It has become apparent this season that Joe Girardi learned well at the foot of the master of stupidity. For years (and years and years and...), Joe Torre cost the Yankees victories by refusing to use his best pitchers in the highest-leverage situations. Most egregiously, he steadfastly avoided bringing Mariano Rivera into tie games on the road in late innings. Why? Dunno. You'd have to ask Torre. Maybe the Big Book of Old-Timey Baseball Laws told him to.
Tonight, and not for the first time, Joe Girardi left Mariano Rivera sitting on his ass with the game on the line in a 1-1 game in the bottom of the ninth inning. He brought The Arsonist Kyle Farnsworth into the game instead. So Rivera would be saved to protect a lead that might very well never have occurred. That Farnsworth got out of the inning is entirely beside the point. Girardi needed to ask himself, "Who has the best chance to get this game to extra innings to give us a chance to win?" The answer is not Kyle Farnsworth.
I will not rest until the Yankees have a manager who, at the very least, doesn't blatantly hand the opposition games through sheer stupidity. A skipper with some basic understanding of the grander intricacies of the game would be nice, but I'm not chasing rainbows here. I'm just demanding a bare minimum of reasoning ability.
And so tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you the debut of.....
The "Fire Joe Girardi" tag!
That didn't take long.
