Continuing on the Tracy thoughts

OK, now that I'm off the pitching soapbox, this column about how Tracy wants to be like the Cardinals because of their intangibles is downright awful, which means it's time for me to play devil's advocate with myself. The last column (pitching is the universal proven winner, if Tracy can develop the pitching we can win) will be my pro-Tracy column. This one will be anti-Tracy.

They won last year because of their Murderer's Row and they won this year because they added Mark Mulder, Chris Carpenter had an amazing year, and they could still pencil that Pujols guy into the middle of the lineup. Albert Pujols is not the scariest hitter in the NL and maybe all of the league because he "hits the ball through the hole on a hit-and-run and it's first and third and nobody out." He's the scariest hitter in the NL because he had an OPS of 1.039 and more specifically a SLG of .609. There's nothing more maddening than an ill-timed hit and run or steal attempt, something we saw all to much of with McClendon. Why bunt or hit and run with the two hitter after a leadoff hit when Jason Bay can stick a ball in the gap and score a runner from first anyways? I never understood that thinking with McClendon and I won't understand it if that's how Tracy chooses to manage. Yes, small ball appears to work when Freddy Sanchez singles, Jack Wilson bunts him over, and Jason Bay singles him in. And no, I'm not hoping for a team where two people walk and Jason Bay hits a three-run homer. I just don't understand how you can not see that two runners on for Jason Bay is way better than one runner on, no matter where those runners are on the basepaths. You can read last week's Stats Geek again, the biggest problem faced by our offense was that Andruw Jones got up with 503 runners on base this year while Jason Bay only saw 462. We don't need more runners in scoring position, just more runners period. If we get more guys on base, we get more guys in scoring position. That's just how things work. The pitching will be good next year so the offense doesn't need to be great (which was the idea behind that last post). The offense only needs to be adequate. We should have the tools for an adequate offense next year, but that necessitates the use of common sense, which I'm not so sure will be exercised after reading this article.

UPDATE (5:17 PM)- As is pointed out to me in the comments, I need to make my point on hit and runs a bit clearer. A hit and run, as Tracy points out, can be a great play, catching the defense off guard and resulting in first and third, usually. If its overused, as it seemed to be at times with Lloyd managing, the pitcher/defense can anticipate it and turn it into most likely a caught stealing. My point is that the benefit of a hit and run isn't so inherently great (since there is risk involved to start with) that I'd prefer not to hit and run at all rather than to do it too much, as would appear to be Tracy's preference.