They originally picked Flande (a lefty) for the last bullpen spot, but then signed Durbin. If they wanted another righty, why not stick with Cody Gearrin. He’s cheaper and would likely be more effective. He spent time in the bigs last year and held his own. And he gets ground balls, I doubt he’d have given up 2 bombs in his first 2 innings.

Veteran leadership can not possibly make up for performance like that.

Fredi is the worst manager in the game.

You must be sniffing Toradol or something.

I think there is an interesting social phenomenon at work in baseball. There are decades of information that any manager can use to devise strategies and to understand which strategies are more likely to have positive outcomes and to contribute to winning or losing ball games. Indeed, nearly all teams employ a team of analytical experts the manager could use to understand the consequences of any strategy he would like to employ.

Instead of using the available information to actually answer questions, “baseball men” seem to prefer to remain in the dark so that opinion can rule the day. So…instead of using real information, they just ask each other what they think and weight opinion based on the baseballiness of the “opiner” rather than the information on which the opinion is based.

A lot of decisions in life are made based on this social mechanism, but in cases where actual data exists, falling back on this mechanism is stupid.