I've never understood it, but Buck has always been a media favorite. Maybe it's because he's "unafraid to go with his gut" or that he "plays the game the right way" or some such nonsense. Of course, these "brave" managers are always revealed to be thin-skinned cowards when one of their "gut feel" decisions blows up in their face.
I'm not going to defend Grady Little but I think this is worse. As has been pointed out Grady left one of the best pitchers ever in game, yes he was done and should have been pulled but it was Pedro. Buck never allowed a guy, who while not vintage Pedro was pretty damned close, to pitch and instead put in Ubaldo Jiminez who managed to lose the game in 5 pitches.
This is where I am. You can understand leaving in Pedro. It was a horrible move, but the logic behind it - he's PEDRO MARTINEZ - at least you can see how it might work. My recollection of my mindset during that inning (to the extent it hasn't been wiped away by the ensuing years of awesomeness) is oscillating between "get him out of there" and "ok, he's not changing pitchers, c'mon Pedro!"
I agree. there is absolutely nothing on the scale to defend Buck's decision not to use a reliever who had one of the best reliever seasons in history. None.
... and Showalter doesn't have the luxury of being one of the smartest men to begin with....
Joe Sheehan @joe_sheehan 
To be somewhat fair, Buck did say if they were at home (like the 03 MFYs), he may have used Britton.
He won a postseason game for a team last night. Sadly for him it was not his own team.
Well, in this game, Torre did use Jeff Weaver instead of Rivera in extra innings on the road, and he met the same fate as Buck.
That was game 4 of the series, not game 7, and NY was ahead 2-1. Also Rivera pitched 2 innings the night before, Britton had a day off after getting 5 outs on Sunday.
All true, but had they taken the lead, he would have used Rivera for the save. He may not have been able to get multiple innings out of him, but he still could have used him.
There was definite backlash, but also people are mostly idiots, so not sure that matters much.
Did you forget that he DID get another manager position after that? I might have, if I didn't get the chance to run into him before a ST game in Jupiter and share my thoughts with him.
So he got hot at the exact right moment, eh? Good for him. I like that dude.
Ha. That's right. I forgot the Red Sox West hired him. Man, that was hilarious.
Well, the Orioles also scored only 2 runs in 11 innings, so there's plenty of blame to go around. But still...
I'll be basking in the glow of this for a long, long time.
Sorry I have to disagree strongly.
That's just not true. After 100 pitches in 2003, Pedro gave up a slash line of .298/.365/.340 with some crazy bad BABIP luck. This year overall, in a much lower run scoring environment, Ubaldo gave up .268/.354/.418. Buck would have been better off bringing in the Pedro Martinez who had just pitched 7 innings in Yankee Stadium than a fresh Ubaldo last night.
Timlin had been dominant that playoffs....but yeah, there's almost no parallel to 2016 Zach Britton. He had the best season of pretty much any reliever in the past couple decades anyway. Maybe since '90 Eck?
Speaking of which, where is that O's fan who used to pop in on the game threads?
And Grady had made exactly the same mistake repeatedly, leaving Pedro in to almost blow a game against Tampa in September, leaving John Burkett in to blow game 4 of the ALDS (which the Sox eventually overcame), etc. The Grady decision can't be considered without the background knowledge that Grady is a man who never learns from his mistakes.
Grady was a moron who had no idea what he was doing and screwed up awfully. No one is excusing what Grady did but when the damage was done the game was tied and the Sox could have still won the game.
Showalter is worse in this regard too. He had the same situation before this year - 2-2 at TOR with no save chance on 7/31 and he brought Britton in in the 9th, he pitched two innings, and Baltimore eventually won 6-2 in 12. So he had the exact same situation, used Britton the way should have and won. Then when the stakes mattered, he used Britton wrong and lost.
