RMJ 101 May 26

I am also faced with a new challenge:

It looks like Bobby Abreu has broken the hamate bone in his right hand. He will be out four-to-six weeks.

I believe James Mouton and Thomas Howard will fill in adequately. But with Derek Bell of out action, we are thrice weakened: in the field, at the plate, and on the bench.

Injuries like this have a ripple effect. I must play two players who would ordinarily be available to pinch-hit, pinch-run or play late-inning defense. This is no big deal, if it is just for a day or two. But Derek still has a couple of weeks to go, and we will be challenged to improve our record while he is out of the lineup.

Thank goodness our schedule gets a little easier. We will be playing the Padres, Dodgers, and Reds for the next two weeks. All of these teams have been having troubles of their own.

Our troubles continued today. We lost 4-3 on a Bonds homer in the bottom of the ninth.
It never should have come to that, but we couldn’t hit Rueter, even though he was wild. And Shane Reynolds walked five batters — the most he has ever walked in a game. He even walked Rueter with the bases loaded.

But I have to give him credit: even on his worst day, he only allowed three runs in six innings. He gave us a chance to win, but we couldn’t get the big hit. We certainly had plenty of chances.

Now we are at the .500 mark. We have all but wasted our good start. But then, we all knew that a good start was only that. It is a long season. Somehow, we will have to get our offense going.

Today’s game posed an interesting strategic question:

We had Billy Wagner and José Lima ready to pitch the bottom of the ninth. I told Vern it would be Lima if we failed to score, and Wagner if we took the lead.

There is a school of thought that says if you have a chance to win, you do whatever you can to seize it. That would indicate Wagner, even in a tie game. Still, I did not use him.

If Wagner had pitched a scoreless ninth, we would have to score in the tenth, and he would have to hold the Giants again to win. If we didn’t score, he would have to pitch two innings, rendering him unavailable tomorrow, and we would have a do-or-die inning to make the strategy pay off.

If we were at home, I could have him pitch the ninth and tenth, and we would have two chances to score.

So far, I have not been reluctant to use him in a tie game at home, but I have not used him this way on the road.

Now I can second-guess myself. I thought Lima would be fine if he could just get by Bonds. I’ll never know, because Bonds hit the second pitch of the inning into the rightfield seats.