Yost Firing Unprecedented, but Not Necessarily Unwise

It wasn't just the American financial system that melted down this weekend, but also the Milwaukee Brewers. Having woken up Thursday with a four-game lead in the National League wild card race, they went to sleep Sunday with no lead at all, having lost four straight to the Philadelphia Phillies, who tied them with the final win. Today, Milwaukee wakes up with a new manager, as yesterday Ned Yost got the sack. If only Wall Street could do the same.

The firing of a manager, who after all was at the time tied for a playoff spot with just two weeks left in the season, is unprecedented in baseball history. This is pretty strong evidence that it was a good idea. No team does something so dramatic unless they honestly think there's nothing else to do. Milwaukee came out of a September 1 loss to the Mets with a 5.5 game lead, promptly went 3-6, and still had to endure a four-game sweep at the hands of their top rivals just to fall into a tie. If the closest observers of the situation think the year can be salvaged with a switch, it's hard to second-guess them. The better question might be why it took so long.

As a distant observer of Milwaukee over the years, I've been impressed by much of what Yost has done, especially in the way of young players. Since 2003, the team has developed several exceptional, if hardly well-rounded, talents such as Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun, and it's easy to forget that the standings might look quite different if another one of them, pitching prodigy Yovani Gallardo, hadn't torn up his knee on a freak play in May at Wrigley Field.

That very freak play, though, showed an example of Yost's signal flaw: a propensity for the staggeringly inane. I happened to be sitting in the stands at that game with a friend, and as soon as Gallardo hit the ground at a really ugly angle, both of us were mourning the potential loss of a terrific young pitcher. Oddly, Yost let him finish out the inning on what later proved to be a torn ACL. This is a relatively small thing, but I've often been bewildered by Yost's seemingly nonsensical use of his bullpen and inability to run a sound defense or enforce a disciplined style of play. A man who played Braun (an all-time butcher) on the infield and infielder Bill Hall in center, as Yost did last year in a pennant race, is a man not entirely to be trusted.

To this it must be added that this year isn't even the first Brewers collapse Yost has overseen in the last two years. After a great start last year, Milwaukee had a record of 42-31 and a lead of 8.5 games as of June 22. With that kind of lead, a team can usually bank a playoff spot so long as they play .500 ball the rest of the way — and indeed the Brewers would have, but they went 41-48 the rest of the way. Even so, they had a one-game lead on Chicago in the National League Central as late as September 11, and were tied for the lead September 12. They finished two games out of first. Perhaps worst of all, while they went 9-8 down the stretch, three of their four losses were by one run, and another was by two.

In such circumstances, it would be hard to say that Yost's weird fixations on particular relievers and inability to straighten out his defense weren't to blame. Whether or not tossing him overboard works, you at least have to give owner Mark Attansio respect for not standing by helplessly pulling his hair as his ship went down in flames. Shrewd longtime Brewers-watcher Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel credits Attansio as the driving force behind the firing, and between his willingness to trade for ace pitcher CC Sabathia and his radical solution to the problem of a listing team, whatever else can be said of Attansio, he clearly means it when he says he's trying to win.

Will the firing make a difference? Maybe so. Yost was an odd manager, with some real strengths, but one who was unusually prone to huge, mind-numbing mistakes. Ask any Brewers fan who's watched blown-out closers like Derrick Turnbow, Eric Gagne, and David Riske wander into tight games while sporting four-digit ERAs over the last two years. Interim chieftain Dale Sveum (pronounced "Swaim," for the curious) may not rally his troops down the line, and he may not prove to have an unreal knack for turning prospects into players. As long as his team doesn't end up missing the playoffs because he pitched Gagne against Derrek Lee or something similar, though, the historic firing will likely have been a good cause.

tmarchman@nysun.com