Ozzie Guillen; Bonehead

Ozzie Guillen once again made an attempt at emulating Tony Larussa and this time it complely blew up in his face. Ozzie may handle his starters with a golden touch, but at times his bullpen management makes one wonder how he led this team to a championship. Due to Ozzie's overmanaging in the 9th inning of tonights game the Angels scored 6 runs, and every one crossed the plate with 2 outs.

Going into the 9th, the Sox were trailing 6-5.

After relieving Heager in the 5th and pitching 3.2 scoreless innings, McCarthy started the 9th and recorded the first out of the inning before allowing a double to Cabrera. With first base open, Vlad Guerrero due up next and Anderson on deck, Ozzie elected to intentionally walk Guerrero and bring Cotts on to pitch to the left-handed Anderson.

Cotts comes on to strike out Anderson on just 4 pitches. So it’s the 9th inning with 2 out, 2 on, and the score is still 6-5. With the right-handed Salmon due up, Ozzie decided to then bring in Jenks to try and close out the inning.

5 batters, 6 runs and one more pitching change later, the Sox trail 12-5.

Pulling Cotts is understandable when looking at the numbers...right-handed batters are hitting at a .389 clip against him and Salmon is hitting .393 vs. left-handing pitching this season. While I'd much rather see Cotts just go after the righty than burn up another arm in the bullpen, I can't argue with the logic in the numbers behind this move. One guys weakness to the others strenghth. My question is, why go to Jenks? Was Pollite unavailable to pitch the remaining 1/3 of the inning because of pitching an just 1 inning Tuesday night?

I would have rather seen Ozzie just leave McCarthy in to go at Anderson and try to get the double play ground ball. If he isn't able to get the DP but gets Anderson anyway, leave him in to finish the inning and face Salmon. Although Anderson has done most of his damage this season against right-handed pitching, hitting .325 with all 4 of his HR's against them, McCarthy was plowing through the Angel lineup with ease since entering the game and still looked fresh in the 9th.

McCarthy had thrown 54 pitches up to that point, and 4 of them were on the intentional walk. I read him being quoted in yesterdays paper as saying that he could go up to around 60 pitches right now if he were called upon to make a start in Jose's absence. He should have had about 10 more pitches to work with.

Even after removing McCarthy and going to Cotts, what reason did Cotts provide in his performance to warrant being pulled? Other than this seasons splits which are based on such small sample sizes that they're almost irrelevant, there was no reason. He sat Anderson down on 4 pitches, and those were the only pitches he has thrown in a game since Saturday, so he is well rested. On top of that, since the second week of the season he has been one of the more consistent guys in a rather shaky bullpen.

Instead, Ozzie unnecessarily goes to Jenks in a non-save situation and he blows any remaining chance the Sox had at coming back. Oz used 4 pitchers in order to record the 3 outs in the inning, leaving the bullpen a bit taxed during stretch were there isn't a schedualed off day for another 2 weeks. If the Sox don't get some long outings from their starters in the next couple of games we'll be witnessing a ripple effect from this game for days to come.