You need to read the whole thing, but JJO went off on Cooper in a blog post today.
Calling him out continuing to run Geary out there, despite the fact that Geary said he'd been hurting for at least a week.
There's a testy little exchange, but Cooper says that he kept putting Geary in game situations, because "he said he could pitch," even though Geary knew he was experiencing soreness.
I couldn't agree more with Ortiz here. There's a fine line between pulling a Pavano and being tough. It's a long season, and you're going to get dinged up, but if you're at the point where playing is counter-productive, then the player needs to take responsibility. No player is going to turn down the ball or an at-bat. But it's up to the manager to make that decision for them. I would tell Coop I could pitch, but that's the last thing he would want to do.
Cooper did the same thing with Valverde, asking him what he wanted to do. That's not going to cut it - Cooper's going to have to manage tough to keep this team in contention, and he's not going to do that by running guys out there who are too proud to say they're hurting the team.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
