Former Chicago Cubs player Jake Arrieta criticized his old manager, Joe Madon, for his antics on Friday night.
At the bottom of the fourth inning, which was already in the running, Angels manager Joe Maddon deliberately chose to walk Corey Seager with bases loaded. Basically, he got the Barry Bonds treatment.
Seager is a formidable hitter, don’t get me wrong. But Madon raised some eyebrows by withdrawing this tactic so early in the game. With that said, LA would come back and win, so in the end it worked. Madon himself explained the post-match game:
I thought that by walking with Siger, he would avoid the big hit, “Madon reporters. “And just teasing the group, quite frankly. It’s not something you normally do. I thought going out there and doing something like that, the team might respond to something like that.”
Joe Madon and Jake Arita disagree over the idea of intentional walking
Walking with Seager and avoiding a heavy blow from the Basque himself, the Rangers were able to take two more runs per half, so the tactic didn’t necessarily work as intended. At least not right away.
“Whatever happens, it pissed us off,” said Archangel Austin Warren, who walked on Seager. “Because we put five in the next. So it worked out.”
However, former Cubs player Jake Arita doesn’t agree to that at the moment, and let his old manager hear about it Social media:
“Walk in the run down already with one, with a new home in the game. You better pull the bowler and pick him right away before you don’t trust his ability. Seager is an incredible hitter, but what happens to baseball?”
Arrieta is not wrong, but Maddon is an analytical thinker. He’s always willing to try tactics out of the box, and that’s just another example.
Walking Seager didn’t avoid running in the immediate aftermath, but we’ll never know if he helped the Angels win the match.
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