Joe V. Wade: Maddon Didn’t Want to ‘Dry Hump’ Davis When Making Throw Choice

Joe Maddon seems like a pretty conservative guy, one who believes abstinence is the best form of run control. He didn’t think Brian Duensing and John Lackey would allow the Dodgers to get past second base Sunday night, let alone score, which is why he didn’t want to engage in any heavy petting with closer Wade Davis.

“Wade was not warming up to come in that game,” Maddon responded when asked about Davis being up in the ‘pen alongside Lackey. “Wade was probably just testing his arm at that point. We had talked about it before the game — up and in.”

That sounds a little dubious, right? Not that it really matters at this point. By now we already know about the rationale for using the combo of Duensing and Lackey in the pivotal 9th inning, so this isn’t about breaking that down further. Other than to say that, while Maddon really didn’t have a very good choice left at all, he went with the worst one he could have outside of leaving Duensing in against lefty-annihilating Justin Turner.

There was no row with Wade, who publicly backed his manager’s decision and cited Lackey’s playoff track record as evidence. That’s cool and all, but if it’s me — a guy who’s not involved in Major League Baseball — I’m going to ride or die with a legit reliever in that situation.

That doesn’t mean Lackey’s not a “real” pitcher or anything, but it’s a totally different setup both physically and mentally when you enter in that situation. In addition to having a man on base, the mound had been beaten up by eight previous innings of pitching. If it sounds like a small thing to have a big divot that’s not in the same place as your typical landing spot, have someone mess with the settings of your driver’s seat or your office chair and tell me how you like it.

Anyway, this is really all just preamble to the best part of Maddon’s presser, which was quite unexpected and gave me a case of the giggles. Because I’m still 12 years old at heart.

“For those that aren’t involved in Major League Baseball and professional baseball in general, when a guy’s throwing too much, it’s very important to not dry hump him, as the saying goes,” Maddon explained.

Wouldn’t want anyone to get Dodger Blue balls, as the saying goes.

Maddon went on to say that nothing was wrong with Davis health-wise, he just can’t run his closer out there every single game. That’s particularly true after the marathon outing last Thursday in Washington. There was a bit of an edge to the laid-back skipper too, either because of the criticism that’s already come or the tsunami of comments from armchair managers he knew was surging toward his shores.

“I really hope you all understand that social media doesn’t count at all,” Maddon said. “Twitter doesn’t count at all. And really, as sportswriters, you should do a better job than relying on Twitter to write a story, quite frankly.”

Well, so much for this little hobby. Guess I’ll log off now, which is probably for the best after tossing such an array of bad puns at you.