I do think it legitimate to ask the question, but I stress that then it is a question. I did so at the time-not about Gross starting although that did surprise me a bit, but why he did not replace Hinske in RF in the 9th and then why he did not pinch hit Gross for Bartlett in the bottom of the ninth. Those are reasonable questions but regardless of one’s view of the matter they do not justify criticism unless you know a lot more.

Another example. I was surprised he brought in Glover with the 4-1 score. Seemed to me that Hammel hasn’t pitched in a while and had at least as good a chance to keep it close as Glover did. As it turned out, Glover was excellent, even better than the stats show. I speculated he was saving Hammel in case the Rays tied it and he needed someone for multiple innings, but am only guessing.

Anyway, suppose Glover had given up 2 runs and the Rays went on to score 2 runs because Gross hit a pinch homer off Valverde? Would we then poll people whether it was a Maddon loss because he used Glover? Of course, now we know that Glover did the job, but we could not know that when he relieved in the 7th just as we cannot know what would have happened with Gross in the game from the start and the circumstances are not so obvious that the odds are that clearly on one side or the other.