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Brad Ausmus Can't Figure Out Who He Wants To Be, Falling Dangerously In The Middle

By Will Burchfield
Twitter: Burchie_kid
Some baseball managers are guided by intuition. Others are steered by statistics. The latter class has come to replace the former, but that doesn't mean there's not a place in the game for both. The danger is falling somewhere in the middle.

Enter Brad Ausmus.

Is he a numbers-driven skipper? It sure seemed like it on Tuesday night, when he let James McCann and Jose Iglesias hit in the ninth inning based on pitcher Brandon Kintzler's reverse splits.

"I thought about [pinch-hitting], but if you look at Kinztler's numbers, righties actually him a lot better than lefties," Ausmus explained.

And yet the manager went with his gut on Wednesday afternoon, when, in the exact same situation – Kintzler on the mound, the tying run at the plate, one out in the ninth and McCann due up – he called on the lefty-hitting Saltalamacchia to pinch hit.

"I mean it's one at-bat, but Kintzler had struck Mac out the night before. I just said we'll throw the numbers to the wind and see if Salty gets a hold of one," said Ausmus.

Neither move worked. On Tuesday night, McCann went down swinging. The following afternoon, Saltalamacchia went down looking. But that's not what matters. Decisions can't be graded in hindsight.

They are to be judged on their rationale, on the thought process that informs them.

In theory, Ausmus' decision to let McCann face Kintzler made sense. Righties are hitting more than 100 points higher against Kintzler than lefties, a gap that transcends small sample sizes and the randomness of the game. Though you could argue about McCann's comparative struggles against right-handed pitchers, Ausmus made the move with the most promising statistical outlook.

But then, placed in the same situation less than 24 hours later, he eschewed the numbers and followed a hunch.

That Saltalamacchia struck out was fitting. And it served Ausmus right.

Managing a baseball team is about adopting a philosophy and sticking to it. If you trust your instincts, don't betray them. If you prefer the numbers, don't ignore them. A certain measure of compromise is to be expected, of course, but vacillating between the two will provoke up-and-down results.

There is no team in baseball this season that has been more up and down than the Tigers.

When making decisions based on statistics, it is especially important to stay true to the process. Averages are formed over time and suggest what will happen over many iterations of the same event. You cannot use them sporadically and expect positive results. And thus it makes no sense to play the odds one night and "throw them to the wind" the next.

For what it's worth, Ausmus sounded an awful lot like an old-school manager when discussing his use of Francisco Rodriguez after Wednesday's game. He brought in K-Rod for the ninth inning of a tie game, but admitted he likely wouldn't have done so on the road lest a save situation arise.

"Closing games is different. I don't care what anyone says, I don't care what sabermetricians say. Closing games is different," he declared. "All 27 outs are not created equal and the last three are much tougher to get than any other three."

That's Ausmus' opinion, the statistics be damned. It reflects a manager who believes in the conventional truths of the game, who feels there is more to baseball than the numbers can express. It's a stance that can yield success – look no further than the analytics-resistant Mike Scioscia for proof – but not if it's diluted by antithetical thinking.

Games are not won, and seasons certainly are not won, by managing in the middle. That's right where Ausmus seems to be, which can at least partly explain the Tigers' inconsistent play.

The skipper is wavering, and the team is following his lead.

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