Yesterday was the sort of gut-punch loss that prompted a lot of "Why is he on the team?" and "Why is he playing, even if he's on the team?"-style questions. I think these same thoughts after a game like that, but there's a tendency to lose sight of a few things: (1) even your worst players see some playing time in baseball, (2) it's hard to know when the best time to use a reliever will be, especially when your bullpen is stressed, (3) marginal players are probably going to play marginal baseball.
Still, with how little use Marshall has gotten (8 pitches in the last five days) and how important that game situation was, you hate to see him held out to pitch in save situations that never come. The easiest way to gloss over bad managerial decisions, of course, is for your starting pitchers and regular position players to give you lots of quality innings. That hasn't been happening regularly enough for this team to start playing above-.500 ball.
Lineup (ugh) after the jump and a new "bullpen log" feature. BP says he's going to "going to see" if he can pinch-hit. Sean Marshall is so ready to play. Today.
Bullpen Log