Tournament managers: dumb, dumber, dumbest.

Since my team is not in the tournament I've only been monitoring the games, i.e., baseball on one TV, something else on the other.  If I happen to notice baseball activity, I watch the replay.  I haven't stayed up to see the end of games so today is the first time I saw the end of game four between LA and Atlanta.  MLB Network replayed the three hour nineteen minute game in two hours.

The Dodgers have the best pitcher in the National Conference (NC): Clayton Kershaw.  Dodger manager Don Mattingly decided to start Kershaw in game four on three days rest despite these facts:

1. in his career Kershaw had never started a game on less than four days rest; regular season stats:
4 days rest: 103 starts
5 days rest: 61 starts
6+ days rest: 18 starts

2. Dodgers led the five game series 2-1.

3. Even if LA won it would deprive the Dodgers of starting Kershaw in game one of the next round against, as it turned out, St. Louis.  Winning the tournament is the thing, not just round one.

With the score tied 2-2 after 6 innings Mattingly replaced Kershaw with Ronald Belisario, despite the fact that Kershaw had thrown only 91 pitches and the two runs were unearned.  Belisario promptly allowed the go ahead run.

Freddy Garcia pitched surprisingly well for Atlanta, also going six innings.  In the bottom of the 7th, Luis Avilan retired the first two Dodgers then allowed a long double to Mark Ellis and intentionally walked Hanley Ramirez, the number 3 hitter.  At this point I thought it made sense for Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez to get aggressive and radical by today's thinking and actually bring in his best relief pitcher, Craig Kimbrel, who had struck out 98 batters in his measly 67 innings.  Atlanta was facing Dodger batters 4-5-6, the heart of the order.  If Kimbrel retired the cleanup hitter Adrian Gonzalez, he could then pitch the 8th inning against Yasiel Puig, Juan Uribe and Skip Schumaker.  That would leave the 9th inning, if Kimbrel could not continue, with Dodger batter number 8, A.J. Ellis, the pitcher's spot, then leadoff hitter Carl Crawford who had homered in his first two times up.

Instead of Kimbrel, Fredi Gonzalez left Avilan in and he retired Adrian Gonzalez to end the Dodger threat in the 7th leaving two runners on base.  However, in the bottom of the 8th Fredi Gonzalez brought in David Carpenter, not Kimbrel, who was warming up.  Puig quickly doubled.  Kimbrel could have relieved then with the tieing run on second and no out.   Mattingly then seemed to take his opposing manager off the hook by having Uribe attempt to sacrifice bunt Puig from second to third.  But Uribe failed to make the intentional out, which seemed like a bad move by Mattingly anyway.  Instaed Uribe hit a hanging curve for a two run homer and a 4-3 Dodger lead.  Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez had equivocated long enough for fate to remove his most potent weapon in protecting the lead.  Kimbrel never pitched and Atlanta was eliminated.  Attendance: 54,438 in LA.

Tampa was eliminated at home by Boston before 32,807.  Time of Game: 3:49.  Score 3-1.  Each team had only six hits.  Why did the game take so long?  One reason was that Tampa manager Joe Maddon must have thought he was Casey Stengel: Maddon used NINE pitchers in nine innings.  Maybe Maddon had forgotten that a tie goes into extra innings.  The starter pitched only one inning.  Only pitchers 3 and 4, Matt Moore and Alex Torres, pitched two innings.  The final three pitchers each retired only one batter.

In addition to running the risk of running out pitchers in this game, even if Tampa won it would still need to play a game five in Boston.

So I'm dominating these three managers as dumb, dumber, dumbest.  You can decide which is which.