Bob Geren and the Rapture

Today at 6pm an earthquake is to begin in New Zealand and eventually roll across the earth as saved Christians (both dead and alive) rise up to the heavens while the rest of us live on on earth while the world crumbles care of earthquakes, famine, war and other atrocities. Happy Saturday people!

For A’s fans this earthquake has already begun and a big temblor came yesterday with Bob Geren‘s mindless managing snatching defeat from the arms  of victory. Sure the A’s offense sucked, and they did themselves no favors by failing to hit with RISP – again and failing to capitalize on numerous lead off baserunners – again. But ultimately this game was managed stupidly and the opportunities to be victorious were taken from our hands not by the Giants, but by the decisions Geren made. Decisions like losing your best starting pitcher, and your best two bench hitters in one fell swoop. Which is what Geren did when he pinch hit for Trevor Cahill with Hideki Matsui and then removed Hideki Matsui when Jeremy Affeldt (a lefty – a lefty whom Matsui is 4-for-9 off of) was summoned from the Giants pen. He inserted Conor Jackson, who was then replaced by pitcher Grant Balfour. There is a kid in Oroville playing Strat-O-Matic today making more sound managerial judgments.

He also inexplicably had Michael Wuertz intentionally walk Aubrey Huff in order to face Buster Posey. If you aren’t familiar with Posey he was last year’s National League Rookie of the Year, a key contributor to the Giants winning the World Series and is pretty much San Francisco’s best hitter. Yes – he walked a guy, in order to face this premium player. Doesn’t make sense to me either.

Then to add insult to injury he clearly displayed his affinity for the “intentionally walk a guy, to face the better hitter” approach when in the tenth inning he did it again. Opting to have train wreck Brian Fuentes intentionally walk Freddy Sanchez in order to get the lefty-lefty matchup against Aubrey Huff. Need to mention this though first, Huff hits lefties better than righties, sort of a key piece of information that I had at home care of Fangraphs or Baseball-Reference.com yet not one seemingly in the possession of Bob Geren. But yeah coming in that at bat in 2011 Aubrey’s splits looked like this:

	BA	OBP	SLG
vs. LHP	.289	.298	.400
vs. RHP	.193	.274	.349

So of course the wise move there was to have Brian Fuentes (left-handed) face Aubrey Huff in that situation right? Well Geren thought so at least, and in a result that wasn’t in the least bit surprising, Huff and karma in general made him pay for this buffoonery by lacing a single into right and giving the Giants a tenth inning victory.

Joe Stiglich of the San Jose Mercury News tweeted after the post-game press conference this quote from manager Geren:

“Geren on turning to Fuentes in tie game: ‘Sometimes you gotta take those roles and throw them out the window and go with your best guy.’ “

If he thinks Brian Fuentes is his “best guy” he has a some serious misconceptions. This adoration of Fuentes is beyond control and it has had clearly detrimental effects to this team’s record. Whether it was having Brian Fuentes serve up a monster shot to Miguel Cabrera on April 15th that erased a 1-0 A’s win (on my birthday no less!) and then adding further insult to injury by leaving Fuentes in to secure the loss in the tenth, or any of the five other meltdowns he has had this year Fuentes has proven adept at not being the guy to have in there with the game on the line. I feel terrible for Brian Fuentes, I complain about him all the time, but it isn’t his fault, he is being misused. Really, Fuentes is a decent pitcher, but Coco Crisp is a decent outfielder and we aren’t playing him at catcher, yet that is sort of what Geren does with Fuentes and where he puts him into games.

It is time for Geren to go. If he doesn’t go, like the poor souls left on earth sometime after the sixth inning of this afternoon’s ballgame the A’s will endure five months (it won’t even be five, but four because the A’s won’t make the postseason) of bad losing, tortuous baseball. This must stop.