Astros Win, Coop's an Idiot

The Wizard improved to 22-1 against the Reds tonight. Pretty cool. It's probably a lot easier now that Griffey and Dunn are gone, though.

In the bottom of the 4th, Tejada and Berkman got on base to start the home inning. Blum comes up. Blum had earlier grounded out in a similar situation, and he was swinging away on this one.

Now, at the 3-2 count, Berkman and Tejada are moving on the pitch. I have never believed in the hit-and-run play, even when I was a kid and thought that small-ball worked. It's honestly one of the worst decisions a manager can make. It forces the hitter to swing away, and it leaves runners open to being thrown out on a strike out or a caught liner. Simply put, it commits the cardinal sin of sports: Trying To Do Too Much With It.

Now, to some degree, I can understand the reasoning here. The fear is that Blum will ground out and allow the double play. You really don't want that to happen.

But the alternative to the H&R would be to allow Blum to just swing at what he's comfortable with. If he strikes out, it's better than the ground out. If he sends one over the second baseman, we might score anyways. If he hits a homer, problem solved.

Instead, Blum was forced to swing. More importantly, Tejada was ordered to run. So Tejada was thrown out at third fairly easily. It wasn't done by a mile, but it was pretty obvious that he wouldn't make it.

So instead of having one out with runners at 1st and 2nd, we have two outs with a runner on 2nd. Now, the double play Coop was avoiding would have resulted in two outs with a runner on 3rd. So Coop's plan actually resulted in a worse scenario than the one he feared. Talk about irony.

So Hunter comes to the plate with two outs, so he can't possibly ground into a double play. Not even if he tried. And he promptly blasts a two-run homer to give the Astros the lead. Of course, that should have been a three-run homer, but nobody ever fucking paid attention to Earl Weaver. Not fucking ever. Unless their name was Billy Beane, in which case they continued the Earl's tradition of kicking ass.

So Coop got the victory, as did Roy. And Wiggy extended the lead to three with a two-run shot in the seventh. Overall, a good night for the Stros, but one that should have been 5-1 instead of 4-1.

Coop's actually not an idiot. This was just a stupid play.