I’m the rare blogsman that does not mind disagreements and won’t, like, ban you or outright yell at you for it. (And if it does seem like I’m ever, like, “yelling at you,” I’m totally not.)

I was gonna drop it, too. We have a mild disagreement. I don’t love the bullpen right now either, but I think it’s worth it to show trust in them in April. If this was June and the bullpen was crapping out at the rate they have lately, I’d probably say, “Well, what the fuck was he gonna do, bring Sarfate in?”

“Anyway, I think I personally will drop this issue, because I got a feeling most of you want to wring my neck…”

I just don’t buy this, “I’ll excuse a bad decision because hindsight is perfect” line of reasoning because it excuses every bad decision…. it doesn’t say anything substantive about the logic and justification for a particular decision.

We’re sarcastic assholes like that….

I will readily admit to being more likely to give Nick Markakis some leash to have a bad game than I will Dave Trembley. One of them will still be here in five years, for one thing. One of them has a future in baseball that I care about.

I also only talked “past” you to make a joke. Then I talked about what you brought up. He had a shitty game. I said that. If he has shitty games all the time I’ll probably be annoyed with that. I said that. So what’s your point? Is it that Aubrey Huff having one good game per week is awesome? I disagree.

This whole Guthrie/Trembley situation from last night is so 100% not a good example of Dave Trembley’s managing that it boggles my mind that, what, two of you are seriously trying to skip over it. I’m not telling anyone to fire him or burn him at the stake or cast him out of baseball but would it kill you to admit he did something that actively blew the game when it was on the line? I wonder if he was getting up, but Guts said, “I’ve got him,” and then Dave sat back down and said, “Oh, it’s OK. He says he’s got him. Rick, did you see that? He says he’s got him. Don’t worry.”

There were other players who had other similar oppurtunities. Whereas, you can pretty much say that Dave’s decision not to pull Guthrie at Ibanez had a worse effect at that point in the game than Markakis’s golden sombrero. That’s not to downplay 3 strikeouts, one being in a critical situation, there’s just more to it, offensively, than Markakis sucking last night. Also, players have bad games. With Markakis, bad games are more the exception than the rule. With Trembley, bad bullpen management, unfortunately, seems to be the rule more than the exception. Besides, Markakis was just listening to Thorne, or was it Uncle Jim, (I don’t remember which d-bag said it) about how the #3 batter should definitely go down swinging over wasting time taking walks.

The point in all the sarcasm is that Huff, generally sucks, and Markakis generally is much better than Huff. Last night they seem to have swapped roles. It happens.

All in all, I think it’s pretty safe to say that this was a team loss (offensively, defensively-ahem, Ramone, management(ly?) )with the exception actually being on Guthrie himself. He’s a gamer.

And one more thing… it’s blastphemous to down-talk Nick, he’s our savior.

could have changed the game, particularly when it’s a close game in the bottom of the 8th. But we’re talking about managerial strategy. From a strategy viewpoint, it’s clearly the best move to leave Markakis in the game even if he has a 2 or 3 crappy ABs in a particular game. Yes, if he had better ABs (or anyone for that matter), the outcome of the game might have changed. But from a strategy viewpoint, that’s irrelevant. In contrast, leaving in a gassed pitcher is a fair criticism.