What? They’re guaranteed to take the longer series. In that case, CC would pitch Wednesday (Game 1) and Monday (Game 4), on normal rest.

And, for the record, I believe you when you say that you don’t truly think you need to have played the game to be able to analyze it, but that’s what you said initially. Those words were your introduction to us here at RAB. You’ve gotta do some smart commenting to undo that initial dumb commenting to allow people some counter-evidence to forget that slip-up.

But like I said, we’re razzing you. It happens. Chin up.

Welcome aboard.

Seriously though, I don’t mind being the object of your scorn, especially because I’ll never match your persistence and that you seem to be good at it, but for the record I don’t think you need to have played the game to analyze it. I know the players are usually terrible at analyzing it and often refuse to acknowledge/adopt all the breakthroughs statisticians have made. But there are some things that go on between players and in clubhouses that they can help shed some light on sometimes. I thought the sign-stealing thing was such a case.

The other thing is, while people have questioned his occasional using 3 guys to get 4 outs, I actually like this style. Firstly because the combinations of guys he uses in the situations always gives him the best chance, percentage-wise, of successfully navigating the situation (I would argue that ace-coke-krob-marte will get the job done more often than any single one of those guys, and of course the team’s numbers back it up), but also because he gets the guys who aren’t going to be as effective getting 3-4 outs as 1-2 (in other words, everyone but Mo, Phil, and Ace) used to pitching about 5 times a week without getting abused at all. Throwing 20+ pitches in 3 straight games might blow your arm out, throwing 10 pitches in 3 straight games probably won’t.

Sure there have been a few games where, looked at in isolation, Girardi has made “the wrong call,” but looked at in context not only with their neighboring games, but in the context of the season as a whole, his moves have made sense. Anybody could have said ace for the 7th, phil for the 8th, mo for the 9th whenever we have the lead and have an amazing bullpen era, but this team has the lead a lot. by mid-august those guys would be toast, and everyone else would be underused and ineffective. Now, heading into october, you can use those guys in those situations and be confident that they are at full effectiveness, and also, should the situation dictate it (down a run/extra innings/whenever else), you have many more usable pieces.

As for the common PeteAbe complaint about the underuse of phil hughes, i personally think his low workload is an organizational decision to protect him. Girardi is great about not abusing his bullpen pitchers, but the nature of the bullpen is unhealthy for an arm to begin with. No matter what, even with Girardi, work is going to be irregular, warmup routines get cut down, and every pitch is thrown with maximum intensity. Phil hughes’s arm is more valuable than the 2 or 3 games we might have lost because we didn’t pitch him.