It’s easy to wake up this morning and say that Charlie Manuel is the anti-Grady Little for taking Pedro Martinez out after seven innings. That’s the knee-jerk reaction. But it goes deeper than that. Here’s Manuel defending himself after the game.

“He was gone. I mean, I think he was spent. We got seven innings out of him. When the game started, I was looking anywhere from 70 to 85 pitches, maybe 90 at the most. … He did a tremendous job, and he took it actually farther than I anticipated when the game started. To me, Pedro was done.”

• You’re still looking, if you brought him back for the 8th, and getting him up to about 100 pitches, for an older pitcher who had been off for 17 days.
• Pedro pointed to the sky and pumped his fists after he got the last out in the 7th inning. Looked to me he thought he was done right there.
• And don’t forget, there would have been a man on 3rd and 2 outs if Chase Utley didn’t throw a DP ball into the dugout.

That last point is key. If they get the DP there and get out of the inning, this discussion never happens. That’s baseball though, and now we have ourselves an NLCS.

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