Whatever happens in the final game of the Mets’ Championship Series battle with the Cardinals (at this writing that battle has just been joined), Mets fans have at least had had the pleasure of watching Willie Randolph grow on the job. This is an entirely positive development, portending better things for the Mets in the future.

Managers don’t like to improvise. That’s a generalization, but a safe one. Any manager who is remotely candid wouldn’t deny it. You wing it in spring training, when you’re sorting your starters from your relievers — your Brian Bannisters from your Aaron Heilman’s — and your situational relievers from your setup men and closers, which is to say your Pedro Felicanos and Chad Bradfords from your Heilmans and Billy Wagners.

If this is done correctly, the manager can, in theory, spend the rest of the season pushing buttons.

It’s not unlike those “when to go for two” situational charts that were handed to NFL coaches the first season after the conversion option was adopted. “If Albert Pujols and ahead, sixth inning or later, use Pitcher A. If Jim Edmonds and behind, seventh inning or later, use Pitcher D. It was this kind of regimentation that helped Joe Torre look so brilliant during the Jeff Nelson/Mike Stanton years.

If a manager sticks to his plan and it backfires, he is immune to criticism. If he makes a seat of his pants decision — say bringing Jeff Weaver out of the bullpen in a World Series game rather than Mariano Rivera — and the team loses, the cries of disbelieving anguish will follow him down through the ages. As such, it’s better for the manager to pursue by-the-book matchups and lose than it is to reach for imaginative solutions that might have a higher upside.

Prior to the advent of relief pitching, a manager’s in-game decision-making was limited to when to bunt and hit and run. Pitching was reduced to choosing a starter. If that decision was made correctly, the manager could sit back and watch his choice pitch nine innings.The rise of professional relievers starting in the 1920s added another wrinkle, the development of the closer still another, and situational relievers, used for onebatter matchups, myriad more.

It was Casey Stengel, a managerial antecedent of Randolph’s (through Billy Martin), who popularized and perfected platooning. The evolution of situational relievers was a direct result of the implications of Stengel’s tactics. If one accepted that most left-handed hitters are at a disadvantage against lefthanded pitchers, and most right-handed hitters are at an advantage against left-handed pitchers, something not clear then but easily apparent in the statistics now, then it was incumbent on the manager playing defense to deprive the offense of those advantages.

The problem is that situational relief doesn’t make a great deal of sense. A pitcher, once he enters the game, has to face at least one batter, and the manager on offense is always free to pinch-hit. More significantly, good left-handed pitching is always in short supply. The advantage gained when a good lefthanded hitter is confronted by a pitcher who may be the 25th best hurler in the organization but the best who happens to be a lefty, is dubious. A bad pitcher is a bad pitcher no matter what side of the plate he throws from.

Stengel never intended for platoon matchups to be a simple “If A then B” proposition. It wasn’t just what side of the plate or rubber each participant stood on, but what the pitcher threw and what the batter liked to hit, what ballpark you were in, what the weather was, and any other factor that might conceivably influence the outcome of the at bat. As he put it, “If [the opposition has] a right-handed hitter who can’t hit an overhanded curve ball [at bat], and you’ve got a right-handed pitcher in there who hasn’t got an overhand curve, don’t you think you might be better off with a left-hander who has?”

In other words, a manager has to think in more than two dimensions and be prepared to discard the conventional left vs. right wisdom if it doesn’t make sense in a given situation. Stengel famously did this in Game 7 of the 1952 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. With the exception of slugger Duke Snider, the Dodgers were stacked with strong righty hitters like Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, and Carl Furillo. With the Yankees leading 4–2 in the bottom of the seventh at tiny home run haven Ebbets Field, Stengel replaced right-handed pitcher Vic Raschi with a rather unimposing lefty named Bob Kuzava.

The move went against everything Stengel was supposed to believe in, but it worked perfectly. Kuzava finished the game, throwing 2.2 perfect innings to save the Series-clinching win. Stengel saw something in Kuzava’s approach that made him the right man to defeat the Dodgers despite the platoon advantage he would be granting them.

In Game 6 of the current NLCS, a literal must-win game for the Mets, Randolph was confronted by a similar situation. Leading 4–0 in the seventh inning, Ronnie Belliard was on first base with one out. Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa pinch-hit his powerful leftfielder, Chris Duncan, a lefty hitter, for pitcher Chris Carpenter. This forced Randolph’s hand, as his current pitcher was Chad Bradford, whose submarine style makes him a less-than-ideal choice to face a lefty hitter.

The by-the-book move would be to go to Feliciano, but Randolph threw out the book. He called for Guillermo Mota. Mota got ahead 1–2 on Duncan, then induced a double play ball to second base. The Mets escaped from the inning and went on to win the game.

By the time you read this, you will know if the Mets are going on to the World Series or going into winter quarters to plan anew. If the disappointing latter, at the very least this much has been accomplished: Willie Randolph has taken his first step into a world of unlimited possibilities.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for www.yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.