I Dunno Daaaaaaavey

I'll say it - I love the World Baseball Classic. I wanted the good ol' US of A to roll through every team we faced and take home the title. Seeing as baseball was eliminated from the Olympics - this is essentially like winning the Gold and would instill a massive amount of American Pride... if it wasn't for Davey Johnson... and American Pride. This was a competition, just about every other team looked at the WBC as an opportunity to play baseball proudly wearing their country's name across their chest, that is every team but the US who for some apparent reason treated this as a glorified Spring Training. I'm really not blaming all of the players who gave what they could, I'm blaming Davey Johnson. If people thought Ned Yost did an awful job of in game management - I'll let them watch the DVR'd USA games at my house and show you what an abysmal manager looks like.
Let's look at the examples, let's start with the embarrassing 11-1 loss to Puerto Rico. Many people will put this on Jake Peavy - and he was awful - he struggled to find the strike zone for his entire outing, and when Davey Johnson was asked why he left his starter out there to rot his response was, 'I wanted him to reach his 52.' His 52? I thought we were going to treat this as a tournament... not a Spring Training start against the other team's AAA guys. This is team Puerto Rico with 22 Major Leagers, guess what happens when you let a guy 'reach his 52', he gets shelled and his confidence gets shaken. Peavy was not the same the rest of the Classic and everyone started doubting Team USA.
Then it comes to Johnson's insistence to play Derek Jeter no matter what the situation. Now I understand that he's the Captain of the team, and plays on 'America's Team', but why when you have Jimmy Rollins on the bench in a close game do you not make a defensive substitution. Does anyone really think that Jeter is a better Shortstop than Rollins? No, because you're basically admitting that you're either a Yankee's fan or rode the short bus to school.
But let's get to last nights Mud Stomping at the hands of Team Japan. Was Japan a better team than us? On pitching alone, Yes. Could we have won that game? Probably. I'll be honest too, the defense of the team and specifically the Big Donkey didn't help the cause but the management of this game was just atrocious. I'm talking mostly about Roy Oswalt and managing the later innings. Right as Oswalt started to falter I looked at my buddy and said, 'are we planning on taking him out soon, or just let him get pounded until they reach 6 runs?' Davey Johnson did just that. Every pitch Oswalt put over the plate was driven into a gap and as Adam Dunn gingerly jogged to the ball, run after run crossed the plate. But this is a resilient US team, just like in the last elimination game against Puerto Rico we started to come back. Mark DeRosa doubles to left scoring Braun and McCann 6-4 Japan. Then DeRosa gets to third on an error with Curtis Granderson coming up to bat. This is the perfect situation for the Tigers' Outfielder, right-handed pitcher and a left-handed batter with some pop with gale force winds out to right. But what's this? Someone's walking to the plate... and they're not black and skinny? Naturally in that situation you pinch hit Evan Longoria for Granderson. I mean it makes complete sense - take the lefty out for righty on righty and let's put in a guy who hasn't taken a hack in all of the WBC. Surprising no one but Davey Johnson Longoria strikes out to end the US threat and then the wheels just fell off from there, Jeter has an error and Dunn just plain stopped playing defense.
Team USA showed some real signs of brilliance in the WBC, and in the hands of a competant manager really could of made some noise. You wonder why when they scanned the ball parks there were more Japanese, Venezualan, or Puerto Rican fans in the stands than US? Maybe it's time we had a manager who took the World Baseball Classic seriously instead of just hoping that a guy 'reaches his 52.'