Flanked by the ghosts of Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather, let's take a look at this week's decision from the A's skipper. But first, a repeat of our standard disclaimer...
There is a misperception that analyzing a manager's tactical decision-making is a black and white referendum on his tactical skills overall. However, in reality every manager, over the course of a long season, is going to make at 50 great decisions and 50 poor ones -- not to mention all the good ones that go bad and the bad ones that work out anyway.
The point of this analysis is simply to parse some of the specific decisions that I applaud or with which I disagreed, in order to say "What did he do well this week and what did he botch?