Simply? Yes.

Far as Jackson goes, I was fine with him going out to the mound in the eighth to see what happens. But when he was struggling with his location, walking batters and giving up some hard-hit balls, I think the responsible thing is to pull him. Maybe there’s some Jim Leyland-psychology going on and it really works in the long haul. I hope so. Otherwise, the move made absolutely no sense, regardless of pitch count.

So count me as in agreement with Bill on this one.

Has anyone else noticed the MLB Network’s overruse of monikers such as “Pale Hose”, “Fightin’ Phils” and “bump”? It’s almost as annoying as the Von Bondies song they played throughout their “30 Clubs in 30 Days” programing.

What’s next? Motor City Kitties? Actually, I wouldn’t mind that one.

Lastly, it’s good to see Matt Dillon getting some work on their network. Whoops, that’s Greg Amsinger.

Great posts gents.

The Rangers had two good looks at Zumaya and Rodney in the first two games and knocked ZuZu around a bit the night before. So he was not going to be an option. But surely some combination of Perry/Seay/Miner/Robertson was going to be as good if not better than a gassed Jackson. After that opening walk, was there any question left? Does he really have so little confidence in his bullpen? It just didn’t make any sense.

This is exactly what i’ve been thinking as well. Move your two best starters apart one day so you don’t have to worry about using your bull pen heavily for 3 straight days.

“Complaining when we have a solid 1 run win is complaining for complaining sake and just overkill IMO.”

Of all people to disparage overkill…

The only thing that I agree with in your post is conditional: if this outing has “conditioned” him for extra stress, great. If on the other hand his next start is miserable, we’ll have some retrospective grumbling on our hands.

“This was HIS GAME. I don’t understand why there can be so much complaining when we won. ”

I usually like to give Leyland the benefit of the doubt (having no baseball experience outside of fanhood), but sometimes the real story is how you win. This outing wasn’t encouraging in that dept, and I would guess that if you were to repeat the scenario in a simulation, the outcome would not favor the Tigers most of the time.

Jackson certainly did the best with what was asked of him, so its not entirely fair to say that he doesn’t deserve the win, but leaving him in for the 8th clearly did more to jeopardize his chances of winning. What would a loss have done to his confidence? If he doesn’t pitch the 8th, does he feel like his manager has any less confidence in him?

I’m not suggesting that the decision was directly resonsible for them scoring the go ahead run, but I think it was a decision that made the players feel just a little better about playing for this team and this manager, something quite important over the 162 game long haul.

Maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe they all thought he should have gotten yanked. I didn’t get that sense though, although I realize it wouldn’t make much sense for a player to question the decision by word or deed.

I’ve only seen quotes from two players, but I’m wondering if there are any ex-players or others not connected to the team, that could give us some insight. I wonder what Rod Allen would have said.

Jackson said, “It would have been easy to go to the ‘pen and pull me out. But to leave me out there definitely shows that he has confidence in me” and “It would’ve been easy to go to the ‘pen, but I’m glad he had that confidence. It rubs off on a pitcher.”

Inge said, “”If you leave it to a guy who really wants to compete, he doesn’t care what his pitch count is. He wants to go out there and try to be able to help his team win.”

Not much insight. Maybe the fact that there aren’t more quotes supports the theory that I’m completely wrong.

If this trend becomes a regular occurrence then, definitely, it’s pitcher abuse. However, baseball is the biggest head game in sports and it all revolves around confidence and Leyland understands that. Sometimes he manages with his intuition instead of his laptop and I see that as a good thing.