro. He's fine at his job, but we all make mistakes, and he picked the worst possible time to make his. That eighth inning was the only decision of consequence he had to make in the entire 2023 season. Barring a miracle, it will be the most important decision of his entire managerial career. Perfect games are harder to win than World Series, so a game seven decision won't match the importance of this. Nothing can match this, which makes this one of the biggest (possibly the biggest) managerial botch I've ever seen.
What the heck is with letting Mike Mayers pitch the eighth inning? It's almost paradoxical, in that it's a decision that makes sense if there weren't a perfect game happening. In that circumstance, it's likely the same decision I would've made. There's nothing to lose anyway, but under the circumstances that actually existed this is one of the worst managerial decisions I've ever seen. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it's almost like Matt is trying to cost his team this achievement. Why one would do that I don't know, but how else do you explain this?
It's possible Matt believed that somehow a perfect game thrown by two people is better than one thrown by four, but if that's the case I would lose a lot of respect for Matt Quatraro, because that makes negative sense, so I'm going to choose not to believe that, which leaves us with what? Either he thought this was a good idea, he just didn't care, or he didn't want his pitchers to throw a perfect game, and I'm not sure which of those three possible motivations is the most unacceptable. If he truthfully thought this was the best way for his team to not allow any baserunners, he is a terrible manager. If he just didn't care, that's likely the most acceptable of these three outcomes, but why expend two more pitchers then? If he did not want the Royals to have this achievement for themselves, he ought to be fired immediately.
There are galling managerial decisions, and then there's whatever this was. It's too strong to call it a fireable offence, but it's not strong enough to call it unacceptable. I respect you buddy, for working to keep this memory alive.
I also notice there were no trades in here. Does this mean you're branching out some in topics? This long long long form writing style seems quite compatible with mine, so if you plan to continue to write historical pieces like this, hit me up. We can collaborate on something sometime down the road.
I've done a few non-trade posts (all on baseball so far) but it's been a while. The Nick Solak post (https://tradestenyearslater.substack.com/p/honoring-nick-solak-a-2023-mlb-player) was a good one and I also wrote a two-parter about MLB starts in April/May (https://tradestenyearslater.substack.com/p/quantity-over-quality-part-two). Happy to work together on something that overlaps!
I'll see if I can think of anything.
We've all been in the advanced metric baseball bubble for so long that everybody knows that the manager's role is dreadfully unimportant. Local media and fans will act like the manager is the most important hire an organisation can make. It isn't. A good manager can get you (maybe) five wins extra over the course of a whole season. Five wins is a lot (5 WAR players aren't cheap), but managers are like Mike Trout on the Angels. They cannot make or break a team.
However, when you find yourself in a situation like this, all of that rhetoric actually becomes truth, and we see what a poor managerial decision can cost you.
Like you said, this could've been one of the biggest days in the history of the Kansas City Royals. Even as the team got much better this season and went on their playoff run, everybody still would've remembered Memorial Day 2023. They would've remembered it forever, but not now, because Matt Quatraro messed this up. Badly.
I have nothing against Matt Quatraro. He's fine at his job, but we all make mistakes, and he picked the worst possible time to make his. That eighth inning was the only decision of consequence he had to make in the entire 2023 season. Barring a miracle, it will be the most important decision of his entire managerial career. Perfect games are harder to win than World Series, so a game seven decision won't match the importance of this. Nothing can match this, which makes this one of the biggest (possibly the biggest) managerial botch I've ever seen.
What the heck is with letting Mike Mayers pitch the eighth inning? It's almost paradoxical, in that it's a decision that makes sense if there weren't a perfect game happening. In that circumstance, it's likely the same decision I would've made. There's nothing to lose anyway, but under the circumstances that actually existed this is one of the worst managerial decisions I've ever seen. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it's almost like Matt is trying to cost his team this achievement. Why one would do that I don't know, but how else do you explain this?
It's possible Matt believed that somehow a perfect game thrown by two people is better than one thrown by four, but if that's the case I would lose a lot of respect for Matt Quatraro, because that makes negative sense, so I'm going to choose not to believe that, which leaves us with what? Either he thought this was a good idea, he just didn't care, or he didn't want his pitchers to throw a perfect game, and I'm not sure which of those three possible motivations is the most unacceptable. If he truthfully thought this was the best way for his team to not allow any baserunners, he is a terrible manager. If he just didn't care, that's likely the most acceptable of these three outcomes, but why expend two more pitchers then? If he did not want the Royals to have this achievement for themselves, he ought to be fired immediately.
There are galling managerial decisions, and then there's whatever this was. It's too strong to call it a fireable offence, but it's not strong enough to call it unacceptable. I respect you buddy, for working to keep this memory alive.