DECISIONS, DECISIONS : While Their Teams Struggle, These Two Managers Endure : GENE MAUCH : Brilliance Means Little Without Hitting and Pitching

The quintessential Gene Mauch moment of 1987 occurred May 12 in Detroit, during the third inning against the Tigers, after a pitch in the dirt.

Tiger catcher Mike Heath retrieved that loose ball with a scoop of his mask, a seemingly harmless move that would have gone unnoticed had Mauch maybe skipped a line or two when he memorized the rule book about 35 years ago.

But Mauch remembered, and out of the dugout he came, walking toward home plate to remind umpire Durwood Merrill of an obscurity known as Rule 7.05, Paragraph D--which calls for an automatic two-base error whenever a player stops a ball with a piece of equipment other than his glove, be it a cap, a resin bag or a catcher’s mask. Oh yeah, said Merrill, that Rule 7.05, Paragraph D. Must have slipped my mind.

The next thing the Tigers knew, Merrill was ordering Angel baserunners Mark McLemore and Brian Downing to advance 180 feet. Downing moved from first base to third, McLemore scored from second, and Mauch pulled into the RBI lead for major league managers in 1987.

Sparky Anderson, the Detroit manager, shook his head in amazement and admiration.

“No one knows the rules better than Gene Mauch,” Anderson said. “He could teach a seminar on it.”

A great moment in baseball managing?

Not if you’re interested in results.

Final score from Detroit that night: Tigers 15, Angels 2.

If you’re looking for a tag-line on Gene Mauch’s fifth season with the Angels, this is it. Title it: “Genius Wasted.” And subtitle it: “You Can Lead a Horse to Water but Only if You Have the Horses.”

In the month of Mauchian strategy charted and presented below--July 16-Aug. 15--as with much of the rest of the season, the manager was rendered ineffective nearly half the time by games that got out hand early and stayed that way. In this 28-game sampling, for instance, 13 games were decided by five runs or more. Included were Angel defeats of 12-2, 11-3, 15-4, 14-0 and 13-3, along with Angel victories of 12-6, 9-2, 12-3 and 8-2.

In such games, all a manager can do is cross his legs and watch, maybe making a pitching change. Mauch, the ultimate hands-on manager, doesn’t enjoy sitting on those hands. He’s happiest when he’s thrust into a 3-2 late-inning struggle with a bench-load of pinch-hitters at his disposal and a fully stocked bullpen.

During the first month of the second half of the season, Mauch was involved in just seven one-run games. His record was 4-3. He lost two of those in extra innings and the third on a perverse twist--a squeeze bunt, a taste of his own Little Ball medicine.

Mauch spent most of the month searching for ways to compensate for a starting pitching staff that produced just one complete game and worked five innings or fewer 13 times. Hitting is one way to compensate, but by mid-August, the Angels were batting .250 as a team--worst in the major leagues.

So Mauch scraped together a 13-15 record during that span mainly by milking his bullpen. He went to DeWayne Buice and Greg Minton often and early, several times requiring individual relief stints of four innings. “I really make them work for those saves,” Mauch said at one point.

Overall, the bullpen responded almost flawlessly, winning five games, saving seven and holding late-inning leads three other times.

Other sub-plots that demanded Mauch’s attention: What to do with Gary Pettis, he of the golden glove and tissue bat; how to get Bill Buckner and Brian Downing into the lineup at the same time; and, how to juggle his middle infielders once Gus Polidor surprisingly threw his bat into the ring.

A month in the life of Gene Mauch:

LITTLE BALL

There was very little Little Ball exhibited between July 16 and Aug. 15. Bunting and running would seem to fit this team, what with its slap-hitting attack and young speed. But two obstacles ran that strategy into the ground.

One revolved around the separated shoulder of Dick Schofield and the failing bats of Pettis and McLemore. With Schofield on the disabled list and Pettis and McLemore batting .230 or less, the Angels’ stolen base potential was squelched. In 28 games, the Angels stole just 10 bases.

Second, with the pounding received by Angel starting pitching, Mauch frequently found himself playing from behind. Sacrifice bunts aren’t considered keen strategy when your team is trailing in the fifth, 8-2.

Mauch had his players sacrifice 10 times. Six times, the ploy led to Angel runs.

Some notable instances:

--July 19: Down, 5-4, in the eighth inning, Mauch had Bob Boone sacrifice, moving runners to second and third with one out. Jack Howell was then walked intentionally to set up the double play. Ruppert Jones followed with a bases-clearing pinch-double and the Angels won, 8-5.

--July 22: Ahead, 5-4, in the top of the ninth, Mauch had White sacrifice with one out. That moved Pettis to second base, from where he scored on a single by Downing. The Angels needed that run, since the bullpen had to hold off the Boston Red Sox for a 6-5 victory.

--Aug. 1: The Angels and Mariners were tied, 2-2, when Doug DeCinces opened the sixth with a single. McLemore bunted him to second, and DeCinces scored on a single by Polidor. The Angels eventually won by a run, 4-3.

Then, there were the times Little Ball backfired, or was ignored when the situation seemed to call for it:

--July 24: Trailing Detroit in the top of the seventh, 3-0, the Angels rallied to tie as their first four hitters reached base. Then, Detroit changed pitchers and Mauch had Boone bunt with Jones on first. Finally, the Tigers had the first out of the inning, and Jones was stranded when Polidor and McLemore made outs. The Angels eventually lost, 6-3.

--July 25: Boone opened the seventh inning against the Tigers with a home run, pulling the Angels to within 4-3. Polidor followed with a single, but Mauch chose not to sacrifice, which would have put the tying run in scoring position with one out. Instead, Pettis, batting .215, and McLemore, .223, swung away, with predictable results. Polidor was stranded and the Angels lost in extra innings, 5-4.

--Aug. 3: Before Joe Niekro was felled by emery board and sandpaper, the Minnesota Twins pitcher was doing a pretty fair job of sabotaging himself. He walked three Angels in the first inning, but Mauch called for a sacrifice after Downing, the leadoff hitter, had reached base. A first-inning sacrifice? The Angels wound up leaving the bases loaded en route to an 11-3 defeat.

The lowest blow was struck Little Ball on the afternoon of Aug. 2, when the Seattle Mariners’ Dick Williams beat Mauch, 5-4, with, of all things, a squeeze bunt.

The Angels and the Mariners were tied, 4-4, in the top of the ninth with Seattle’s Dave Valle on third base and Domingo Ramos on second with one out. John Moses was not walked to set up the double play, nor was he thrown a pitch-out, which would have foiled any squeeze intentions. Minton threw a strike, and Moses laid down a perfect bunt, scoring Valle.

Afterward, Mauch said he had figured the bunt was coming but was more concerned with what to do with the Mariners’ RBI leader, Alvin Davis, two batters away.

“I’ve been known to pitch out three times in a row in that situation,” Mauch said. “But if I walk (Moses) and we don’t get the double play, then there’s Alvin Davis. I don’t want that.”

Williams was glad he caught Mauch looking ahead.

“If they pitch out there, we’re screwed,” Williams said. “But they didn’t . . . and we won.”

PINCH-HITTING

This was the month in which the Angels tied a big league record with three pinch-hits in one inning Aug. 2. This was the month in which Mauch enjoyed a .360 success rate--9 hits in 25 at-bats--from his pinch-hitters.

But this was also the month of Gary Pettis’ fall from the majors. And therein lies a link worth noting.

As Mauch proved with Pettis, patience is not necessarily a virtue. During this month, Pettis batted .100--5 for 50--with 22 strikeouts, his average dropping from .221 at the All-Star break to .204. Yet Mauch stayed with him, starting him 12 times and allowing him numerous late-inning at-bats with the game on the line.

Pettis wound up with a plane ticket to Edmonton but not because of a lack of opportunity.

On July 25 and Aug. 2, the Angels lost one-run games in similar fashion. In each game, Mauch allowed Pettis to bat twice after the seventh inning with runners on base. In each game, Pettis struck out twice.

--July 25: With a fly out in the seventh inning and strikeouts in the 9th and 10th, Pettis stranded a total of five runners. Mauch pinch-hit for both McLemore and Polidor in the top of the ninth, which left him without an experienced middle infielder, but kept Pettis in the lineup. When Pettis struck out with the bases loaded in the 10th, Mauch still had Butch Wynegar on his bench.

--Aug. 2: Mauch got pinch-hits from Jack Howell, Buckner and Darrell Miller in the eighth inning--tying a big league record. But he also used Mark Ryal as a pinch-runner for Buckner and had Jones announced as a pinch-hitter for Polidor, only to call him back when Seattle changed pitchers and send up Miller instead. Thus, Mauch had run out of pinch-hitters by the time Pettis came to bat with two runners on base and one out.

Pettis followed with a strikeout. McLemore then walked to load the bases, but Downing ended the threat with a broken-bat infield fly.

The Angels lost on Moses’ squeeze in the next inning.

Mauch also ran out of pinch-hitters against Milwaukee July 16, with the Brewers leading, 5-4, in the top of the eighth.

Boone led off with a walk, and Mauch had Jones run for him. Polidor was due up next, but Mauch batted for him with Ryal. On a 1-and-0 count, Milwaukee changed pitchers, bringing in left-hander Dan Plesac for right-hander Mark Clear, so Mauch called Ryal back and replaced him with Wynegar. Wynegar then sacrificed.

Thus, to get down one sacrifice bunt, Mauch used three hitters--Polidor, Ryal and Wynegar. That left no one to bat for Pettis, who struck out.

The Angels failed to score in the inning and went on to lose, 6-4.

Mauch had better results from his pinch-hitters later in that series.

On July 18, George Hendrick delivered a three-run pinch-homer that sparked a comeback 16-6 victory. And on July 19, Jones’ three-run pinch-double in the eighth gave the Angels an 8-5 win.

Mauch also got game-tying singles from pinch-hitters Buckner in the eighth inning Aug. 9 and Miller in the ninth inning Aug. 14. Miller was batting for Pettis, who had gone 0 for 4.

The Angels eventually lost that game, 7-6, in 12 innings when Mauch’s final pinch-hitter, Howell, failed to deliver. It marked Pettis’ last start before his demotion to Edmonton last Tuesday.

MAN OF MANY LINEUPS

Mauch, as any baseball manager, can only play the cards he is dealt. He simply prefers to shuffle them more than his counterparts.

In 28 games, Mauch used 26 different lineups. He used four leadoff batters, Downing, Pettis, Jones and McLemore; and six clean-up hitters, Wally Joyner, Hendrick, Howell, Downing, Buckner and DeCinces. Devon White batted second, third, fifth, and sixth.

Interestingly, Mauch went 1-3 with the two lineups he used more than once, the only win a 6-5 decision July 22.

During the month in question, Mauch had to cope with Joyner’s sore ribs, which necessitated periodic rest; Schofield’s separated shoulder, which sidelined him until Aug. 13; Pettis’ slump, and the July 28 acquisition of Buckner, which prompted Mauch to restructure his outfield to make room in the lineup for the designated hitter-first baseman.

To get Joyner, Downing and Buckner into the same lineup, Mauch had to move Downing from designated hitter to left field, a position Downing loathes but agreed to play. In his fourth start as a left fielder, Aug. 6, Downing strained his shoulder throwing out a runner at home plate, a condition that still persists.

Buckner was the domino that moved Downing from designated hitter to left field and Howell from left field to right, a position he had played just once before 1987. Howell has 16 home runs, thus making him a valuable cog in the Angels’ power-thin lineup, but to keep him in the batting order, Mauch has had to play Howell at third base, left field, right field and second base. Howell has played as many as three positions in one game.

In the same 28-game span, DeCinces appeared at both third base and shortstop. Miller played catcher, left field, right field and third base. White took to shuttling between center field and right field almost every game.

Mauch plays the percentages heavily, often lifting starters en masse when the opposing manager changes pitchers.

The Angels’ 12-6 win over Milwaukee July 18 was a typical example. With his lineup loaded with left-handed hitters, Mauch began re-loading when Brewer Manager Tom Trebelhorn changed pitchers.

In came the left-handed Plesac--and in came Angel right-handed hitters DeCinces for Howell, Miller for Ryal, and Hendrick for Jones. DeCinces and Miller went a combined 0 for 3, but Hendrick hit a game-winning three-run homer.

PITCHING

That Mauch would have to scramble for runs in 1987 comes as no surprise. Offensively, this was to be a rebuilding year. Mauch opened the season with a regular lineup consisting of two rookies, White and McLemore; two second-year players, Joyner and Howell, and three defensive specialists, Schofield, Pettis and Boone.

Mauch expected to get by with starting pitching. “Our foundation,” he called the Angels’ five-man rotation during spring training.

In the first month after the All-Star break, that foundation fairly crumbled.

Until Mike Witt pitched a complete game July 28 in Oakland, Mauch went 11 games without getting more than 6 innings from any of his starters. Throughout the entire 28-game span, Angel starters pitched four innings or fewer eight times while working beyond the seventh inning just four times.

That put a heavy burden on the Angel bullpen and removed a strategic burden from Mauch.

“The home run is a thought remover,” Mauch took to saying as his starters were buried in a barrage of July home runs. “I can’t manage against a home run.”

Those games that could be salvaged, Mauch turned over to his bullpen. Angel relievers won five, saved seven and lost four.

Mauch’s bullpen maneuvering was most effective when an injury befell a starting pitcher.

On July 20, Angel starter Willie Fraser was hit on his pitching hand by Wade Boggs’ line drive and was forced from the game after 3 innings. Mauch then went to Gary Lucas, who pitched two innings and handed a 2-2 tie to Minton in the bottom of the sixth.

Minton closed out the sixth and pitched a scoreless seventh before Mauch brought on Buice. Buice struck out three Red Sox over the final two innings, and the Angels emerged with a 3-2 victory.

Then, on July 31, Jerry Reuss threw only two pitches in the first inning before a pulled calf muscle prompted his departure. Mauch brought on the tag-team of Jack Lazorko, who worked 4 innings, and Minton, who worked the last 3. They held Seattle to two runs and the Angels won, 8-2.

Mauch saved one of his finest moves for last. A defensive wrinkle helped preserve the Angels’ final victory of the four-week period, a 5-1 decision over Minnesota Aug. 13.

With Twins on first and second, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Mauch called for the Hrbek shift. With Kent Hrbek, a left-handed pull hitter at the plate, Mauch positioned shortstop Polidor behind second base and second baseman McLemore in shallow right field, closer to first base than second.

Hrbek stroked a forkball past Buice through the right side of the infield--a sure single against a normal defensive alignment. But Mauch had McLemore in precisely the right spot. Hrbek’s sharp grounder bounced right into McLemore’s glove, and McLemore threw to first for the final out.

“We don’t go to that except when Buice is pitching,” Mauch said. “It figures that Buice is going to throw Hrbek forkballs, and Hrbek is going to get his bat on the ball. Most of the time, Hrbek is going to hit a forkball to the right side.”

Just a little slice of strategy, but in this case, an effective and valuable one.

Little things count, Mauch will tell you. But Little Ball is rendered meaningless in 11-3 ballgames. When your starting pitchers are getting hammered, a manager can do little more than stand aside and bring in fresh pitchers.