-Blade

Contributing writer Central Arizona College Baseball

6.8.21

(Signal Peak) I had decided many years ago while I was sitting in the stands watching any baseball game that my opinion of any strategy of any baseball head coach is just that.

An opinion.

I completely love questioning in my head why a head coach would take that great hitter out at this time of the game, or why he would give that pitcher that got killed for five runs, another inning.

And I never have an answer and I leave it at that, in my head.

And it reminds me of why I love baseball so much.

I have ZERO idea what is happening in that dugout, who's under-confident, who's got a groin issue, who has missed the signs twice in a row, or any of the other thousands of things that go through a coach's head.

And it's remarkable to me how many people in the stands really do know.

When it comes to a baseball strategy, I do have one opinion about one particular in-game strategy out of the hundreds and thousands of baseball games I have watched and it really stands out, I have no problem expressing my opinion about it either.

Removing Blake Snell in Game 6 of the 2020 World Series.

"Didn't want Mookie or Seager seeing Blake a third time. There was no set plan. As much as people think, there's no set plan." Said Tampa Bay head coach Kevin Cash.

Five and a third innings of domination, Snell on a roll, and as confident as he has every been in his life, possibly. Way more confident than his own coach apparently.

"Didn't want Mookie or Seager seeing Blake a third time. There was no set plan. As much as people think, there's no set plan."

Sure, yeah.

Let's take the ball out of the pitcher's hand who has a chance of throwing a World Series game of a lifetime, when he has given up two hits and struck out nine Los Angeles Dodgers.

And the guy stood by his decision as he watched his decision completely change the outcome of the game.

I know one coach who I THINK would have let his pitcher talk him out of that decision...on that day...in that moment.

On a hunch.

Anyway, that's the only baseball coaching strategy opinion of my own in my head. I can put that one at the top.

The rest all fall into one category:

"How the hell would I know?"

 Now who in this world would have started Shane Spencer in the do-or-die JUCO World Series game?

The staff at Central Arizona College did.

And I mean staff.

Wow. What joy that decision gave me, and what joy Spencer's performance gave me.

The head coach signs off in the end, but I do know this whole staff talks a LOT together about the best strategy in starter for that day.

And they talked a LOT about where to put Kiko Romero in the field, an all-around, flat-out baseball player who's never played first base.

And about having a .352 hitter (at the time) in Devon Dixon hitting last in the order, which stuck.

I have always said baseball is a game of hunches, and the head coach is more qualified than anyone to deploy his hunches, excepting the experts in the stands of course, but Kevin Cash's hunch was dead wrong, to everyone in the baseball world except himself.

There's an old Ernest Hemingway book and movie I both read and watched..."The Old Man and The Sea", and there was a surprising baseball undertone through the movie. The old fisherman would talk to the young Cuban boy who would caringly and lovingly wander over to his tin hut to help him set up his day fishing for a living in that rickety 10-footer.

One day the young boy asked the old man who the best manager in America was.

"Oh son....." said the old man.

"They're all about the same."

Bright light above my head at that moment, a good twenty years ago. They are!

They really are, they all basically use the same strategy and common knowledge...that really....we ALL know.

The only obvious differences in head baseball coaches, to me, are the handling of his players and moreover, his gut-hunch feeling... at that moment.

It's been seven years of covering Central Arizona College baseball and it occurred to me that whenever I see a hunch-call coming from their dugout, it fills me with an excitement I rarely have in baseball any more. Because when you get blind-sided by a hunch call... it's a scoop!

Hey the coach has one on us!  He has something the articles and experts don't see!

Notice how the baseball announcers always seem to know what move is coming next in the game of the day. That's easy because all managers "are about the same."

Now for a JUCO World Series reference as Central faced McLennan, Texas, who won...I don't know how good your hunches will be when you have a guy on the mound striking out your players at two per inning.

As the head coach said..."The game didn't feel like a win at all, but the season sure did."

As the baseball announcers said in JUCO World Series coverage..."these Vaqueros can hurt you by doing many things on these basepaths."

And..."the head coach has a calming and caring effect on these players."

Those two things really stand out to me.

Hey old man! Maybe they're not ALL the same.