In a game over the weekend between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers, Red Sox starting pitcher Cooper Criswell was pitching the game of his life. In a 0-0 tie through four innings, the Tigers had no base-runners at all. Criswell, a rare breaking-ball and control specialist who serves as Boston’s fifth starter now that those above him on the depth chart have been injured, appeared to have perfect command of his pitches, as evidenced by the large number of strikeouts he was getting, and he is not a strike-out pitcher. Criswell also threw just 52 pitches in his four innings, and that is well-below any likely fatigue level.
Nonetheless, despite being literally perfect that far, Cooper Criswell did not come out to the mound for the fifth inning. Red Sox manager Alex Cora replaced him with lefty Rich Hill, because the Tigers had three tough lefties coming up to bat (left-handed batters typically hit right-handed pitchers like Criswell better than they hit lefties like Hill).
Hill walked one of the left-handed batters, and the first right-handed batter he faced as a result hit a two-run homer. The Red Sox never caught up.
After the game, Cora had no regrets, telling the press that pulling Criswell was part of a predetermined plan. “We drew it up, they had a bunch of lefties,” Cora said.. “He gave us enough. We went to Rich in that situation. We had a big pocket of lefties. Just the righty burned us.”
There are two ethics issues here.
I. Management competence. Making plans is fine and necessary. Stubbornly sticking to a plan when there is new information and unexpected events that render the plan obsolete is incompetent management. Cora’s game plan was based on what he had observed to be Criswell’s ability in past performances. When pitchers have everything working, however, Cora knows well as a veteran manager, coach and former player that they can pitch no-hitters, shut-outs and seem unhittable. Nobody knows how or when a major league pitcher will have such a fortunate outing when all his biorhythms and the stars are aligned, and, of course, Criswell might have had only those four prefect innings in him.
However, it is crazy to pretend that his performance in the game so far didn’t mandate an adjustment in Cora’s plans. Maybe the Tigers would never get a hit off him. The prudent move was to at least see how far this momentarily hot pitcher could go while maintaining his current level of exellence. Cora’s “plan” did not consider the possibility that his starting pitcher would pitch like Greg Maddox. Once that new information had been received, the prudent response was to adjust the plan.
2. Consequentialism. Most of the Boston sportswriters, assailing Cora’s decision after the loss, wrote that removing Criswell was wrong because the next pitcher gave up a game-winning home run. That’s consequentialism, however. Cora’s decision was wrong, immediately and forever the second he took Criswell out of the game, and it would have been exactly as wrong if the Red Sox bullpen had continued Criswell’s mastery and the Red Sox had won 1-0.
What happens after a decision is made is moral luck; it doesn’t prove anything. A decision is competent or incompetent, wise or foolish, ethical or unethical, depending on whether the manner in which it was made was valid and defensible at the outset.
This one wasn’t.
Ethics Alarms 
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I look to Alex Cora for an ethics lesson.
Amen.
And the same goes for A.J. Hinch.
They should have been sent off to the Venezuelan league or some other baseball purgatory for the rest of their careers. What an embarrassment to MLB’s ownership group.
Brava.
I’m reminded of my decision sciences rule. There are good decisions and bad decisions. Either type of decision can have a good outcome or a bad outcome. The good decision/good outcome is evidence that the decision maker is good at this job and, if it’s a bad outcome, the decision maker may still be good at his job but no one has control of all variables. It’s the bad decision maker who has a good outcome that is just plain lucky; if he ends up with a bad outcome, he might also end up out of a job.
This called for pure old school hot hand baseball. When A guy has a hot hand you’re keeping in for another inning. If things start to go sour with a hit or two you yank him out of there.
During each of the three games the Diamondbacks played against the BoSox a week ago, the Diamondbacks television announcers commented on Alex Cora’s adamant adherence to matchups. To the point he’ll do it at any time in a game and has been known to deplete his dugout of pinch hitters extremely early in games. They certainly found this remarkable, and maybe extreme, with more than an undertone of it’s being just kind of dumb.
That analysis strikes me that he probably needs a year or two more seasoning at the AAA level managing. I understand that baseball strategy is more defined by stats and percentages than ever before, but I still think the top tier of managers require some judgment. Obviously if he’d been through 12 batters already, he had retired these guys once, even though we are talking 4, 5, 6 in the order.
If this was his first start returning from Tommy John surgery, I could understand it. But it’s not. Yes, he’d been on the 10 day DL the first of August, but this was at least his third start since being activated. He’s not a 20 year-old just starting out, he’s 28 and has been pitching in the pros since 2019.
As I said, managers require some judgment to really be good at what they do. Otherwise, why do they exist? Were it me, I would be a lot more comfortable explaining that I went with the perfect game and he broke down in the fifth than what actually happened.
Even from someone such as Alex Cora you can derive ethics lessons. Of course they may be bad ones as in this case.
Pretty rare for guys to go from playing in the bigs to managing in the bigs. At least successfully. Bob Brenley went from catching to broadcasting to managaing. But I think catchers are the most likely to succeed at making the transition successfully. I’m not sure Joe Torre spent much time managing other than in the bigs.
He’s been manager in Boston on and off since 2018. He’s not going to get anymore seasoned, just more ripe.
As former friend used to say, #CanCora
He just signed a long-term contract, and one of the richest of any Boston manager.
DEI?
Given the struggles of Boston’s bullpen this year, to say nothing of its extensive use, pulling Criswell after just fifty pitches of perfect baseball made no sense to me, either. At the very least, he should have stayed until he allowed a runner to second with less than two outs.
Overall, a very good analysis and a correct conclusion.