Coop had been trying to get Tejada to take a break for two weeks, reportedly.
He finally got Tejada to agree to the day game on Thursday, presumably because A) it's a short gap between Wednesday's game and Thursday's game.... because this West Coast swing has been tough on the players' internal clocks... and because against Linecum, NO ONE was going to do that well (Lee got one hit off him and Berkman got one hit off him, and that was about it, right?) Tejada might have gone 0-3 against Linecum today.
Instead, he got to pinchhit against the bullpen (but was sadly out, thus ending his 7 game hitting streak... but he'll have higher later in this season), and avoid futility against Linecum.
Also, because of this, Coop didn't sit anyone else. Remember a couple days ago when he sat both Bourn (hurting our defense) AND Matsui (hurting our offense)? At least he didn't do THAT today.
And yes, you can make an argument that Loretta hurt us both defensively and offensively as well, but Loretta's actually had a decent week, he had a couple hits in one of the Giants games already, so maybe Coop thought he was due for some more success yet this week.
Either way, Tejada's not exactly error-free either, so it's not like he put in Loretta in place of Everett in a late-inning 1-run-lead situation where we needed a defensive replacement.
This team is capable of overcoming 2-error games, and in fact has DONE so two straight days vs. the Giants.
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