Bobby Valentine left Kenny Rogers in the game for one batter too long when the Mets lost to Atlanta 4-3 on Wednesday. But the manager refused to kick himself while he was down yesterday. So Mets fans, don’t worry. That Bobby V confidence isn’t going anywhere.
“I wasn’t up all night,” said Valentine, who saw Rogers give up two home runs in the fateful sixth inning. “It’s just one of those things. You make thousands of decisions. When you leave a guy in and he gives up a homer, then it was the wrong decision, I think. That’s the way it works.”
What made the non-move more confounding was that it appeared that pitching coach Dave Wallace seemed to be on his way to yanking Rogers and then turned back. Eddie Perez then hit the second homer of the inning and the Mets trailed 4-2.
“We were never going to take him out there. We talked about it, but we didn’t,” Wallace said. “It was our decision. There was no disputing or anything like that. Now, I’d like to have that decision back. That one and a lot of others.”
But it seems like while Valentine has made his fair share of errors in the dugout, his counterpart, Atlanta’s Bobby Cox, has made hardly any.