I’m used to it: Art Howe, Ken Macha, Bob Geren, Bob Melvin, and Mark Kotsay have shared one quality and it’s that if you ask AN they don’t know how to manage a bullpen, decide when to bunt, choose whether and when to yank a starting pitcher…

Certainly my critiques of Kotsay’s tactical acumen have been ongoing and at times strong and I stand by them. But what are the odds that not only is the A’s current manager clueless around strategy, so are each and every one of his peers? Well, according to fan sites that appears to be the case.

I haven’t browsed every corresponding site to AN and generally I know Bruce Bochy has been considered, even by his own fans, to be master strategist. But the post-season brings visits to other sites and guess what? Phillies fans want to run Rob Thompson out of town while John Schneider is currently being absolutely roasted by Blue Jays fans after last night’s disappointing loss. Even Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was referred to, earlier this week, as a butcher managing his bullpen — while his team was steamrolling the Brewers in a 4-game sweep.

It’s not as if some of the objections are baseless, mind you. I have trouble understanding how Schneider deemed Brendon Little to be the best option for the 8th inning last night. Not only has Little struggled considerably since the All-Star break, posting a 4.88 ERA in 24 IP with 17 BB, he was brought in to turn Cal Raleigh around to bat RH where Raleigh has been particularly great this season (.281/.351/.681 compared to .231/.362/.547 batting LH). Chris Bassitt has been woefully absent any high leverage all series having tossed just 2 garbage innings in game 3, while Seranthony Dominguez and Jeff Hoffman may be troublingly inconsistent but they are also your set-up man and closer designed for games you enter the 8th inning with a one-run lead.

But if you go around to fan sites you see, again and again, claims that this particular manager is uniquely terrible at making these key decisions and always has been, worse than his managerial peers. In Lake Wobegon all the children are slightly above average, so to balance it out in MLB all the managers are tactically well below average.

A significant piece of this, undoubtedly, is that fans tend to focus on the few glaring failures and to ignore the quiet successes that could also be ascribed to the same manager’s decision making.

It’s also true that good pitching, good hitting and good defense tend to make manager moves look good, while bad pitching, hitting and defense have a way of making managers look bad.

And also undeniably, 20/20 hindsight allows many fans to join those who complained beforehand in arguing that “anyone could see this was going to happen”. Overlooking, of course, the times failure was angrily predicted only to be proven wrong when the “dumb” move worked out beautifully.

Still, oftentimes the criticisms I read, whether on AN or on other teams’ sites, are more than fair and are made with foresight and not after the fact. It’s unlikely that “crowdsourcing” these decisions would yield better overall results and yet sometimes it downright feels that way.

So what is reality? Are this many managers this blind to some of the most basic principles of strategy, probability, common sense, and judgment? Or are fans just blind to the fact that tactical managing is nigh impossible to get right a high percentage of the time just as even the best hitters get out 2/3 of the time?

Certainly there are plenty of times where multiple moves are defensible — to bunt or not to bunt, to yank a SP early or try to squeeze an extra inning out of him, where to play the infield with a runner at 3B and less than 2 outs, which reliever to trust in a key spot.

How could be it that your manager is one of the worst at it, and so are the managers of at least 23 other teams? On the internet at least, that appears to be the case. What do you think is reality?