Dear Bobby V,
I’m not going to piss in your face and tell you it’s
raining. I’m not going to give you a
couple of compliments and then sneak in a dig, that’s never been my style. Don’t consider this letter hate mail, just
consider it a statement of facts; this season has left you completely and
utterly exposed for what you are…an undeniable clown.
OK, I lied. I’ve got
one nicety to get out of the way. But
brace yourself because it’s more backhanded than Rihanna’s face.
Bobby, I would like to thank you for turning down the
manager’s job with the Baltimore Orioles back in 2010. Not only did you spare us with the experience
of watching you mismanage our bullpen, alienate our stars, and from taking a
fat dump all over our fan base; but you are the Anti-Buck. Because of your bigger-than-the-Green-Monstah
ego, you felt managing the Orioles was beneath you. And if not for your self-entitlement, Buck
Showalter would not be our skipper and leading us to the playoffs for the first
time since English Patient won Best
Picture.
Do you remember your reasons for turning down the job with
the Birds? Don’t worry we haven’t forgotten:
"I
did go down there and I did talk with the owner (Angelos) and the general
manager (MacPhail) and they have a whole lot of problems and they seem like
they're really putting their heads together to try to solve them somehow, some
way, [but I'm] not sure how."
One solution to solving the problem was certainly not hiring
you.
"It's
a big challenge. I like big challenges, but I like to have some reward too, and
the reward is in the standings and their standings don't look like they're
going to turn around very quickly."
I get it; you are an instant
gratification kind of guy. You want the proof to be in the pudding from the get
go. And to your credit, you did make
things in Boston happen pretty quickly.
You were able to lose your locker room early in the season when you
called out Kevin Youkilis and alienated team leader and resident garden gnome,
Dustin Pedroia. But you were very wrong;
those standings turn around awful quickly, don’t they? Especially when you take
a team with 90 wins last year (even if they missed the playoffs) and turn them into a 90-loss team. If you are looking for the Orioles we are the
team near the top of the division saying, “we told you so.”
You are a hack. I do
not care about the titles you won in the Japanese Professional leagues. They mean nothing to us in the land of
back-to-back World War Champions. Winning the Japanese World Series is like
being the smartest person on Honey Boo Boo.
I get it, this has been the most frustrating season of your
career, but that does not give you the excuse to just simply mail it in. Seriously, you and your team have less backbone
than someone with spina bifida.
The final three games of the season mean the world to the
New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles.
The A.L. Beast crown is still on the line and therefore the two teams
who are playing the O’s and Yanks can take a lot of pride in impacting the
outcomes of their division. Joe Maddon
and the Tampa Bay Rays got the memo, heck he’s got Evan Longoria whose playing
on one leg in his lineup every night.
But you and your team have rolled over and taken what is coming to you
like Jerry Sandusky is about to when he is unleashed into general
population.
The lineup that you wrote for game one against C.C. Sabathia
was a gigantic middle finger to Buck Showalter and the Orioles. I understand that guys you expected to rely
on this season have gotten hurt or sold off for spare parts, but no Ellsbury
(due to a left on left matchup, weak sauce) and no Pedroia (ouchie my finger
hurts!) is an obvious white flag. I
thought you were Italian, but I guess you are pretty French.
If Game 1’s circus wasn’t enough you seemingly lost last
night on purpose. I mean that is my only
rationale for the way you used your bullpen in the back end of the game last
night. Left hander Craig Breslow only needed 13 pitches to get through the 8th
inning last night and had plenty left in the tank to face LEFT handed hitting
Curtis Granderson leading off the 9th, followed by the ballerina swinging right
handed Eduardo Nunez, and LEFT handed hitting Ichiro Suzuki. You felt that right handed throwing Andrew
Bailey and his 6.00 ERA would be a better matchup against Granderson (who kills
righties), Nunez who would obviously be pinch hit for with a left hand bat,
like say Raul Ibanez, and then followed by ANOTHER left handed Ichiro
Suzuki.
I’m not a big league manager and overall baseball genius
like yourself, but I am a student of the game and you botched this one. When your closer has a tougher time getting
outs than the ghost of Kevin Gregg, it may be time to strictly go matchup by
matchup with your bullpen to grind out those final three outs and secure a 3-1
win.
But, hey you’re Bobby V and you’ve got all the answers. Which
is why I’m hoping you can answer these questions:
1) How do you seriously start a DH who is hitting .160?
2) How do you not use a single pinch hitter or pinch runner
in a 12 inning game compared to Joe Girardi who used 3 catchers, two pinch
hitters, and on pinch runner
On the game-winning play last night, I saw all I needed to
see on how much your team respects you and how much you are motivating them to
play hard. Raul Ibanez sent a seeing-eye
single bouncing between 3B Pedro Ciriaco and SS Jose Iglesias. There was a runner (Francisco Cervelli) on 2B
with 2 outs, and this is known as a “belly up” or “do or die” situation for
infielders. Meaning, if there is a
groundball remotely close to them they are expected to sell out and dive for
the ball in order to knock it down and keep that runner on 2B from
scoring. By holding the runner to 3B,
the pitcher and his defense lives on to fight another day – the next
batter. The ball was close enough to
either defender that even though neither would have had any chance of throwing
Ibanez out at first, they still would have knocked the ball down and saved a
run. Instead, neither guy laid out, the ball trickled into left field and
Cervelli came around to score the game-winning run for the Yankees. I guess the only thing going belly up in
Boston is your job security, eh Bobby?
As of today, the Orioles need to win and we need you guys to
beat the Yankees in order to tie for the Division lead and force a one game
Division Championship to be played tomorrow at Camden. But it appears you have already licked the
stamp, sealed the envelope, and mailed it in because you are sending Daisuke
Matsuzaka to the mound. Domo arigato Mr. Bobby.
It’s time to take a page out of Buck
Showalter’s playbook. He was in the same
position you were in last year (minus the whole everyone hates you and you’re
going to get fired thing), and he motivated his players to go all out because
even though they were not going to the playoffs they still had an opportunity
to completely decide who did. All Birdland asks is that you and your trash squad
BUCKle up and show some pride and compete tonight.
And hey if you really like challenges
you’re going to love your next one. It’s called cleaning out the gutters on a
Sunday, cutting the grass, running back out to the store to pick up the low-fat
vanilla Soy Milk, or any thing else on your honey-do list because you are
staring unemployment and free time right in the eye. Don’t blink Bobby.
Sincerely,
BIRDLAND
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