Detroit TIgers: Brad Ausmus Is Not Learning From His Mistakes

Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus isn’t a finished product. He has taken risks before. It hasn’t come back to cost them a game yet, but the team’s success could hinge on Ausmus’ decision making.

Detroit Tigers fans are used to this by now, but Brad Ausmus has made some questionable moves over the course of his two-plus years as Tigers manager. Today, in an 8-2 win over the Pirates, Ausmus made another “what are you thinking?” kind of move that will go largely unnoticed thanks to the victory.

With the Tigers up 2-0 in the second inning and runners on first and second with one out, Justin Upton came to the dish fresh off a 452-foot solo blast in the first inning that put the Tigers up 1-0.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that the runners on base were Anthony Gose and Ian Kinsler. These are guys with pretty good speed, especially Gose, who was the lead runner on second.

With that in mind, Ausmus called for the double steal and Gose was thrown out at third base by Francisco Cervelli, who had to make a perfect throw (and did) to get the speedster. That left the Tigers with a man on second base and two outs.

Now, it didn’t come back to bite the Tigers. Upton reached on an infield single and Kinsler scored on a throwing error. Miguel Cabrera drove in Upton to push the Tigers lead to 4-0. 

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So no harm, no foul, right?

Wrong.

This is the kind of move that keeps a team from padding its lead a lot of the time. What Ausmus basically did was take a huge gamble that could have led to Cabrera missing a chance to come to the plate with runners in scoring position.

It wasn’t a gamble worth taking, no matter how fast Gose is.

You can say that he was trying to stay out of the double play, but I don’t buy that. You can say that he’s just trying to play an aggressive brand of baseball, which is probably the case and completely goes against the way this team is put together.

Ausmus manages the Tigers like Ned Yost manages the Kansas City Royals, who won a world championship last season. The problem here is that the Tigers are a team that isn’t built to play small ball. They can’t afford to take at-bats away from their best hitters, especially when the payoff is a small one (Gose would easily score from second base on a base hit). The chances of Gose getting thrown out at third base are far greater than that of Upton, a guy with a bit of speed himself, grounding into a double play.

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Nothing could be worse for this team than Cabrera leading off an inning when he should have been at the plate with some ducks on the pond. The damage he does with men on base is otherworldly. He’s simply the best at it.

This is something Ausmus has done many times over the past two years. With Upton now solidifying the Tigers lineup, Ausmus has even less reasons to make such a move. It’s a boneheaded play and a completely unnecessary one. If you play with fire long enough, eventually you’re going to get burned. And he has…many times.