#LOLYankees

Good managers, like good players, can have bad games. Joe Girardi has, on balance, done an outstanding job in the Bronx, but yesterday he had a day Grady Little wouldn’t sign for:

There was a big, big call in yesterday’s Yankees-Indians game that, if made correctly, would’ve ended an Indians rally and, in all likelihood, would’ve allowed the Yankees to beat the Indians. The call was not made correctly on the field however, and Joe Girardi did not challenge it. Hours later, he still didn’t have a good answer as to why he didn’t.

The call came in the bottom of the sixth inning, when Chad Green threw a two-strike, two-out pitch to Lonnie Chisenhall. The ball grazed the knob of Chisenhall’s bat, but home plate umpire Dan Iassogna called it a hit-by-pitch. Catcher Gary Sanchez held on to the ball, by the way, so if it was correctly called a foul tip, it would’ve been out number three. The call was wrong, however, as you can see here…

…Despite this, Joe Girardi did not ask for a replay challenge. Chisenhall took first base, Francisco Lindor came to the plate and hit the grand slam that gave the Indians new life. They, of course, came back to win the game.

There were several hours in between that grand slam and Girardi’s postgame interview in which he had time to gather his thoughts about it all. His answer when he was asked about the non-challenge started out well enough:

“There was nothing that told us that he was not hit by the pitch . . . By the time we got the super slow-mo, we are beyond a minute. It was too late. They tell us we have 30 seconds.”

Partially understandable in the abstract, but that doesn’t hold up in context. It doesn’t because his catcher, Sanchez, was a foot away from the ball when it hit the knob of the bat — he had literally the best seat in the house — and was clearly imploring Girardi to challenge the call. You don’t always listen to your players when they tell you to challenge a call — no baserunner has ever been out in their mind in the replay era — but you have to believe your catcher in that situation, based both on his proximity and on the gravity of the game situation.

More broadly, of course, Girardi had almost nothing to lose: if he was wrong about the challenge and thus lost the ability to challenge again, fine. He was only an inning away from the umpires being given the authority to initiate challenges on their own. On the off chance, in Girardi’s mind at the time anyway, that he was right, an Indians rally and an inning would’ve come to an end. The risk-reward calculus at the time clearly demanded a challenge be mounted.

Bill James liked to observe that in most cases it’s hard to prove that a manager’s in-game tactical decisions are wrong, because there are too many unknowable variables about specific questions. And while it’s fun to argue about I think this is true of some of Girardi’s questionable decisions last night — the quick hook on Sabathia, arguably staying too long with Robertson and Betances (although I would say the fact that he didn’t want to use Betances before extra innings makes taking Sabathia out at 77 pitches worse than it would be in a vacuum.) But the failure to challenge the phantom HBP is an obvious exception. The upside is huge — the difference between the inning being over with a 5-run lead and an excellent bullpen needing 9 outs and having the bases loaded, two out, and a guy who slugged .505 at the plate is about as big as you’re going to get outside of a challenge to the winning run or something. And, as Calcaterra says the downside here is essentially nothing — Girardi still would have had a challenge, and in a playoff game the umps would almost certainly review any close meaningful play in the late innings anyway. I could maybe give him a pass if nobody noticed in real time, but even in the 30-second window (that Girardi could have extended anyway) he had 1)Sahchez strongly indicating that the ball hit the bat and 2)a replay showing that Chisenhall did not react from being “hit” with a fastball in the high 90s, and made no motion towards first base until the umpire awarded it to him.

Again, Girardi is a real good manager — I’d give him a blank check if he wanted to manage the Mariners. He’s very good with pitchers, and the development of players like Judge and Hicks has been quite astounding. I’d rank only Bochy and Tito clearly ahead of him. But he screwed up a playoff game about as badly as you can.