Notes on Pitching in the Majors

Tonight, I was watching updates online of the Giants-Mets game, and one of my pet peeves occurred -- they brought in a reliever to pitch to Barry Bonds, and then had him issue an intentional walk (this has nothing to do with Bonds in particular, it's generally annoying, and Bonds is just the batter it seems to happen most often with). Now, I'd understand switching strategies and issuing an intentional walk if the runner on first had stolen second (or advanced to it by some other means), but bringing in a reliever to throw four intentional balls to Bonds makes no sense. If the previous pitcher (usually a starter, and Tom Glavine in this case) has gotten into a situation where an intentional walk to Bonds is warranted, have him issue it. I've even seen games where a pitcher was brought in to intentionally walk Bonds and then was replaced before the next batter -- what did that guy do to get on his manager's bad side? (Usually, the batter following Bonds was pinch-hit for, which explains the yanking of the pitcher, but not why he was brought in to intentionally walk Bonds in the first place.)

While I'm commenting on that, I'll add a note on the official scoring as it relates to pitchers. As those of you who follow baseball know, a pitcher will not be charged for an earned run if an error allowed that run to score (that's an over-simplification, but you get the idea). For some reason, this includes not being charged for earned runs for homeruns they allow following errors when there are two outs in the inning (such as happened with Turnbow on Sunday night, which spurred his remark but did not create this opinion, as it is one I've long held). I strongly disagree with this -- if they give up a homerun, they should be charged the earned run for it, period (though not the other runs scored by it, excepting those that fall under my next point). Also, supposing there are two outs in an inning in which an error occurred; if the pitcher gives up a hit, walks a man, or beans a man, and that man subsequently scores, the pitcher should be charged an earned run for that as well, excepting the case where another error was committed. These seem like common-sense issues to me, but the official rules of Major League Baseball do not seem to agree. Well, I should add a slight caveat -- they don't agree, but they might not disallow what I am proposing, and it might merely be scoring convention; I haven't read the rules in awhile. I know there are some rarely used exceptions when it comes to such things as assigning wins (which is how Chris Ray got one earlier this year, which was helpful to my fantasy team), and there might be when it comes to assigning earned runs. Either way, the way it is conventionally handled, at least, strikes me as wrong.