Where Is Kiké? Better Ask Ronnie!

Last night, moments after the Dodgers lost Game 2 of the NLDS, Ronnie, the parking lot attendant, was already conducting his own postgame analysis. His primary question was a familiar one: Where was Kiké Hernández? Why wasn't Kiké used to pinch-hit instead of J.D.P.? And, as the conversation progressed, the question became less about one at-bat and more about Dave Roberts himself. When, Ronnie wondered, is Roberts going to learn?

It was an interesting question coming from a guy standing in a parking lot approximately five minutes after the final out.

It was also a preview of what was coming the next day.

By Monday, the conversation had spread well beyond the parking lot. The local radio shows were questioning Roberts, social media was doing what social media does during October, and the usual collection of armchair managers had gone back to the tape to explain exactly what the Dodgers should have done. There was plenty of criticism to go around, and Roberts, as he so often does when a postseason game doesn't go the Dodgers' way, was near the center of it.

Some of the questions are legitimate. They should be.

Should Shohei Ohtani be in the lineup against Chris Sale? Given the matchup and Ohtani's struggles in this series, there is a reasonable baseball argument for giving him a day. Should Andy Pages play? His postseason track record certainly doesn't make that an unreasonable question. And should Kiké Hernández be considered in place of Pages? Absolutely. Hernández has been in enough postseason games to understand the difference between October baseball and the regular season, and he remains a perfectly viable option when Roberts is looking for a different look and a little unbridled electricity.

Those are baseball decisions, and they can be debated without much difficulty.

What becomes more difficult to explain is the leap from questioning a decision to questioning whether the man making the decisions should still have the job.

The Dodgers lost one game. The series is tied 1-1. That seems worth mentioning before we start cleaning out Roberts' office.

This is the same Dave Roberts who has managed the Dodgers to 100-plus victories, won back-to-back World Series titles and spent years operating under the rather unusual expectation that anything short of a championship season will be treated as a disappointment. He has certainly made decisions that can be questioned. Every manager does, particularly in October, when every decision is examined with the benefit of knowing exactly how it turned out.

That's the strange part of postseason baseball. The manager is judged not only on the decision but on the result of the decision. If the pinch-hitter gets a hit, it's a brilliant move. If he strikes out, everyone wants to know why the other guy wasn't used. If the player left on the bench hits a home run the next night, the manager apparently becomes guilty of having known the future and ignored it.

Which brings us back to Ronnie, because Ronnie has some history with postseason certainty.

Last year, when the Dodgers went back to Toronto needing to win Games 6 and 7, the situation was considerably more serious than being tied 1-1 in an NLDS. The Dodgers had to win both games.

As the disheartened crowd was leaving the stadium after the Dodgers had fallen behind in the World Series, Ronnie wasn't bidding farewell to fans who had just watched their team come up short. He wasn't talking about what had gone wrong or what might happen next. He simply said, “See you Monday.”

Monday, of course, was parade day.

Ronnie had already made his plans.

That's one of the things I like about October baseball. Everybody becomes absolutely certain about everything. A manager makes one decision and someone knows immediately that it was the wrong one. A player goes 0-for-4 and someone knows he should have been replaced. A player sitting on the bench suddenly becomes the obvious answer. By the following afternoon, an entire fan base has rewritten the previous night's game as though the outcome had been apparent from the beginning.

Maybe Roberts should start Ohtani against Sale. Maybe he shouldn't. Maybe Pages plays. Maybe Kiké gets the start. There are legitimate reasons to have those conversations, and that's part of what makes October baseball interesting.

But there is a considerable difference between saying, “I would have made a different decision,” and deciding that the manager who has just won back-to-back championships has suddenly become incapable of doing his job.

The Dodgers lost Game 2. They didn't lose the series.

And if history has taught us anything about Ronnie, it might be worth waiting a little while before deciding how this story ends.

After all, last October, Ronnie already knew.

“See you Monday.”

He was right.

There was a parade.

So perhaps we will see Kiké replace Pages in Atlanta.

Perhaps Roberts will make a different choice.

Either way, let this October play itself out before we start firing people in the parking lot.