Brewers Panic, Fire Yost to Save Themselves

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↵The Milwaukee Brewers fired manager Ned Yost today, despite possessing a share of the wild card lead heading into today’s action. An obvious panic move if ever I saw one, from the outside it looks like management is making Yost take the fall for a short stretch of bad baseball that could wreck the team’s playoff run.↵↵Without a specific incident triggering the firing, it comes across as brutally cynical: Now, if things turn out poorly in the regular season, it will be difficult to pin blame on the front office. Since they’ve preemptively blamed Yost for the slide and unceremoniously dumped him from the organization, they can claim a poor result was his fault and they took the most drastic of measures to fight it. If things turn out well, they can take credit for making the change that saved the season.↵

↵↵Of course, rational people recognize that the players on the field are the ones who will either strain into the wild card or slink away into the offseason, and interim manager Dale Sveum can’t possibly have that much of an effect on whether Ben Sheets throws another shutout or Prince Fielder hits a few clutch home runs during the last two and a half weeks of September.↵

↵↵Even before the managerial change, it was going to be rough going. The pragmatic pessimists, including me, see that the Brewers have a tougher schedule than the Phillies from here on out, including five games against Chicago. If you’re a wishy washy optimist, you’ll see that a sudden hot streak, including two sweeps of the Cubs, could put them in contention for the division, let alone the wild card. The smart money’s on doom. ↵

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