Good stuff from Jayson Stark at ESPN.com:
Charlie Manuel isn’t the first manager in postseason history to gong his starting pitcher in the fourth inning. He isn’t the first manager to wave for a reliever who found himself muttering later about that “one bad pitch” he tossed up there. But he was the first manager in the history of his franchise to yank his starting pitcher in the fourth inning of a postseason game even though he had the lead. And when a manager puts himself that far out there on a limb that precarious, here are the rules of October:
He’d better be right.
Phil Sheridan disagreed. Good luck on this one, Phil. When 46,000 people boo because they see a manager make a bad decision and then get completely validated by the results, you can be damn sure that the manager is going to hear about it. Forever. Charlie has made plenty of bonehead moves, but this will be the one that he’ll be forever defined by. Says Stark:
20 years from now, the manager shouldn’t be shocked if some total stranger approaches him in a restaurant and asks: “Why the heck did you take Kendrick out?”