Tiger Geist

Plenty to read about Leyland’s blowup last night.  I love how he attacked Grilli — interesting how he’ll protect his players when he’s on his team, yet let them have it when they’re out of line and no longer with them.  Interesting to see how his other comments work through the system — he didn’t seem pleased some players were talking in the media.  I wonder the effects on Inge and Sheffield’s playing time (Sheffield goes 0-5 last night while the rest of the crushes the ball).  Overall, it was a bitch session that could easily alienate a team from its manager, depending on how well the team respects the manager.  Tonight’s game is as important as last night’s game in my mind — they must be competitive or Leyland’s outburst didn’t mean anything.

Great move today, announcing Dontrelle Willis will move to the bullpen to work out his control issues.  Couple of thoughts here:

• Gives competition to the rest of the starting rotation
• Without hurting Dontrelle’s pride (by using his injury as the reason he’s out of the rotation to start with), they send a message to the rest of the rotation.
• They protect themselves in case Galarraga’s start is somewhat a fluke, as mentioned here.

No matter if Galarraga’s starts have been a fluke or not, you can’t yank him as long as he’s putting the team in a position to win every time he goes out.  If some of the contact against him starts dropping for hits, you can make that decision.  But you don’t yank your most consistent pitcher because you ‘feel’ like he might have been lucky.  I ‘feel’ that Willis can’t throw a strike, and that Robertson hasn’t been very good this year.  But i also have the stats to back it up.