Rain Must Fall: Game 3 of the 2014 NLCS

Life is learning, forgetting, and learning again

Each Monday and Friday throughout April, we will review the worst losses the Cardinals experienced from 1996-2016. Up next: Watching Game 3 of the 2014 NLCS and coming away wondering if Mike Matheny was a transcendental idealist.

Randy Choate was the Cardinals fifth pitcher to take the mound in Game 3 of the 2014 NLCS, brought in specifically to face Brandon Crawford, the lefty Giants lead-off hitter. It started right with him firing a strike. But the dusty veteran wasn’t able to build off that first pitch and he walked Crawford.

After the walk, Choate looked into the dugout, incredulous that the umpire had called ball four instead of strike three. He looked back to the dugout a second time, his incredulity transforming into inevitability. As in, here comes manager Mike Matheny to relieve me for Carlos Martinez. But Matheny didn’t come. He stuck with Choate.

It makes me wonder.

A little less than a year earlier, the Cardinals lost Game 4 of the 2013 World Series with Randy Choate sitting in the bullpen. Instead of giving the lefty a chance to face David Ortiz, manager Matt Matheny chose to walk the affable slugger and let Seth Manness pitch to Jonny Gomes.

“[Choate] was ready,” Matheny told the press after Gomes hit a three-run homer, the difference in the Red Sox 4-2 win. “We just weren’t going to go there.”

The next day in the paper, columnist Joe Strauss scrutinized the skipper and had this to say about his decision to leave Choate languishing in the bullpen:

In a three minute span, a manager who lived by unyielding faith in his guys registered a tacit vote of no-confidence in…lefthanded reliver Randy Choate.

So, I wonder.

I wonder if that snippet was in Matheny’s mind during Game 3 of the 2014 NLCS. If he felt that whereas he once doubted Choate and it bit him, this time he would support the lefty. That’s the best I can come up with as Matheny stoically sat in the dugout and Martinez stayed in the bullpen.

With the lead-off man on, everyone in the stadium - including Choate - expected the bunt. “100 times out of 100 I’m bunting here,” commenter Tom Verducci told the national audience. The Giants tried. The pitch hitter Juan Perez squared to bunt twice and fouled both off. With two strikes, Perez decided to swing and smoked a single to left field.

Matheny didn’t come out of the dugout after the single either. He sent the pitching coach Derek Lilliquist instead. Choate and Lilliquist likely talked about what to do with a bunt - because again - everyone knew that was coming.

Gregor Blanco bunted the first pitch foul, but bunted the second pitch right back to Choate, who fielded it and proceeded to throw it into right field. Giants win. “It was right there and I blew it," Choate said. "The ball just sailed on me."

That’s an unfair burden. He didn’t blow it. Because he shouldn’t have been on the mound for the Blanco at bat. His appearance in Game 3 represented the 20th postseason game of Choate’s career, but the first time since the 2001 World Series that he faced more than two batters in an outing.

The only reason he was out there was the same reason Michael Wacha would be on the mound two nights later. It wasn’t a save situation - so Matheny didn’t want to go to a closer.

I think Mike Matheny is a good man. I have seen him at charity events. I have seen firsthand the good he has done in the community with the Catch-22 Miracle Field out in Chesterfield. I think that is important to note before the next paragraph.

It was so eminently frustrating watching Mike Matheny manage my favorite team.

And the frustration with his years as manager will always come down to the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote above - for every lesson Mike Matheny learned, he seemingly forgot it, and had to learn it all over again, usually during another loss. We saw it with how he deployed his bullpen, with how he managed the double switch, with how he managed personalities.

Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe Mike Matheny was secretly a transcendental idealist. Was he reading Kant and Schopenhauer on team charters? Inspired by Emerson, was he intent on simply doing what he believed was right no matter what others think?

It makes as much sense as pulling John Lackey in a tied playoff game when he was only at 79 pitches and had retired 12 of the last 13 batters he faced.