(Photo by Blevine37 at the english language wikipedia)

First and foremost, congratulations to Dusty, who for all the crap he gets, has been a major league manager for a long time, and as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t screw it up too badly. 1500 wins is a lot – there are only 20 other managers who have done it all-time, and only one of them is still active (I mean, depending on whether you think LaRussa is going to rise from retirement like the cryptkeeper or something).  Most of those guys are also in the Hall of Fame or will be, so, good on ya, Johnnie B. Baker.

This was mostly on the shoulders of Johnny Cueto, who didn’t have the most dominant performance in the world, but overcame Zack Greinke shutting down the Reds lineup by posting 7 scoreless innings of his own, relying mostly on groundouts and either clutch or lucky pitching with men in scoring position. Of course, the Reds also benefited from Dusty’s somewhat unorthodox move of removing closer Sean Marshall in the 9th after Marshall had allowed a run and then put men on base with two outs. It looked ridiculous after the Brewers put in a pinch hitter and Ondrusek walked the first batter, but Logan got the out, and here we are.

This win is no thanks, to home plate umpire C.B. Bucknor who called what felt like a ridiculous zone the whole game. Brooks Baseball has a pretty handy strikezone tool that attempts to normalize the called strikezone for the reported pitchfX batter height, and it doesn’t look like a particularly consistent strikezone. But pitchfX isn’t perfect, the normalization isn’t perfect, and calling balls and strikes is really a hell of a job, so, just look for yourself and come to your own conclusion.