Tony, I love you're blog. And I beg to differ. At the risk of being overly detailed, here's what I saw in the seventh inning...

1--Harris walks on a borderline pitch. Tsao does not have the great slider working this AB but a pretty good heater.

2--Johnson goes with the pitch (good outside fastball) and doubles to left. A good piece of hitting. Tip your hat to him.

3--Renteria, who looked like he knew what was coming, doubles. Three pretty good pitches by Tsao followed by a horrible slider that Renteria jumped on. Two runs are in and it's 4-3.

Now, here's a question for you. At what point do you put Beimel up? Or anyone, for that matter? At the beginning of the inning?? Please. After Renteria's double, Honeycutt was on the horn, as he should've been. Billingsley begins to throw (I don't know if anyone else was throwing).

4--Francouer pops out. Tired of throwing an inconsistent slider, Tsao ups his fastball a notch and Francouer cannot--and does not--catch up with it. One out, man on 2nd.

Does Beimel go up now? With Andruw Jones up? Tsao hasn't pitched terribly, Billingsley is throwing... I'm sticking with Tsao.

5--Jones walks. Tsao does not want to "miss" with a fastball and avoids the strike zone with the heater. But a hanging slider fools Jones, a nasty slider gets strike two and on 3-2, Tsao misses with a slider. Still one out, men on first and second.

Now what do you do? Beimel should've been throwing the whole time here? I think it's just as important, in a regular season game, to let a guy who has been pitching brilliantly to try and work his way out of a jam. I think that's what Grady did and I agree with the thinking. So, Tsao pitches to Chipper Jones and...

6--Jones strikes out.

2 out, 2 on. 4-3 Dodgers. Tsao is throwing hard. Do you stay with him? If not, why not?

7--Thorman singles to right. Tsao, IIRC, threw a slider that hung ever so much and the ground ball was not hit softly. Tie game, 4-4.

In comes Billingsley.

What I want to know is this: what was the decision that Grady did not make that will keep him up at night? And when should he have made it? It certainly isn't obvious to me that Grady did anything wrong here.

Again, thank you for this blog. Really good stuff, Tony. This is the place to have a great conversation about the Dodgers.

It's one of those 20-20 hindsight things, and I took Grady to task a bit in tomorrow's paper, too. But I'm not sure Beimel was even available because he pitched the last two games, and I guess maybe Broxton wasn't available either. But Tsao was going so deep in counts, which isn't like him at all, and to me, that was a clear warning sign that something was wrong. As far as getting someone warmed up quickly, I don't remember any attempts being made to stall for time, nor do I remember anyone even going out to TALK to Tsao. It took him six batters to get two outs. IMHO, he shouldn't have been allowed to face that seventh guy. Thanks for the great post.

I partially agree with Tony. Should have pulled Tsao after the Cox/Larry Jones/Bob Davidson fiasco. Cox is a master at leveraging ejections to fire up the crowd and his team. That's a lot of heated emotions for a kid like Tsao. At that point, you go with a fresh arm who isn't emotionally involved in the inning.