Tampa Bay Rays show why Chicago White Sox fired Rick Renteria

The Tampa Bay Rays showed exactly why the Chicago White Sox fired Rick Renteria.

Some teams have big issues with their manager doing too much in big moments. The Chicago White Sox have been victims of that lately and have since dealt with the problem. On the biggest stage baseball has to offer, Kevin Cash did just that to the Tampa Bay Rays in game six of the 2020 World Series. They had a 1-0 lead in the ballgame with Blake Snell cruising on the mound and Cash took him out with 73 pitches thrown.

Following that bad decision, the Los Angeles Dodgers came back and won the game to win the World Series for the first time in over 30 years. It will forever be remembered as one of the biggest managerial mistakes in the history of the World Series. Cash and the Rays showed us exactly why the White Sox fired Rick Renteria earlier in their offseason.

You can’t have a baseball manager lose you a game. They need to be good bullpen managers and lineup decision-makers but they can’t “overmanage”. Taking out Snell had big Renteria vibes and the Sox are lucky they don’t have to deal with that anymore. They dealt with that issue before it ever became apparent on the World Series stage.

It stung when he mismanaged that game three against the Oakland A’s but it can’t be anything like seeing it happen to your team in game six of the World Series. Cash is a pretty good baseball coach but a mistake like that will haunt him forever.

If you are the Chicago White Sox, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this. They need to hire someone who has a proven track record of managing bullpens the right way. They are going to be in the playoffs a lot over the next few years so this is a big issue. The next guy to come in should be smart with the analytics but also needs to have some feel for the game. The Rays, hopefully, showed exactly why firing Renteria was a good idea.