When Cardinals manager Mike Matheny chose his own ace Adam Wainwright to start the 2014 All-Star Game over Dodgers ace and defending Cy Young award winner Clayton Kershaw, everybody knew it was the wrong decision, perhaps even Matheny himself. But that didn’t prevent the third-year Cardinals manager from starting his own guy saying that Wainwright “deserved it” – this in spite of Kershaw’s superior numbers across the board. Wainwright, of course, gave up three runs in his one inning of work after admitting that he had “piped” a couple of pitches to retiring future Hall of Famer Derek Jeter which Jeter, of course, did not miss. (Kershaw relieved Waino and pitched a perfect second inning with a strikeout).

The eventual 5-3 All-Star Game loss gave home field advantage to the American League for the 2014 World Series – a World Series that Matheny successfully managed his team out of on Thursday night in San Francisco with his second and far worse bad decision of the season.

With the game tied 3-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning of Game-5 of the NLCS and his team down three games to one, and for reasons that only he knows, Matheny opted to bring in starting pitcher Michael Wacha to pitch the ninth – this in spite of the fact that Wacha last pitched on September 26, exactly 20 days ago. In fact, Wacha wasn’t even on the Cardinals NLDS roster against the Dodgers.

Oops.
(Photo courtesy of foxsports.com)

But just as he did for the All-Star Game, Matheny is once again trying to defend a decision that is absolutely indefensible – bringing in a starting pitcher who hasn’t worked in three weeks to pitch the ninth inning of a tied ‘win-or-go-home’ ballgame while one of the game’s best closers, Trevor Rosenthal, sat in the bullpen.

“We can’t bring [Rosenthal] in, in a tie-game situation. We’re on the road,” said Matheny after the game which the Giants won after Wacha allowed a leadoff single to Pablo Sandoval, a one-out walk to Brandon Belt and a walk-off three-run home run to Travis Ishikawa.

Poof. Season over. Go home and watch the World Series on television.

Matheny violated one of baseball’s oldest and most golden of Golden Rules – “Play for a win on the road and a tie at home.”

“That’s on me,” said Matheny about his bonehead NLCS-costing decision.

Ya think? Yes, Mike, that’s definitely on you – and you will have a very long cold off-season to think about it.

But there is a silver lining to all of this. Back on July 15 when Matheny made his first bad decision, it gave home-field advantage to the smoking hot Kansas City Royals for the upcoming World Series – and for Dodger fans (and other non-Giants fans), this is a very good thing.

Go Royals!