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It's time for fans to acknowledge manager's role in team success
Published on Sunday, Sep 09, 2007
ANAHEIM, CALIF.: It's not quite time for Indians' fans to celebrate, but it is time for them to give Eric Wedge his due.
As much as some of you hate the idea that the manager might have done a good job no, make that a bang-up job it happens to be true.
Sorry folks, but the Tribe has won, in part, because of Wedge, not in spite of him. The thousands of times you were sure he should bunt and didn't, or leave C.C. Sabathia in the game (or take him out), or send Trot Nixon on a month-long mission to the supermarket to buy whipped cream were not managerial mistakes.
The vast majority of the time a manager gets grief from fans, it's the fans who are flat wrong. Moreover, as I have said early and often, the test of a manager is not the way he runs a game.
Most managers do most things the same way. When a left-handed hitter comes to the plate in a tight game, the skipper will summon a lefty reliever to face him. It's called playing the percentages.
The same goes for issuing an intentional walk to a prime-time slugger who shows up just when the game is on the line, or going to the bullpen when a starter passes 100 pitches and seems to be losing the strike zone, or taking out a big run producer for a ninth-inning pinch runner with the game hanging in the balance.
Managers react to most commonplace situations in a similar manner. Of course, there are differences, but even these often stem from circumstances on the field that vary from the norm.
And keep this in mind: Usually there is more than one way to reasonably respond to a game issue. If the manager picks a course of action that is not your preference or mine but there is logic on his side give the guy a break.
Now for the important stuff managers do, the things that make Wedge successful.
Make sure your general manager acquires talented players. No manager wins without skilled pitchers and hitters. No manager can weave straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin, after all, lived in a fairy tale.
Once he has a team that has the ability to win, the manager is responsible for making certain his troops play hard, with discipline and a positive attitude.
That is probably Wedge's greatest strength. You don't see this when he goes to the mound to change pitchers, argues with an umpire or conducts interviews with the media.
Almost from day one of his tenure as manager, Wedge's players have internalized his message. They have seen that it works, so they believe it.
That is why they have forced pitchers to throw strikes, why they are adept at getting into hitters' counts and more often than not swing aggressively at hittable pitches.
The process is more than being patient and not swinging at first pitches, two elements of hitting that are ingrained in the brains of fans but have little to do with what Wedge is talking about.
Because General Manager Mark Shapiro has given Wedge players who have the good sense to listen, the manager has persuaded them to endorse his strongest convictions: play hard to the last out, be a good teammate and understand that the game will do bad things to you if you try to take shortcuts.
We all have seen these characteristics emerge in Wedge's teams. They have helped the Indians win games with two outs in the ninth, as they did Tuesday night when Travis Hafner homered to tie the score against the Twins, then delivered the decisive sacrifice fly in the 11th.
One thing fans have declined to gripe about, to their credit, is the way Wedge has managed the pitching staff, particularly this year when it has been a struggle to find enough back-end relievers.
Keep in mind that the Indians have been in first place for most of the season, despite having only three relievers Joe Borowski, Rafael Betancourt, Rafael Perez who can be counted on to hold leads in the eighth and ninth innings.
Wedge has taken great care from the outset of the season to protect his Big Three without throwing away games, and it hasn't been easy. Yet the pitching arms of all three remain firmly attached to their shoulders, despite Wedge's reliance on them.
The negative perception of Wedge is largely his own fault, a result of fans listening to his formal sessions with the media. The Wedge that fans hear in taped interviews before and after games does more harm to his image than a string of 10-game losing streaks.
Wedge has adopted the attitude that the less the media know, the better. And I'm not talking about revealing the team's steal sign or that he confronted a player for making a stupid mental mistake. I mean totally innocuous information.
Questioner: ''Eric, Do you think Travis Hafner can hit 40 home runs this season?''
Wedge: ''We don't get caught up in home runs. Hafner is a hitter first, whose swing can produce home runs when he takes the right approach at the plate, has a plan and the discipline to carry it through.''
Questioner: ''Huh?''
If the questioner is trying to elicit any real answers rather than just sound bites for radio or TV, Wedge's brain reacts by using a different language that sounds like English, but isn't.
He does it on purpose. Fans should totally ignore what he says. If he could somehow conduct his sessions with the press without microphones or television cameras, he would enhance his reputation a hundredfold.
There is one question I haven't heard lately: ''How come the team started losing right after Wedge got his contract extension?''
It was a stupid question then, and now it's irrelevant.
Sheldon Ocker can be reached at socker@thebeaconjournal.com.
ANAHEIM, CALIF.: It's not quite time for Indians' fans to celebrate, but it is time for them to give Eric Wedge his due.
Get the full article here.
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