The New York Yankees’ Game 2 pitching debacle has a lot of people baffled over the teams’ decision-making, including former pinstriped star Alex Rodriguez.
Following Wednesday’s Game 3 loss to the Rays, which put the Yankees on the brink of elimination, Rodriguez ripped into GM Brian Cashman and the Yankees front office for their flawed strategy in the game prior, taking Deivi Garcia out after one inning and using J.A. Happ out of the bullpen, which may have been the turning point in the series.
“I’m still scratching my head,” he said. “I mean, you’re the New York Yankees. You’re the biggest, most successful franchise maybe in sports. You’re number one in payroll with $240 million. You have to play your game. You’ve done it for over 120 years. You have 27 championships. You’ve done it as an alpha. You’ve done it the old-fashioned way.
“You get to Game 1, you do it the old-fashioned way: Great starting pitching and you get nine outs from the bullpen,” he continued. “And then to Game 2, the front office wants to get involved and then you start getting gimmicky. To me, the Yankee roster has to bail out Brian Cashman and the front office – and they’ve done some wonderful things – Game 2 was a mistake. And it was a mistake for about 20 different reasons.”
Happ intimated after Game 2 that the organization knew how he felt about the strategy, although he did not use it as an excuse. The Yankees had not used either Happ or Garcia as an opener in any form during the course of the regular season.
“The players start saying, ‘What are we doing?’” A-Rod added. “You start spending so much time trying to figure out how to outsmart the Ivy Leaguers over there. That’s not your game. Don’t play Jeopardy!, play baseball. Players win championships.”
Rodriguez also appeared to absolve manager Aaron Boone’s role in the process, which Cashman told the New York Post was an organizational decision, although the GM added that Boone ultimately had the final say.
However, Rodriguez did not seem think so.
“We used to say, ‘If a manager can stay out of the game, that’ll be great,” A-Rod said. “Now we have to say, ‘Front offices have to stay out of the game.’ Frustrating. The last thing I’ll say is it’s unfortunate that Aaron Boone has to sit there and explain to the media what he’s doing. I would love the smart Ivy Leaguers to come down – the front office – and explain to us why that was a smart move for the New York Yankees and that fan base.”
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