Rockies 4, Giants 3: The small hardy group that calls itself the Edgar Renteria Fan Club is having a crisis of the soul tonight, while the rest of us sadly shake our heads or fists. His at-bat in the bottom of the 9th -- two runs in, no outs, men on second and third representing the tying runs, a remarkable comeback right there on a platter -- was perhaps the knife in the back of the Giants' season. Renteria ran the count to 2-1 then swung at a high, tight slider and popped up. Randy Winn then grounded out to score a run, but Nate Schierholtz struck out to end the game and strand the tying run on third.
Blaming one player for a loss let alone the balance of a season is petty, and usually, as it is here, just plain wrong. The Giants had earlier opportunities to score and didn't. Matt Cain made some very bad pitches. But fairly or not, dude's in for some serious scapegoating.
I'm sure folks will also be asking why Renteria was allowed to hit at all in the ninth. He looked bad his first two at-bats, then hit a line drive to third base his next at-bat. When he came up in the ninth, Winn, Ishikawa, Bowker, Guzman, Frandsen, Rohlinger and of course Posey were on the bench. In hindsight it's easy to criticize. But what the Giants needed, at minimum, was a ground ball to the right side to score one and move the tying run to third with one out. Even a diminished Renteria seemed a good candidate for that.
But the left-handed Ishikawa, who flat-out rakes at home, was an acceptable choice too. It's possible the Rockies had a lefty greased up and ready in the bullpen, I can't remember, but that wouldn't have deterred me. Travis has fared decently against lefties this year in limited at-bats.
Oddly enough, after Renteria's pop-up Bochy sent up Winn to pinch-hit for Rowand. And oddly, Jim Tracy didn't send in a lefty to force Winn to hit right-handed (.376 OPS vs. .768 left-handed). Perhaps he didn't want Bochy to counter with Guzman or, uh, Rohlinger. Perhaps he knew Boch was saving Buster Posey for just...that....very....situation. Curses, foiled again!
As I mentioned a few posts back, every manager makes dozens of questionable in-game decisions over 162 games. The Renteria Decision was definitely questionable, but without, say, a Jason Giambi or Seth Smith or even a Schierholtz or Lewis on the bench as the obvious substitute, it wasn't the biggest no-brainer of all time. So instead of exiling Bochy to Skull Island I'll end with another question: Do you think any manager in major-league baseball would have pinch-hit for Edgar Renteria in that spot with any of the Giants' available choices?
