Tony LaRussa is overrated and his teams won in spite of him because they were loaded with talent.
1948_Swell_Robinson
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Tony LaRussa is overrated and his teams won in spite of him because they were loaded with talent.
This past week Tony LaRussa decided to bat Leury Garcia third. Leury Garcia had the worst lifetime OPS and the worst current season OPS in the lineup, and yet he was inserted in the third spot.
This marked the second time in White Sox history where the third place hitter had both the worst lifetime OPS and current season OPS.
The other time it happened was in 1979 when Mike Squires had that dubious distinction. Squires manger? Tony LaRussa!
LaRussa was so 'smart' that he batted Garcia third in the following game as well.
LaRussa finally came to his senses and moved Garcia out of the three spot.....but then batted him second!!!!
No words. No words. Completely indefensible.
Considering this stuff is not new to him, it is utterly ridiculous we are still subjected to these blatant failings with such great talent he actually does have at his disposal.
GM Hahn isn't much better. His answer to 2B for what should have been a championship team is completely lacking.
Comments
I want to add that when you know you have a few injury prone players, then you play them when they are healthy.
Tired of seeing a 'sunday' lineup where your best players get rested and you throw games away. This idiocy cost the white sox home field advantage last season for the first round.
You know there will be injuries and THAT is when you play your subpar players when you have no choice.
Otherwise, stop resting these guys when they are fully healthy!. If they never get injured, then give them a day off at the end of the season depending if your built up lead is big enough to do so. Or take them out early in the game in the blowouts.
Stop throwing games away. Those games matter.
I've never been a LaRussa fan.
I do think the White Sox will be fine though. They'll start hitting and winning games consistently
and be where they want to be at the end of the season, first in the division.
I agree they will too, in spite of LaRussa...if he is still around the team by then.
But, you also want that first round bye. Throwing games away isn't the way to go about it.
There are only so many things a baseball manager can do to win, and one of them is to NOT bat your worst hitter third.
I won't argue about LaRussa, but I'll just note that you could replace his name with Sparky Anderson, Danny Murtaugh, Earl Weaver, or anyone else's and I wouldn't argue either. Managers in baseball are overrated. Managers (head coaches) in team sports, on the other hand, can play an important role and can have a significant impact (for better or worse) on how the team performs.
But the record does show at least one exception to the baseball rule - Billy Martin. Teams that hired Martin won more games - a lot more games - than they had the year before.
True, they typically are overrated.
When Ned Yost first started managing the Royals he always seemed to leave the starting pitcher in too long.
The starter would start struggling and Yost wouldn't pull him until he gave up a three run bomb or something similar.
Happened time and again. Thought he was lousy at knowing when to bring in a relief pitcher.
He got better as KC's bullpen improved and after 2015 when they had gone to 2 straight world series I kind
of forgot about it. But I remember my brother saying they won in spite of Yost and I tend to agree.
@Darin
You're welcome, in advance. 😁
My eyes are bleeding from watching LaRussa manage. One of the few things a manager can do is simply play their best players and have their best hitters bat as often as possible(meaning put them in the lineup and bat them as high in the lineup as possible).
If LaRussa were a basketball coach of the 1990's Bulls he would be doing everything in his power to make sure Will Perdue gets as many shot attempts as Michael Jordan.
Lost in the Tim Anderson/Josh Donaldson event was that Tim Anderson only played one game in the doubleheader(again). Yet somehow Leury Garcia played both ends of the doubleheader, and batted second(again).
It is almost as if Tony LaRussa is trying to lose on purpose.
They win in spite of him. But now they aren't winning enough.
LaRuss is taking a team with such great resources and turning it into something pedestrian.
Lost interest/respect for him when he was mgr. of StL. When, after the using scandal came to light, when asked, he denied knowing Big Mac was ever a user. Okay, what else would he say. Still probably believes to this day he was clean.
Or maybe LaRussa likes Leury Garcia so much because they had similar batting stats as each other.
White Sox's Tony La Russa makes perplexing decision to intentionally walk batter with 2 strikes.
Chicago White Sox manager Tony La Russa defended his decision to intentionally walk Los Angeles Dodgers batter Trea Turner on a 1-2 count in the sixth inning during their game on Thursday.
Turner had two strikes on him in the sixth inning when La Russa inexplicably decided to call for an intentional walk while left-handed pitcher Bennett Sousa was pitching. La Russa, a Hall of Famer, apparently wanted a lefty-lefty matchup with Sousa facing off against Max Muncy.
The White Sox broadcast caught a fan yelling, "He’s got two strikes, Tony!"
Muncy would answer the challenge with a three-run home run as the Dodgers defeated the White Sox 11-9.
La Russa told reporters he was playing the percentages.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/white-sox-tony-la-russa-intentional-walk
Aisde from the fact that he chose to walk him at that point, it was the defense of his decision that was completely incoherent and just flat out incorrect.
Trea Turner for his career is a .229/.245.375 hitter with a 1-2 count vs lefties.
Max Muncy for his career vs lefties is .251/.365/.492.
Then you are also ADDING another baserunner for Muncy to hit with. So even if they were even odds to get out, you are now adding an extra runner for Munchy as opposed to just one runner for Turner. Should be simple.
After watching LaRussa's smug press conference where he was wrong in his decision, I could only assume that LaRussa was simply using numbers based on this season only where the sample size is faulty and Muncy was hurt(and now healthy).
I don't want to break down his response to the question from the reporter, because my eyes are already bleeding from watching him bat Leury Garcia in the top three spots several times already.
LaRussa showed smug douchebaggery in defense of a situation where he was CLEARLY wrong, and he has taken a team with great resources and turned it into something pedestrian....so he should probably change his name to Bo Jiden.
Sunday morning.
Will Biden employ the Sunday lineup today and sit the only guys on the team who can hit and are hitting?
Or will he realize that they need to win and they should not be resting healthy productive players at this point in the season in this predicament he has put them by doing that too much already?
If both Harrison and Leury Garcia are in today's lineup, I may not watch them again until Biden is gone.
Rockhead Balldummy sits BOTH Buxton and Correa on a beautiful Saturday home game.
Don't they understand the fans come to see the best players?
Correa could be gone next year and you never know when Buxton will get hurt again. Sit them when we are on the road and try not to sit them both at the same time!
I thought Yoan Moncada was going. to take off by this point in his career...... injuries and just a poor urgency level seem to have curtailed that significantly... there is a certain malaise on this team that I can't put my finger on...
That is precisely it! It is maddening.
They owe Moncada a lot of money the next three years too.
Andrew Vaughn is going to be their best hitter among their current younger crop of players....and he had trouble finding every day at bats for a while.
I was not a fan of what Biden did last year when he made that big stink about Yermin Mercedes swinging on a 3-0 count in a blowout when the other team had a position player pitching...then Biden called the other manager to apologize.
Mercedes carried them up to that point. He disappeared after that and is now cut.
Biden is STILL defending that intentional walk...pure smug, arrogant, douchebaggery while trying to defend the wrong side of correct.
trying to defend the wrong side of correct.
.......
Well said, I like that.
I could maybe understand the IBB before any pitches, but after getting a 1-2 count. Talk about a dreamkiller that lead to the HR.
At this point Tony should be at home eating ice cream and playing scrabble, sitting on a porch drinking lemonade, or taking a walk to Ace Hardware to grab a few light bulbs and a box of nails.
Just an observation. And a thought. I think that it's possible that he sees himself as someone who achieved partially by thinking "outside the box". Not saying he did, but anyway...if he feels that way, while simultaneously having "lost his fastball", these types of decisions just might be unfortunately expected.
Absolutely.
It could be rough. The only way anything changes is if their players get so hot that it doesn't matter what Tony does, because Tony isn't going anywhere as he is only there because of his friend as the owner.
Although, that 1-2 count intentional walk in that situation....I don't know if a box exists that is big enough to be outside of.
I do wonder though if Kirk Gibson was somewhere in LaRussa's mind. Tommy Lasorda waited until he got to two strikes before attempting to steal the runner to second with Gibson up to bat because he didn't want Gibson to be walked.
LaRussa didn't walk Gibson even with a full count and a base open...and the rest is history. Tony may still be feeling that decision.
Totally different situation as this was only the sixth inning where playing for one run prevention wasn't exactly of paramount importance where one can even interject that strategy.
Afterall, LaRussa might have thought the Gibson home run happened just last year.
PS: Damn, that was 1988 and LaRussa is still here. I would tip the cap to LaRussa if I knew he wasn't here now because of a form of nepotism.
LaRuss really is Biden. I was just watching his post game interview and LaRussa is mumbling through the whole thing, and then they asked him about Joe Kelly who had left the game in the middle of the inning with an injury.
They asked LaRussa if it was an arm injury. Larussa said "It's not an arm injury." LaRuss tried to claim that Kelly, "may have been out of breath," or "got dizzy" as the reason why he left the game.
Keep in mind that Kelly was literally shaking his arm in pain after throwing a pitch. How LaRussa came up with being "out of breath" or "dizzy" is just another big head scratching moment in a season of full of them.
The reporters asked again and Larussa got all pissy and emphatically said "It's not an arm injury!!"
Guess what. It was an arm injury.
Tim Anderson got tossed arguing a strike call. LaRussa came out of the dugout looking like a slug.
I think Anderson was just mad because he actually had to play tonight...no rest day.
It certainly hurts losing Anderson for the game...but helpful losing LaRussa with the follow up ejection because maybe the next guy in charge will put Andrew Vaughn back in the lineup for a team that can't score runs.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/look-white-sox-manager-tony-la-russa-appears-to-nearly-fall-asleep-in-dugout-during-game-vs-royals/
Why. Just why is this guy in the dugout.
Whatever.......But,.....I saw him turn a really good play once. He was playing for the A's.....That play has always stuck in my mind......I've never been able to figure it out.......was it the play?......or just how bitch*n he looked in that A's uniform.......The A's had the best looking uniforms!!!!
He had his day in the spotlight...but those days are over. He should be walking to Ace hardware on Saturday mornings and sitting on his porch sipping lemonade.
I hereby retract the above statement about the White Sox winning the division.
I made that comment on April 24. It is now August 12 and the Royals just beat the White Sox
3 out of 4 games.
The good news is the Sox are at .500 and only 3.5 games out.
Now is the time for either the Guardians, Twins, or White Sox to get hot and establish themselves
as the best team in the division.
Or maybe just have the Guardians play .500 ball the rest of the season and coast to the division title, who knows.
Maybe the White Sox are making a mistake by not providing hospice care for La Russa while he's in the dugout.
The only thing the Sox having going for them is that their division is the NFC East from a couple years ago...so it is still possible they can win their division.
So what went wrong this year? I said it last year too...you have to stop giving maintenance days off to guys in their 20's. Tim Anderson is allergic to playing both ends of a doubleheader. Ozzie Guillen tweeted one day questioning why Anderson was taking a day off earlier in the season....Anderson was really sensitive to the remark. Boom. There it is. No heart. No fight. You have to play your guys when they are healthy. Period.
What happened when Andrus arrived?? He played every day. Sign Andrus and tell Anderson he goes to second base. If Anderson wants to play SS again, then he has to play 158 games to earn it back. Andrus is better defensively anyway...and moving Anderson to 2B solves the Leury problem.
LaRussa treats the team like a little league team where every player needs to play X amount of times. Leury had way too many at bats this year. When they hire their next manager the first question should be:
How many at bats should Leury Garcia get in a season? If that question isn't on there, then they need a new GM too.
Yes, they had injuries like everyone else, and some of the players are made of glass....even more reason to play them every single day when healthy.
17 home runs was the team leader this year. Andrew Vaughn...yet he couldn't get in the lineup every day. 17 does not cut it.
Luis Robert has to start hitting home runs.
Whoever told the white sox to start going for contact and batting average in lieu of power(Yes, LaRussa did), there is another problem. Your power guys need to hit home runs. Hire a hitter or two to round out the lineup that will get the contact and batting average...but do not change what the guys are good at. You hurt the team and run production.
What, you're not a fan of giving 315 PAs to a guy with a .500 OPS?
Ha, no. To compound it, Tony even had the gall to bat him first, second, and third a few times.