We like to have our fun with managers here on the Internet. Baseball fans have been complaining about managers for 130 years, so it's not exactly a byproduct of the technological revolution, but the Internet makes the complaining louder. And easier. Also, louder. Your complaint can echo off the walls of the Internet and reach the eyes of 100 different people who all think the same way. It's great.

The only problem: The worst managers probably aren't losing as many games as you think. Not even close. The decision to bunt a runner over to second with no outs will cost your team runs in the long term, but there will be successes mixed in, too. Bloop singles that score that runner from second, just at the right time. Think of in-game managerial decisions like some sort of alternate blackjack table that's still tilted toward the house, but juuuuuuust barely. The worst managers sit down with $1,000 in chips and continually make dumb decisions, but lose about an average of $50 after a full season of drunken gambling, tops.

There is an exception, though. A big, big honking exception. There's just about no way Mike Scioscia could bunt his way to seven more losses, but if he sat Mike Trout for Cal Towey every game of the season, he could cost the Angels seven or more wins. Why aren't you playing Trout, skip?

Needs to cut his sideburns.

And that's all it would take. That alternate reality Scioscia would cost his team seven or more wins. That would never happen, of course. No one's going to sit Trout for a minor leaguer, not unless we're talking about a lizard-people conspiracy that goes straight to the top. But the example is used to prove a point. Managers can absolutely murder their teams if they don't play the right players.

Which brings us to Don Mattingly, who was once released by a team for not cutting his sideburns, so we've come full circle. If you want a short version of his dilemma, here you go:

Jimmy Rollins, the 36-year-old Hall of Nearly Greater with a .279 on-base percentage, hurt his finger. The Dodgers called up Corey Seager, super prospect, as a replacement, and he's hit .419/.528/.628 with six doubles, nine walks and just four strikeouts in 53 plate appearances. Rollins is almost ready to come back from the DL now, so there's a decision to make.

You're caught up. The manager is at least pretending there's a decision to make.

When Rollins is ready to play, he will go back to being the starting shortstop, Mattingly said. — Dylan Hernandez (@dylanohernandez) September 12, 2015

Since then, Mattingly has hemmed and hawed, shifted and deflected. Now there are more we'll-sees than definitive statements either way. Possibly because he doesn't want it to be a distraction. Possibly because he can't respond with, "Jimmy Rollins is a decomposing mummy and Corey Seager is an erupting volcano of molten baseball talent. What do you think I'm going to do, jerk?" Possibly because he's really torn on what to do.

It is possible for people to be conflicted on this. Steve Dilbeck of the Los Angeles Times isn't even conflicted. The headline of latest column:

Corey Seager or Jimmy Rollins? Dodgers need to go with experience

Dilbeck's arguments, roughly:

Seager couldn't buy a beer until recently, which makes it unlikely that he's better than Rollins?



Rollins has experience





Rollins has postseason experience





Rollins knows how to "step up in the biggest, most pressure-packed games."





Postseason experience has what plants crave





Postseason experience has electrolytes





Seager is just 21, you know, so ...

The argument is simple. So is the rebuttal to the logic used in the argument, though: Sandy Koufax also has postseason experience, but you don't want him starting Game 7 of the 2015 World Series for you. At some point, the body betrays the experience. It's not fair, we'll eventually die and the sun will burn out. But you can't just say that a player is the better option because he's baseballed well in the past. There's a tipping point. There always is.

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However, Dilbeck does use the most cogent argument of all: sample size. We have 53 plate appearances suggesting Seager is the greatest rookie shortstop in baseball history since the last one. We have 421 plate appearances from Triple-A, though, that suggest Seager is a work in progress.

A .332 on-base percentage in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League isn't encouraging at all, not if you're looking for immediate, guaranteed results. If you're arguing for Seager, you might be the one telling Mattingly to get his nose out of the stat sheets and watch a game. The minor league stats suggest he's a little underbaked.

The Dodgers have to use their eyes. We're talking the whole village, from Farhan Zaidi down. They have to out-scout the advance scouts and look for the adjustments Seager will have to face for the teams that are ready for him. They have to anticipate just how he'll struggle, and how he'll adjust to the adjustments. They'll have to figure out why Seager was so underwhelming against inferior pitching. Remember that Joc Pederson was setting the league aflame when he came up, too. Major League Baseball is hard.

The way to solve this conundrum is to stop focusing on Seager. Focus on Rollins instead. Focus on his season instead of the limited sample of Seager's mad dash. What the Dodgers will find with an honest assessment of Rollins, what they have to find, is that they have a 36-year-old shortstop who has been awful this year. His defense is sound, but it isn't magic. The bat is slower.

There's more guessing in every plate appearance because he needs to speed that bat up. The 12 steals out of 20 attempts, easily the worst percentage of the year, suggest he's lost a step on the bases. Aside from a mini-hot streak in July (with his OBP still under .300), he has been a constant drag on an imperfect offense. And now he's returning from a hand injury.

It's the description of a player that a postseason-bound team should think about replacing anyway.

Now look and see what the alternatives are and, whoa, look at this, it turns out there's a 21-year-old phenom shortstop hitting like he's found the options menu of baseball and adjusted the difficulty. If Seager didn't exist, the Dodgers should still be in a pickle with what to do about Rollins. As is, it's almost impossible not to go with the higher ceiling. We know what Seager's worst-case scenario would be if he's overmatched. It would look a lot like Rollins.

Mattingly might want to keep the clubhouse happy. The Dodgers might be waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the league to catch up to Seager. Maybe there's hard evidence, statistical and scouting, that suggests Rollins has been nothing but unlucky.

It looks obvious from here in Pundit Land, though. Whatever he does, Mattingly had better be sure when he makes his decision. This is the one thing a manager can't screw up.

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SB Nation presents: All that's happened with the Dodgers during Vin Scully's tenure