Thanks for the memories, and what should we think about Mike Scioscia?

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Well, thanks to the L.A. Times for letting me play around here for the Angels’ too-brief run in the playoffs. I hope those (hopefully few) of you who also care about presidential politics tune in to the LAT’s Opinion section this week for my dust-up with Kareem Clayton about Election 2008. And, of course, come by Reason any old time and say hello.

A final thought about managing in the playoffs. Bobby Cox, the great Braves manager, has been criticized over the years for managing the exact same way in the playoffs as he does in the regular season, contributing (the theory goes) to those 1990s teams’ winning only one World Series. You’ll hear some similar talk about Mike Scioscia. It is, at best, only about one-quarter true.

The two important ways Scioscia manages the same are that his team steadfastly follows the cliche of playing one game at a time -- which, I believe, contributed to the furious battling we’ve seen since about the bottom of the fifth in Game 2 -- and, his team remains aggressive on offense despite playing against the inevitably much-better defenses that make it to the playoffs. We certainly saw that tonight with a play-call that will be talked about for years to come: The failed squeeze by Erick Aybar on a 2-0 count with one out in the ninth.

I watched the game with a Bostonian coworker, and I was all, ‘Scioscia’s totally gonna squeeze here.’ He was all, ‘No way, that’d be wicked retarded’ (they really talk like that). After all, Scioscia loves making that call with one out, and Aybar is the second-best bunter on the team (behind Reggie Willits, who was at third base). Manny Delcarmen threw a tough pitch to bunt, Aybar missed it, and the Angels lost. Coupled with Vladimir Guererro’s Game 1 blunder, getting thrown out by 10 feet at third base, and even Torii Hunter’s awful attempt at stretching a single into a double last night, one could make a plausible argument that Scioscia failed to recognize that the stuff that works against the Seattle Mariners doesn’t quite cut it against the great defenders of the World Series champs.

There are a couple of flaws with this analysis. One, Guerrero’s blunder in Game 1 was despite his coaches, not because of them; and Hunter, too, was running on his own in Game 3. Two, Aybar should have made contact on that pitch. It was a failure to execute more than a failure of strategy, unless you are just hostile to the whole concept of one-run plays to begin with.

More importantly for the whole Bobby Cox question, Scioscia actually manages quite differently in the playoffs, whether it’s allowing Scot Shields to pitch longer in Game 3 than he had all season, bringing in Frankie Rodriguez in the eighth inning, putting inexperienced rookie Kevin Jepsen on the postseason roster instead of veteran Justin Speier, or making any number of wacky decisions in previous playoff runs (not least of which was deciding to start then-rookie John Lackey in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series instead of proven veteran Ramon Ortiz). From a game-strategy viewpoint, I think Scioscia outmanaged Terry Francona this series by a country mile.

But there’s another element of leadership that the Angels brass should consider after this debacle against a great but hobbled Red Sox team. Any manager of men is tasked with preparing them individually to succeed. I don’t know what exactly went down, but Howie Kendrick was nowhere near where he needed to be mentally this past week, and that alone was probably enough to cost the Angels the series. There was evident friction within the clubhouse, with team leader Lackey calling out his teammates and barking at bad defensive plays. I lost count of botched outfield fly balls at about six. A team that prides itself on ‘playing the game right’ played the game pretty wrong all series, yet still pitched and hit and battled enough to barely stay in contention.

Some of that, ultimately, must fall on Mike Scioscia’s shoulders. I still think he’s among the best managers in baseball, and certainly the best one ever to put on an Angels uniform (and I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool Gene Mauch fan), but it was his job to prepare his players to succeed and on that count he failed. It will be interesting to see how this embarrassing breakdown will reverberate in what will probably be a much different-looking clubhouse next year.

Thanks, all, and go Rays!

--Matt Welch

Matt Welch is the editor of Reason.