It's all Dickie being Dickie.

Larry Dierker had a passage in his "It Ain't Brain Surgery" book that stunned me. To paraphrase, he was an NL-thinking guy where you manufacture runs, steal a base here, bunt a guy over there and work to get the run home. Some SABR guys talked to him during the time he managed the Astros and convinced him that all of that was worthless and the percentages were with sitting back and waiting for the three-run homer (or "AL-ball" or more specifically "Earl Weaver ball" as they were known then).

He seemed convinced by one particular stat about how the team which scored the most runs in any one inning during the game won the game some 70% of the time. Sounds like a persuasive argument until you realize that a 1-0 game or perhaps a 2-1 game can fall into the same category. Sure, sometimes playing for one run actually costs you a chance for a bigger inning. But, dangit, there are times too where scratching out a run wins a close game. Good teams need to be able to do both.

Take Friday's game against the Cubs. Some say the sacrifice fly is a meaningless stat because nobody intentionally tries for a sac fly. Others disagree and say you can concentrate more on contract, wait for a high pitch and use an uppercut to get more lift on the ball. Anyway, my point is that if Ty Wigginton doesn't sac fly to score Tejada yesterday and make the score 4-2, DeRosa's homer off Valverde ties the game and we go into extras with our iffy bullpen. If Wiggy's mindset was to swing for the yard and strikes out, chances are the winning run doesn't cross the plate.

To me, it's about situations. Have runs been tough to come by? Is the pitcher one that is tough to score on? Is he tiring? How good is my hitter at bunting? How good is my hitter at putting the ball in play? How fast is my runner? All those questions factor into whether you should play small ball or wait for the home run. The Astros have a team now with three rabbits (Bourn, Pence and Matsui) and some mashers. Some of the mashers are good contact guys and others are high-K guys. To me, it's silly to keep your rabbits from running and your contact guys from doing some hit-and-runs for fear that you'll run yourself out of the inning. If the pitcher and catcher have no fear that you'll do some things on the basepaths, they can concentrate more on just staying in their rhythm and getting the hitter out.

If I were a manager, I'd probably manage along the lines of Whitey Herzog in those Cardinal teams of the 80s where you had three speed guys at the top followed by two mashers and then your role players and the pitcher at the bottom of the order, relying on your rabbits to manufacture runs, your mashers to supply the big innings and your pitchers to keep the game close. I suppose part of the problem is that with smaller ballparks and poorer pitching, it is harder to make that equation work now that it did then.

"Astro Fan Since They Were First Called Astros."