Because there is no way to prove what impact the decisions have on the overall games with a certainty it makes it okay to make poor decisions? That's simply being obtuse. Putting your worst reliever in the game in high leverage situations is just plain poor managing. There is a middle ground between overusing our best relievers like we did last year and using every pitcher in the pen in key spots like Fredi is doing this year.

Bobby did have many of the same bullpen issues Fredi does, but Bobby made up for it by being an excellent manager in other ways. Fredi hasn't shown anything that will make up for his weaknesses yet (outside of the willingness to make lineup changes Smartass mentioned).

While you are very much right that the players bear the brunt of the blame for our complete collapse last year, Fredi's mismanagement of the bullpen and the resulting fatigue definitely played a large role as well. Usually I don't think you can point to a manager costing or winning games for a club too often, but Frdi definitely cost us 3-4 games last year due to poor decisions.

This year I don't think he's cost us any games, though he did make decisions that kept us from getting back into games. Pitching Durbin against the Mets in the second game of the year in a 3-2 ball game in the 7th inning was beyond bizarre, and made a 1 run game into a 2 run game. You can small ball 1 run fairly easily, 2 runs is more difficult. The same happened when he pitched Hernandez and Durbin in our first Astros game, a close game became a blowout. It's impossible to say what would happen if he wasn't pitching our two worst pitchers more than our best during the first 3-4 games, but it's odd managing to say the least.

In fairness Fredi stopped doing that for the most part after that until just recently, when he's been throwing Durbin back in there in tight spots/close games. I personally don't expect any manager to be close to perfect, but I do want their strengths to outweigh their weaknesses. So far Fredi's weaknesses by far outweigh any minor strengths he's shown.

This post was edited on 5/5/12 at 5:47 pm