Over-manager Dave Roberts should tone down the over-managing

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has been over-managing all postseason, and he has continued the trend into the World Series.

Despite leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to back-to-back World Series appearances, manager Dave Roberts has garnered quite a reputation for “over-managing” in the postseason. In fact, it’s been a pretty common theme in general during the 2018 playoffs, but Roberts has essentially been the king of over-managing.

It was seen plenty during the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers, when Roberts would make unnecessary pitching changes or unnecessary substitutions. It has continued into the World Series against the Boston Red Sox as Roberts made a few baffling decisions in Game 1.

First off, Roberts removed his ace Clayton Kershaw from the game in the fifth inning. He came back out initially, but after allowing the first two hitters to reach base, Roberts made the decision to go to the bullpen. Kershaw’s pitch count was only at a mere 79.

To be fair, Kershaw was far from his normal dominant self, once again living up to his reputation of wearing down in the postseason. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean he was getting lit up or anything like that. He gave up three runs initially, and then another two were charged to him after he left the game. But to that point, Kershaw was keeping the Dodgers in the game and he is more than capable of pitching out of danger.

Roberts has to trust his best pitcher to be able to work out of jams, especially when it’s only the fifth inning and he has only thrown 79 pitches to that point.

And that wasn’t even the worst pitching change Roberts made in the game. In the seventh inning, with Los Angeles trailing 5-4 and Andrew Benintendi on second base, hard-throwing righty Pedro Baez entered the game and proceeded to whiff Mitch Moreland, intentionally walk J.D. Martinez, and then whiff Xander Bogaerts as well.

Even though Baez was pretty much unhittable right then and there, with left-handed hitting Rafael Devers on deck, Roberts made the boneheaded decision to replace Baez on the mound with lefty Alex Wood.

Now, Red Sox manager Alex Cora made an over-managing decision here as well, as he then decided pinch-hit righty Eduardo Nunez for Devers against Wood. Nine times out of 10, you would rather have Devers at the plate than Nunez, regardless if he is facing a righty or a lefty pitcher.

But Cora questionably made this decision, and it actually paid off as Nunez drilled a 1-0 pitch from Wood deep to left field and it just barely cleared the Green Monster for a three-run homer to make it an 8-4 game. In a battle of over-managing, Cora came out the winner and Roberts came out the very heavy loser.

I’m not a fortune teller or anything, but if Roberts had stuck with Baez on the mound, I’m about 95 percent sure he would’ve retired Devers with relative ease.

I understand that when you are managing a team in the World Series, you can never be too careful. But sometimes, you can’t overthink every little detail of the game. Sometimes, you just have to let your players go out there and play baseball, and trust that they will get the job done.

Roberts should think about this the next time he’s feeling the urge to take one of his pitchers out of the game a little too soon.