Yostie´s mouth is back

So far this year the airtight baseball manager logic hadn't yet flowed out of Ned Yost's mouth in any clearly damaging capacity. That was until yesterday. Lets take a quick look at his justification for not leaving James Shields in after pitching eight scoreless innings of two-hit baseball (obviously, I'm not the one who noticed):

“In a one-run game,” Yost said, “(if) you send (the starter out) out, he’s either going to win it or lose it. So you let the closer go out and try to do his job.”

Okay...get ready because we are about to tumble deep down the well of Yostian logical incompatibilities regarding this new gem of  a quote. So, first of all, his justification relies on the utterly meaningless win-loss stat, kind of (we´ll come back to this). Further we can only assume that it also relies on that managerial psychology Yost so famously employs to protect his player's psyche. We are then to assume that a starter losing a ball game after pitching eight scoreless innings would be so damaging to his mental state that the repercussions would be nearly fatal. If James Shields had gone out and given up a run or two in the ninth, he might retire from baseball and move to a Tibetan monastery and never speak again. We must stop to point out that apparently this rule is only applicable in a one-run game, given the previous statement, the fact that Jeremy Guthrie was allowed to close out his game a few days ago and this response from James Shields:

"...and I think if we scored another run right there [in the previous inning], he (Ned Yost) was gonna leave me out there."

We're getting pretty deep down the well here, so lets stop and review. In a one run game you don´t leave your starting pitcher in to finish it because starting pitchers can´t handle losing ball games that are so close. This is also James Shields, the guy we gave up our best hitting and best pitching prospect to get two years of potential nine inning complete game shutouts and, yes, WINS!!! However, obviously this is irrelevant when you arrive at the Yostian One Run Lead Axiom of Managerial Bullpen Usage Theory. This is also closely related to the Yostian One Run Lead Existential Dread Theory of Fragile Starting Pitcher Mental Stability. We also need only dig into Ned Yost, Ph.D.'s research a few games back to see how clear this theory is. Four starts prior in Toronto, in the EXACT same situation, Ned Yost let this very James Shields pitch the ninth inning. However, this was when he was already losing the game, so clearly he had already been mentally conditioned to the prospect of losing a close game and therefore Ned's previous two theories are no longer applicable.

Once we have understood this concept, we then must move to the conclusion: none of these rules apply to relievers. Obviously this has to be true or you could only use them in two-run lead situations and therefore only position players would be allowed to pitch with one-run leads in the ninth. Parsing through his quote some more we are to understand that it is the JOB of  a closer to pitch with one run leads in the ninth, but this is clearly not the JOB of a starting pitcher. Not Even the Ace of the staff, the Veteran Leader and certainly not the guy who led the league in Complete Games two years ago. No the mental state of a reliever with two years experience and an already erratic year, he is the guy you trust, because that's his JOB.

We're here, at the very bottom. Because we must now conclude that it is only a starter's JOB to win baseball games when the lead is greater than one run in the ninth inning. If a starter pitches a great game and holds the team without scoring over eight innings, but his team happens to only score one run, then and only then is when a starting pitcher loses his job of winning baseball games and it now becomes the job of the closer to SAVE games. It has nothing to do with pitch counts, nothing to do with the quality of a starting pitcher, nothing to do with how he is pitching in the game, no when the game is 1-0, you pull the starting pitcher because...I´m sorry but I can´t go on.

“(if) you send (the starter out) out, he’s either going to win it or lose it." Yes, Ned, this is exactly what happens EVERY TIME a starting pitcher, or a baseball team for that matter, walks out on the field. You either win or lose (presumably Ned was actually trying to do the former) and the best way to win is to LEAVE YOUR BEST PITCHER IN THE GAME!!!!!! Don't make up ridiculous rules that have nothing to do with the actual game situation. This is Ned Yost, this is the stuff that comes out of his mouth constantly and these are the decisions which lead to Royal losses.