Yesterday's 8th inning. In case you didn't see, here's how it went down. Gonzalez is brought in to start the inning. This move made sense. The game is tied 1-1 and the first two hitters due are both left-handed (Schierholtz and Ishikawa). The third hitter is Juan Uribe, who sucks, so it shouldn't matter anyway. Gonzalez goes 0-2 with a nasty breaking ball and a good fastball then Schierholtz fouls off a fastball. Then he hits a line-drive right back at Gonzalez whose funky recoil (you know, the part where he practically falls into 3rd base off the mound after throwing a pitch) leaves him defenseless against the ball. He tries to recover and it hits him in what I thought was his surgically repaired elbow. Schierholtz makes it to first safely and they then take Gonzalez out of the game. Turns out, he's probably going to be OK after missing just a few games. He won't have to go on the DL (we think). Anyway, Cadahia (now managing for the previously ejected (and justifiably so, Umpire was dead wrong on a call that turned a 1st and 2nd 1-out situation into a strike-em out, throw-em out in the 6th inning. The pitch wasn't even close) Bobby Cox), goes with Boone Logan, his only remaining left-hander (seeing as Gonzalez was done and O'Flaherty had been used for 2 batters earlier in the game). To me, this didn't make a whole lot of sense. Moylan was warming up and it's not like Travis Ishikawa is Prince Fielder. Plus the next batter was right-handed anyway. In a tie game after you've burned 3 relievers including your only long-reliever, it's usually a really dumb idea to bring in a specialist for 1 batter. But he does it. And the Giants say, that's alright. We'll trade you a base for an out. Ishikawa bunts. What I'm about to describe is one of the sillier and more frustrating plays I've seen in recent memory. The ball is bunted fair down the 1B line. Logan and Kotchman both run after it, Escobar moves to cover 2nd and Prado moves to cover 1st. Kotchman beats Logan to the ball, picks it up, and basically turns to second and fakes a throw like he's deeking our own defense. Logan hits the deck, Kotchman realizes he has no play, and throws a soft egg-toss to Prado who is covering 1st. Meanwhile, speed demon Travis Ishikawa is busting it down the line and ends up beating the pathetic throw. 1st and 2nd nobody out. When the offense is trying to give you an out, unless it's a game-decisive run for an out, TAKE THE OUT. Kotchman proceeds to walk around like he doesn't care. Cadahia comes out and makes a double-switch removing Kotchman from the game, putting Kelly at 2nd, and shifting Prado to 1st and bringing in Moylan to pitch and bat 7th. I don't get why you need to make a double-switch here. Moylan isn't a multi-inning reliever. He's not going to pitch more than 1 inning and you can just pinch-hit for him anyway. Maybe it was a punitive move for Kotchman disguised as a double switch. Maybe Cadahia had never gotten to do one before and just pounced at the opportunity. I don't know. At any rate, Moylan now on to pitch. And once again, the Giants want to give away a free out. Uribe gets a crappy bunt down on the first pitch slightly down the 3B line. Instead of taking the out, Moylan looks over at 3rd, sees he has no play, turns to first, fires off his back foot, and hits Uribe in the back of the head. Now, Uribe was inside the base-line and the batter runner is supposed to be out. But you can only count on umpires to call that correctly 50% of the time. Wouldn't have been an issue if we had just TAKEN THE OUT. Interestingly, this is the 2nd time this has happened to Kelly covering 1st. Once against the Phillies I believe. But the ball, deflected off Uribe's helmet, gets away from Kelly and Schierholtz is able to score. 2-1 Giants. Still nobody out. Runners at 1st and 2nd. That brings Matt Downs to the plate. Who strikes out. Which brings Zito to the plate (oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we only got 1 run in 7 innings off of Barry Zito. Which is pathetic. But this rant is about the 8th inning), but John Bowker pinch-hits for Zito. And he strikes out. At this point you're probably thinking, "seeing as we've got a pitcher who induces a lot of ground balls, we're probably going to get out of this inning only down a run". But no! Because Randy Winn is up next, and he has like a 2.000 lifetime batting average against the Braves. Of course, Ted Lilly could've hit the pitch Moylan threw to Winn, which Winn lines through the 3-4 hole and Ishikawa comes in to score. Rather than just throwing to 2nd to make sure the force at 2nd stays in order and having runners at 1st and 3rd, Ryan Church decides it's a good idea to try and cut down Uribe who is advancing from 1st to 3rd on the play. And rather than just accepting the fact that the runner is going to make it into 3rd, Chipper gets on his knees and tries to make a play of it. Of course, the ball gets by him, Uribe comes in to score, and Randy Winn advances to 2nd. Awesome. You know, it's a lot better to just minimize your losses than to try to turn a toad into a prince. To quote Rob Neyer quoting Jack Handy:

If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone.

Fred Lewis singled in Randy Winn to make it 5-1 one batter later, but the inning was just a joke at that point and the game was pretty much a lost cause. Lewis stole 2nd but Moylan got Kung Fu Panda to fly out to end the half-inning. Kelly Johnson lead off the bottom of the inning due to the unnecessary double-switch and singled up the middle. But McLouth capped off his 0-4 night by grounding into his 2nd double play of the game, all but ending the threat. We might've had a rally had McLouth just waived a white flag and sat down, as Prado singled after McLouth was retired, but Chipper grounded back to the pitcher to complete his pathetic 0-4 day (he doesn't have many of them, but you just expect more). The game was lost at that point. Bad fundamental baseball. Lessons of the day. 1) Chino Cadahia is a horrible pinch-manager and considering he does nothing else positive, he should be fired. 2) When the offense is trying to give you an out, take it. 3) There is something to be said for playing good fundamental baseball and not trying to make the spectacular plays. The wins matter, not the webgems.