Playoff Prospectus: Ned Wins: Assessing The Managers In Game 4

When we talk about the decisions managers make in big games, we probably spend too much time on the mistakes. It’s true that the first tenet of good managing tends to coincide with the first line of the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.” Still, sometimes a team needs good guidance, or the right button pressed at the right time, in order to get the result it deserves on a given night. So before we talk about the things Terry Collins and the Mets should have done differently in Saturday’s Game Four loss to the Royals, let’s talk about the things Ned Yost did right.

For one thing, with a runner on first and one out in the top of the fifth inning of a 2-1 game (the Mets having the lead), Yost pinch-hit for Chris Young with Kendrys Morales. That was the right choice, even though it almost certainly wasn’t an easy one. Morales is a high-leverage bench bat, the kind no team carries unless that team usually has room for said player in its lineup. Very often, managers blanch at the notion of using up their best tactical weapon before the seventh or eighth inning, lest an even higher-leverage opportunity arise later on. Moreover, the bottom of the Mets’ order was due in the bottom of the inning, so Yost had at least some cover for a decision to let Young bat and attempt to bunt Alex Gordon into scoring position.

In this case, though, the Royals had the tying run on first base. The Leverage Index of that plate appearance, according to our friends at FanGraphs, was 1.18. That’s not sky-high, but considering that the game was halfway over and that Morales was stepping into one of just two lineup spots in which Yost would even consider using Morales at any point, the odds were good that he was hitting the red button at the right time. As for Young, leaving him in to bunt not only would have hurt the Royals’ chances of creating a big inning, but would have set up a pitcher already struggling (on short rest) to get himself into trouble with the third trip through the lineup looming. Yost’s decision to lift Young for Morales smelled faintly of compensating for the more questionable choices he made in the middle of Game Three, but it was the right choice. It didn’t pay off, in that Morales’ single led to no further damage in the inning, but the process was good, and by getting Young out of the game when he did, Yost set up the good choices he made with regard to bullpen usage the rest of the way.

It didn’t feel like the right move, so much, when Michael Conforto led off the bottom of the fifth by homering off Danny Duffy, who came in for Young. Still, Duffy was the right pitcher to use in that situation, and once the Mets helped him escape the fifth without falling any farther behind, the Royals’ relief lined up nicely. Recognizing how hard the other key members of his bullpen had worked and asking Wade Davis to get six outs was Yost’s final stroke of brilliance for the evening.

Now, on the other hand, there’s Collins. Collins, who has become so enamored of his glorious, young, thrilling starting rotation that he absolutely cannot see the forest for the damn trees. (Yet again, he left his starter in to face the best hitters in the opposing lineup a third time on Saturday night, this time allowing Steven Matz to see Ben Zobrist and Lorenzo Cain and giving up the Royals’ second run as payment for his hubris.) Collins, who went into the NLCS practically muttering “we’re not a running team” under his breath even when no one was around, suddenly so in love with his surprise-attack running game that he ordered (or at least allowed) Curtis Granderson to steal a base with two outs in a game the Mets led by two, off the stingy duo of Duffy and Salvador Perez. (The rally died there.) Collins, who allowed Tyler Clippard to face Alcides Escobar, Zobrist and Cain to lead off the eighth, then called upon Jeurys Familia to face Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Perez and Gordon. (That’s despite the fact that Escobar and Cain are right-handed, and Familia is the much better pitcher against right-handed batters, and that Hosmer, Moustakas, and Gordon bat lefty, and Clippard is the better pitcher against lefties. Collins ought to have either begun the inning with Familia or allowed Clippard to work through the traffic jam on the bases. The particular way in which the inning unfolded leads most of the blame to fall squarely on the players’ shoulders, but the manager’s process was incompletely considered here, too.)

Ned Yost may be the autopilot manager. He may think about the game radically differently than most of the people who analyze his work think about it. For the second straight October, though, he’s showing a fairly admirable willingness to adapt to the specific demands of the playoffs, and the man who once was fired by a team on the precipice of the playoffs is now one win from a World Series title in which his tactical superiority over his counterpart has been an undeniable (though small) factor. What a time to be alive.