Don’t expect Alex Rodriguez to land a job in any analytics-oriented MLB front office any time soon, not after the astonishingly asinine theory about baseball he shared during last night’s Phillies-Mets game.
With the Phillies leading 2–1 in the seventh, Adam Haseley led off the inning with a double. Jay Bruce came in to pinch hit for the pitcher, and that’s when A-Rod started playing manager. He argued that Bruce should lay down a sacrifice bunt to allow Haseley to advance to third, a move he thought would increase Philadelphia’s chances of extending the lead.
This is already a momunmentally stupid idea—Bruce only has three sacrifice bunts in his career, and if you wanted to bunt you’d do it with the pitcher instead of burning a bench bat—but it was what he said after that was really the icing on the cake.