MAKING THE TOUGH DECISIONS
Gibbons is no country bumpkin, as post-season tactics have revealed
In August, when the Toronto Blue Jays were still in mid-romp up the American League East standings, manager John Gibbons sat in his office and casually batted away all attempts at scrutiny.
Though the Jays were rolling, they had a number of off days ahead, which meant they could move to a four-man starting rotation and remove pitcher Drew Hutchison and his hefty ERA.
Gibbons acted as though he hadn’t considered such a thing. He looked at a wall calendar and scratched his stubble. It was vaguely theatrical: Well, shucks, I guess you could do that.
A week later, Hutchison was out of the rotation and sent to Triple-A Buffalo for a brief stint to open up a roster spot.
David Price last week used the analogy of a duck on the water to describe the way a ballplayer could appear outwardly calm but have a lot going on below the surface. It seems like an apt metaphor for the way Gibbons manages, too. He likes to play up his laid-back Texas way, doesn’t mind acting the bumpkin, but it masks a manager who is a bit of a stealth tactician.
Never was this more apparent than on Monday in the ALDS against the Texas Rangers in Arlington, where the obvious move, the easy move, the move that would have shielded him from criticism, was to sit back, hands on his belly, and let R.A. Dickey knuckle his way through at least the fifth inning.
It is true that the Blue Jays had a 7-1 lead at the time, and also true that Dickey has been nothing but class since his arrival in Toronto, the kind of player a manager might go out of his way to avoid slighting. Further, Gibbons’ decision to hand the ball to Price with an out to go in the fifth inning took Toronto’s staff ace out of the starting slot for what is now a series-deciding Game 5.
Gibbons wasn’t just setting himself up for second-guessing, he was unleashing hordes of skeptics. Couldn’t he have left Dickey in to collect his first playoff win? Didn’t he want Price on the mound in Game 5? Wasn’t he worried about offending both of them, especially when Price, the best starter Toronto has had in years, is set to be a free agent in a few weeks? And now Gibbons had gone and slapped them both in the face with the same swing of his hand.
Gibbons’ explanation for it all on Monday night was telling in that he seemed acutely aware of the Dickey issue, but not at all concerned that Price might also have been miffed. He spoke at length about pulling Dickey before the 40-year-old would qualify for the win. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” he said. “It was hard for me to do, but I thought that was the best way to win the game, keep them from coming back.”
He joked that it certainly wasn’t a relationship-building move.
But when he was asked whether that bit of sarcasm referred to the move to pull the knuckleballer or bring in the big heater — “the bazooka,” as Dickey called Price after the game — Gibbons, to my eyes, seemed to think it was an odd question. That makes some sense: He had just made the decision to bring in Price because he wanted to give his team what he felt was the best possible chance to win Game 4. He was leaving nothing to fate, or the Texas wind and the short porch in right field, and putting his best arm on the mound. This was supposed to be a slight of Price somehow?
It is possible that Gibbons had already decided that he wanted to keep Price from putting his winless record as a playoff starter on the line in a Game 5, and that the switch was a chess move to ensure he didn’t have to sit a rested Price on Wednesday. It’s a theory, and only Gibbons knows how much of it is bunkum. But the manager had told Toronto reporters before the game that Price, and not Marcus Stroman, was most likely to be the first arm out of the bullpen in Game 4. Stroman had never been a reliever, Gibbons said. Price had, briefly in his early years, and had been good from the bullpen.
He had pondered the options ahead of time, and had already decided that if Dickey faltered, he wanted Price to lock it down and ensure a Game 5. One more thing for the conspiracy theorists: If Gibbons really just wanted to burn Price just so he wasn’t available to start Wednesday, why not bring him in for the sixth inning? Why use him before Dickey was through five?
Because he really wanted Price to come in when he did. Gibbons said he didn’t want to take a chance with Shin-Soo Choo, who already had two hits off Dickey and had a .500 on-base percentage against him previously (4 for 11 with 3 walks). He was protecting against Choo coming up in the middle of a rally, which would set up Texas to turn that six-run lead into a much smaller one.
You wouldn’t do it in the regular season, the manager said.
Feelings be damned. It was shrewd, it was fearless, and it will follow this team for some time, particularly if they lose on Wednesday.
Gibbons, in one of his many explanations of the pitching change on Monday, finished his answer with this: “It’s all about winning,” he said. “I thought.”
I thought so, too.