Why I am not the manager

 If I was the Guardians' manager here is what I would do/would have set myself up to do tonight:

Pitching

1) Civale, if he can get through it, goes through the batting order one time, exactly.

2) Plesac comes in and gives us 2 innings or whatever he needs to to get us through 5 innings.

3)  De Los Santos gives us one inning

4) Karinchak gives us one inning

5) Stephan gives us one inning

6) Clase gives us 1 inning (and no more)

Hopefully that would be enough, with us having some offense, to win the game.

Here is what I am afraid is going to happen:

1) Tito tries to get 5 out of Civale. The problem is that this is what he thinks he needs out of Civale based on how he plays the game out in his mind.  He isn't thinking straight and is putting too much faith in his starter, something he has done too much in the past.   What actually is likely to happen in this scenario is that Civale goes the first 3, giving up one run (very passable and manageable performance) but then gets touched up for 2 runs in the 4th and is removed with one out with De Los Santos (or Hentges, depending on the matchups) finishes the inning.  By then we are down 3-0 or 3-2 and that puts us in a hole we try to crawl out of the rest of the game.  He then needs one more inning to get through 5 and stretches out Enyel another inning. He then goes through his bullpen as above, giving up one more run.  The question is, is the horse out of the barn by then?

2) The offense either saves us (if they are patient and hit good pitches and we get some luck) or they doom us by scoring only one run by trying too hard.

We either win 6-3 or lose 3-1.

I think we saw last night and at the end of the season the following:

1) Plesac can be really good in short stretches where he can let it all go.  In that sense he reminds me of Adam Wainwright when he was converted to a reliever and carried the Cardinals to a WS championship.

2) For guys like Morris with good stuff and the other team not having a book on him, you can get up to 2 innings out of him, one time, during a short series without exposing him.  Unfortunately we burned that bridge last night and putting him into tonight's game has a chance of success, to be sure, but also a dramatically enhanced peril of them exposing him.  If we can get through tonight I think you can wash, rinse and repeat a couple of times with Morris in the Houston series.

3) Morgan is not someone you want to pitch against the Yankees.  He gives up too much hard contact and all it takes is one time to get us too far behind to catch up.

4) You went to the well two times already with Clase going multiple innings after not doing it during the regular season.  Let's not go to that well again.  We need him for the rest of his contract, not just this season.

Tito is the master and I have faith in him but I would do things differently, I think.   And that is why I am not the Guardians' manager.