Yankee fans have had a rough couple years to say at least. There's been a postseason drought and the rebuilding process has been cumbersome. This year has had a lot of great moments with an influx of youth and excitement that seems deep enough to last for many years. Rookie of the Year candidates, MVP candidates, Home Run Champions and "The Beat Goes On". The Postseason is something that Yankee fans have come to appreciate more and more because of the drought that they've lived through recently, but Friday night's game in Cleveland couldn't have been a more crushing defeat. If your team gets hammered you live with it, and you go on and try to do better and focus even more. You try to reset the narrative for the next time, and if you've done your best and you get beaten then sometimes you just tip your cap. Friday's game in Cleveland didn't have a script like that. It was a series of blunders, miscalculations, and bad decisions. As my son pointed out if the Yankees only made half the mistakes they made they probably still win, but that's life in the fast lane.
Historic comebacks always need some help from the other team that's the way it works, and the Yankees provided plenty of that. The details are well-documented from an early departure of CC Sabbathia, to a failed review on an umpires call, to being picked off in the 11th inning. All of them a disaster in their own right, but together a tsunami too much for the Yankees to overcome.
Sports is the only true reality show in the world, it's played by humans who compete and pay the price every day. There is a bigger issue here and I've been talking about it for a long time and that's the Sports World's obsession with statistics and letting the computer dictate how someone manages a game. A computer is a machine that collects data statistics and information to "Aid The Human Condition" not take it over. Saber
Metrics, Stat Cast and all the other databases that baseball seems to be obsessed with are there to aid the manager not to dictate what he does without thinking about the human element. When the game is on the line a good manger should be able to make his own decisions based on what he sees, what he knows, and his own experience. If you're going to leave the human element out of it the managers should just sit in their offices send in their lineups and let the computers figure out who won the game.
A manager's job is to read the moment and make decisions based on specific game situations, and adjust to the problems he sees on the field. Otherwise you might as well let the computer make the decisions for you and then why do you need a human manager at all. The computer can't tell you if a pitcher is losing his velocity, if his tempo is off, if he is struggling with his motion and delivery. Or if a batter is chasing pitches, if his swing speed is late, or if he's over swinging etc. That's the human element. That's what a manager is supposed to be able to do, not just read a stat sheet and manage the game based on computer data. The upsetting thing about the Yankee loss on Friday is that it seems that that's exactly how Joe Girardi managed the game. "Formula Joe and his stat sheet". The game got away from him because he didn't know how to make in-game momentary decisions. Managers like that do not help their team win they're just caretakers to the statistics they use and in the real time moments when they need to make decisions they come up short. Which is what we saw on Friday with the Yankees, it was a sad day. Managers, coaches, and analysts need to be able to tell the difference between real action, human performance and fantasy teams. They need to go back to managing by what they see, otherwise owners should just plug it into the wall socket and let the computers dictate the day. Computers can be a man's best friend but they're not meant to replace the man. Spock was Captain Kirk's most valuable asset, but he wasn't there to take over the ship.
