On the other hand, I guess Joba is the third best reliever—after all, he is the 7th inning guy—so Girardi can’t be too faulted with using him in the sixth and seventh even if in this case he failed. Maybe Joba should be moved to the all important Sixth Inning Guy role, and Robertson promoted to Seventh Inning Guy?

As for why he hasn’t been used before, that’s a different issue. The fact is, as of last night he hadn’t pitched, the Yankees were down 3 against a very good team. If your #5 stater hasn’t seen work yet, it’s not a bad decision to get him an inning in. Beckett was totally on last night, and Paps, as much as I hate him, is a very good closer. Yankees chance last night was less than 2%.

Still, it’s got to be a very low Win Expectancy even if the trailing team puts everything on the line. So, even if Girardi made a mistake there, it couldn’t have been a big mistake, from the point of view of gaining expected wins.

Monkeypants, the situation was worse than you stated, since the moment in question was the bottom of the 8th. I see, maybe you were thinking, “Even if Soriano pitches and we shut them down, it’s still a very long shot.”

May as well try and keep it close, crazier things have happened than a team scoring three runs in the 9th inning. But again, it’s more a question to me of why use Garcia in particular there. On the one hand yes you have a day off tomorrow, why not use Soriano or whomever, but I’m more suspicious of the use of Garcia.

So the game was probably pretty much lost at this point.

Now of course, if the Yankees could have held the Sox lead to one run, their chances go up (but only to about 13%), which is why some argue that you should often (not always) use your best reliever earlier in a close game to keep it close, rather than save him for the ninth inning lead that may never come. But that’s a dead horse for another day!! ; )

And yeah, the situation only arises because ten or so games into the season he hasn’t pitched yet. It seems like poor planning all around.

This being said, with an off day following Girardi could have thrown out the WE chart in his binder and gone with a better reliever. Also, why is it that Garcia had yet to get any work yet this season? He pitched Soriano with a four run lead but couldn’t find room here our there to get some work out of his long man somewhere.

But then this leads to my larger critique of current baseball praxis: why do teams carry so many pitchers when it is obvious that #12 and #13, if not more, are useless. That a manager needs to “find” work for the last arm in his BP is evidence enough that the team is carrying one too many pitchers.

Once the Twins games was rained out the schedule affords the Yankees the luxury not to carry a #5 starter. So cut the staff to 11 men (send down or release someone useless like Ayala if they need to protect Garcia) until the end of April when the “need” for that extra pitcher is more pressing.

I had the feeling at that point the game was lost. Not going to fault Joe for putting Freddy in at that point. He’s going to be starting on Friday and there certainly can be a Garcia vs. Mitre debate, but once the decision has been made, you get the guy ready to pitch.