It's always easy to focus on bullpen management. Gabe's arguably lost more games in the past 10 days sticking with his starter just a hair too long. And then he got one the other day doing the opposite. And some nights when the bullpen isn't perfect our hitters have come through, while other nights they haven't.
I'm kind of not kidding about managing for next year though. This team hasn't been in a serious postseason race for weeks (even a month), and the one they are in is just a hair of a chance at a sliver of a spot (even the Cubs are not likely to do much with it, and have all the same bullpen issues we do with the $ to Kimbrel on top of it). So at this point when I see Irvin and Pivetta in tight spots, as well as Hughes, Parker and Morin, it's not just because there are so few options but because they have some decisions to make about off-season roster spots and contracts. They are certainly not going to go out and sign four free agents to replace Nicasio, Hunter, Neshek and Robertson (to say nothing of Seranthony) so figuring out whether Hughes can get back to his earlier form and deciding which of the scrapheap guys and failed internal starters are keepers does matter. And since there's no one more reliable to use at any given time (even our two best guys, Neris and Alvarez, are hardly perfect), you roll the dice (except it's neither dice nor roulette, there is more information and real probabilities at work, even when they don't pan out).
Anyway, it's fun that winning three games in a row this week injected some hope into September but losing these games certainly wasn't a killing blow, losing twice to the Mets at home after they'd lost six straight was still worse.We are clearly not going to play the .650 baseball required to get anywhere and the Cubs probably aren't gonna play .450 either.