[ad_1]
Despite all the excitement, Tony La Russa was down.
And he made it known during his post-match press conference.
“I would find it hard to think about winning a great game and enjoying it less than I am right now,” said the South Side skipper after a thrilling overtime win against the team with the best record in the League American.
RELATED: TA Plays The Hero Again In Another Big Win, This Time Against The Rays
So what was the Hall of Famer eating?
As it turns out, even the heroism of Tim Anderson who blamed the team to send the Chicago White Sox to a Friday night win in hometown La Russa wasn’t enough to erase the remorse that ‘he was feeling about the way he handled one of his backup launchers.
Specifically, La Russa was tormented by the way he used his new relief pitcher, Craig Kimbrel, a guy who will potentially join him in the Hall of Fame someday.
La Russa called Kimbrel, acquired in a booming trade from Crosstown on the trade deadline, to kick off the eighth inning on Friday night and protect a two-point lead. It was Kimbrel’s first appearance since Monday, and between outings, he had briefly left the team to attend the funeral of a family member.
On Friday night, things were not up to its historically dominant standard. He walked the first batter he faced on four pitches, and after a lineout, the runner reached third when Kimbrel’s wild pitch bounced off Seby Zavala on a goal steal attempt.
Kimbrel struck out the next batter. But La Russa made a change there, replacing him with Aaron Bummer, who came in, walked the first hitter he faced, gave up a single RBI – helped by Anderson making a capricious pitch at second base – a Intentionally made Nelson Cruz walk to charge the bases and gave up a two-run single to put the White Sox behind.
After the game, even after a comeback win, La Russa struggled over his decision to lift Kimbrel – and maybe even bring Kimbrel in in the first place.
“The way it turned out was excruciating,” he said. “This is one of those things I went to thinking it had been three days since Craig had pitched, one of those days he made the trip for personal reasons. All of a sudden, you throw it in the middle of it.
“You want to try to create fair situations. I kept thinking – as he walked the first guy around and as he continued – I kept thinking, ‘This is just not fair. “I take him out after he hits (Mike) Zunino, and I think that was the totally wrong message to send him, to think that I and we don’t trust.
“It wasn’t fair for it to develop that way. I thought, ‘He shouldn’t be facing this guy.’ But when I look back, thinking of the potential closer to the Hall of Fame that he is, I sent him the wrong message. If it had worked, I still sent him the wrong message. not what I think of him.
“He’s definitely a key part of what we’ve got going forward. (We won) the game and (now we’re going) to try to undo the damage done to Craig.”
Since acquiring Kimbrel, one has wondered how the White Sox would handle having two All-Star forwarder closers in the back of their paddock. La Russa assured that there wouldn’t be a narrower controversy, and there wasn’t, as Liam Hendriks remained the go-to guy for the ninth round. It shifted curiosity to how Kimbrel, one of the top 10 game savers in baseball history, would handle the eighth pitch as the main Hendriks setup man.
The results have been mixed. And while the mixed results aren’t new for Kimbrel in Chicago – meaning his 2019 and 2020 struggles with the Chicago Cubs weren’t due to his pitch in an unknown round – he went from an ERA. nearly untouchable from 0.49 in 39 appearances for the Cubs this season to a 5.40 ERA in the small sample size of nine appearances in relief for the White Sox.
No one should assume that someone with Kimbrel’s background is broken now that he’s wearing a different jersey and throwing an inning earlier than in the past.
And in fact, that’s what bothered La Russa, that he didn’t trust someone who’s stepped out of this jam so many times in a Hall of Fame career.
“You do these moves a lot. But in this case, when it’s Craig Kimbrel, future Hall of Famer, it wasn’t the move,” La Russa said. “He won that challenge, and I took it off. I took it off because the whole time I sent him out there, I knew he had three days off, had a lead of two. sleeves, I thought, ‘Hope this starts well.’
“He walks the guy first, and I think it’s unfair to him, that’s why I did it. But I think what’s worse than being unfair is not showing of confidence.”
Click here to follow the White Sox Talk podcast.
To download
Download MyTeams today!
[ad_2]
Source link