FanHouse Ned Yost

While we await the winner of the last Division Series to be settled, a few teams that have already finished their season are in the process of trying to find new managers who can get them to the postseason next year. Two of those teams, the Cleveland Indians and Houston Astros, have interest in a couple of coaches from the recently eliminated Boston Red Sox.

The Indians contacted the Red Sox to see if they could interview pitching coach John Farrell as it seems Farrell is Mark Shapiro's top candidate to replace Eric Wedge. Well, Theo Epstein said that Cleveland can talk all they want with Farrell, but odds are he's going to be staying in Boston.

Yesterday, there were a lot of people feeling sorry for Mets fans. I mean, I felt sorry for Mets fans and I never feel sorry for anyone (I'm a Pirate fan, forgive me). After feeling sorry for the Mets for a minute, I realized that the person we should probably all feel a little sorry for is Ned Yost. He managed the Brewers for almost six years, then got fired 12 games before their first playoff berth since 1982. Sure, he was a bad manager, but that doesn't mean he's not human. It must come as at least a little consolation that Dale Sveum and Doug Melvin value his contribution:

"I sent Ned an e-mail," said Melvin, who became emotional while talking about the manager he fired with 12 games remaining in the season. "He went through 93% of the season. I backed Ned and supported him."

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"Ned Yost is a good friend of mine," said Sveum. "I wish he could be here right now."

As consolations go, I don't imagine hearing this is much for Yost. He's said he'll be rooting for his old team in the playoffs and since he's clearly still got a lot of friends in the organization I believe him, but it still has to sting to watch someone else pop the champagne bottle and run the lineup card out to the umpire before the NLDS starts. Of course, the Brewers did make the playoffs after appearing to be dead on the water when Yost was fired, so it's hard to feel that bad for him.

With the playoff chase coming down to the wire, our MLB editor rounds up the five biggest pennant race stories in Eye Toward October.

- One Final Gamble: For the better part of two months, the Brewers have been rolling the dice. They went out and got reigning AL Cy Young winner CC Sabathia in July. Once they got Sabathia and once it became clear the bullpen couldn't be trusted in tight spots, they rode Sabathia and Ben Sheets hard -- pushing them past the 110-pitch and even 120-pitch mark with regularity.

And then with the team scuffling through September, they made a move that was just as dramatic as the Sabathia trade -- they fired manager Ned Yost, an almost unprecedented move for a contender. Some of the gambles have worked and some of them haven't.

The effect of four 120-plus pitch starts probably took their toll on the fragile Sheets. But on the flip side, the Brewers would probably be out of contention if the Sabathia deal wasn't made.

Milwaukee will roll the dice one last time Sunday, hoping that one last roll will result in a spot in the postseason after 25 long years. Fittingly, they'll have their biggest gamble -- Sabathia -- on the mound for that last roll. And he'll be starting on short rest for the second consecutive turn. Things might not go the Brewers' way in their last stand of 2008, but at least they'll be in familiar territory with their season on the line.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

The Brewers have had a wild few weeks. The standings might say they're tied with the Mets for the wild card, but they don't tell the whole story. It's well documented here and everywhere that the Brewers had a 5 1/2-game lead in the NL wild-card race on Sept. 1st and the whole thing was gone on Sept. 15th, which lead to Ned Yost's firing. Since then, the Brewers have been treading water and even with their near-epic collapse, they're still in the thick of things 10 days after Yost's firing.

So what's the deal in Milwaukee? Why did this team collapse? Can they still make the playoffs? What happens if they do? What happens if they don't? The Brewers don't generally come up in converstations about baseball's most enigmatic teams, but there's hasn't been any team that's more interesting or compelling than Milwaukee in 2008.

With the playoff chase coming down to the wire, our MLB editor rounds up the five biggest pennant race stories in Eye Toward October.

- Second City Collapse: With every loss in September, the Mets are painted as chokers -- victims of another September swoon. That depiction was fair in 2007. They had a seven-game lead in the standings on Sept. 12 and wound up out of contention. It is not fair this year. The largest lead they have had this September was 3 1/2 games.

No, the Mets are just a flawed team that loses very ugly and carries the stigma from a year ago. Shift your focus from Queens to the South Side of Chicago if you want to see a team on the verge of a "collapse." The White Sox have dropped the first two games of a three-game series with the Twins this week.

If Minnesota finishes the sweep tomorrow, Chicago will find itself in unfamiliar territory -- second place in the AL Central. It will also be staring down a harrowing final weekend, needing to pick up a game in the win column against the Indians while the Twins play host to the Royals.

Oh, if the White Sox collapse it won't be in the same realm as the Mets' historic freefall in 2007. But it will be nearly as frustrating. Since May 17, Chicago has occupied first place for all but a dozen days. For the vast majority of the season, Ozzie Guillen's bunch has been demonstrably better than the Twins. They have a more polished and experienced starting rotation, a slightly better bullpen and a superior collection of offensive talent.

All Minnesota has is a good defense to prop up a very pedestrian starting rotation and a surreal .310 batting average with runners in scoring position. The Twins have had one other thing, a decided edge in a vital year-end head-to-head matchup. With it, they've pushed the White Sox to the edge of a cliff. Mark it down: Chicago needs a win Thursday much more than Minnesota.

With the playoff chase coming down to the wire, our MLB editor rounds up the five biggest pennant race stories in Eye Toward October.

- No Time for Panic: The Brewers finally stopped the bleeding Wednesday night, beating the Cubs to end a five-game winning streak and keeping pace with the Mets, who were also victorious, in the wild-card race. But they might be worse off anyway. Ben Sheets left the game after two innings with stiffness in his forearm. After the game, Sheets revealed he has been battling elbow soreness since late August -- describing it as a "cutting" sensation.

Yikes. Considering this is a team that just couldn't go on with its manager with two weeks left in the season and the wild-card lead, it's hard to imagine that the possibility one of its best pitchers being out indefinitely will go over well. Milwaukee has already made its panic move by firing Ned Yost. Now they're really in trouble, right?

Yes and no. Sheets was slated to make two more starts this season. If he can't make either, you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the Brewers have a better chance at qualifying for the postseason than they did yesterday. That doesn't mean we should bury them entirely, though.

After all, it's only two starts. Sure, maybe they're two of the biggest starts in a quarter century for the franchise, but how many mediocre pitchers, even terrible pitchers, have strung together two good starts in a row in the major leagues. Heck, Carl Pavano even won two consecutive starts at the end of last month.

Stars are born this time of year, but so are unlikely heroes who rise to the occasion at the right moment then fade into baseball oblivion. (See: Spencer, Shane.) Carlos Villanueva or Seth McClung would be in line to start should Sheets be unable to go, and both are capable of turning in a good start or two.

There have been plenty of histrionics about the Mets and Brewers collapsing, but odds are one of those teams is going to the postseason anyway. With or without Sheets, there's no reason it can't be Milwaukee.

By now, everyone knows the saga of Ned Yost. Whether one agrees with the firing or not -- and there are reasons to be had on both sides of the debate -- most everyone agrees that Yost was bound to be fired at some point. The choice was not whether to fire Yost, but when; the Brewers just happened to pick a particularly provocative time.

If I was Ned Yost, I'd be furious. I'd be angry. Those words mean the same thing, but I'd somehow manage to be both of them. I'd be wishing that all the worst things in the world happened to the Brewers, and only the Brewers. I would morph into Silky Johnston and let the hate flow. But not Ned. Ned's bigger than that:

"I've got XM Radio, so I'll be able to listen to the Brewers pitch-by-pitch and be rooting Dale on in his first win," Yost said. "If anybody thinks that I've got sour grapes or I don't want this club to succeed, they're crazy. I'll be rooting them on every inch of the way and I hope they can win that wild card and go deep, deep into the playoffs and win the World Series," he said.

That's pretty impressive. Given the base circumstances of the situation -- managing a young team so close to the playoffs, and then getting canned -- Yost is being really big here. Not as big as Prince Fielder's daily intake of tofu ... but big all the same.

When Ned Yost got the phone call from GM Doug Melvin asking for a meeting yesterday morning, he admitted that for a moment his job flashed before his eyes. From Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

"I said, 'Are they going to fire me?' I said, 'No, not with 12 games left,' " recalled Yost, who has a year left on his contract.

But when Yost entered Melvin's room and owner Mark Attanasio was there also, the message was clear.

"When I saw Mark, I knew that was it," he said.

The Brewers have been simply awful since the start of September -- they've lost 11 of 14 and have five regulars under the Mendoza line -- but Yost still thinks he received a bum deal:

Asked to sum up the situation, Yost said, "It's the nature of the business but it's gotten a little strange. Two bad weeks (and you get fired)."

What Yost is forgetting, though, is that the Brewers have gone through more than two bad weeks, at least when you consider their performance down the stretch last season. The Brewers led the NL Central by as many as 8 1/2 games last year and still managed to miss the playoffs. If he couldn't stop the slide in 2007, why should Melvin and Attanasio have thought he could stop it this year?

Baseball is a very bizarre sport. It's a sport full of accepted norms and unwritten rules that are counter intuitive to success, but they're followed because, "it's how things have always been done." Imagine yourself as the CEO of a business with an inept manager running one of your branches right before a crucial stretch for the company. Would you hesitate to fire that manager? Of course not. And yet somehow, when the Brewers make a similar decision with Ned Yost today it's "drastic" and "desperate" (and yes, I'm as guilty of using those words as anyone).

Instead of considering that nothing like this has happened in recent baseball memory, let's view this move through a different lens. The Brewers were sinking fast, having lost a 5 1/2 game lead in 13 games. With 12 games to go, there seemed to be almost no hope of them playing a game better than the Phillies to snag the wild card. After the collapse was complete and the season over, Ned Yost would have almost certainly been fired in short order. Why wait? If you can do something about a bad situation, don't you have to do it?

The bottom line on Yost is that he's a bad manager. His in-game decisions are questionable at best and it seems to me, from reading between the lines of quotes, that Ryan Braun has either called him out or gone right over his head in public twice this year (one and two). Throw in his insane whinings about the CC Sabathia one-hitter and you've got an all-out distraction for a team making a pennant run. It seems crazy that the Brewers fired him with 12 games left, but I think it's crazier that they waited this long.

Apparently losing a 5 1/2 game lead in 13 games is not good for job security. Word out of Milwaukee this afternoon is that the Brewers have given manager Ned Yost the axe with 12 games remaining in the 2008 season with their team tied for the National League wild-card lead.

Of course, the being tied part is the problem given the massive lead the Brewers enjoyed just two weeks ago. When players like Ryan Braun are calling things "a complete and total disaster," the handwriting is more than on the wall. GM Doug Melvin released a pithy statement:

"This was a very difficult move to make, and we appreciate all of the work that Ned has done to develop this team into a contender," Melvin said. "In the end, this was a collaborative decision made to put our Club in the best position for the final two weeks of the season."

The interim manager will be third base coach Dale Sveum while bench coach Ted Simmons has been "reassigned." While I don't think that Yost is a great manager, this is an incredibly desperate move so late in the season. It's indicative that things must be pretty ugly in the Brewers' clubhouse for Melvin to think such a move is necessary and that it might have the intended effect of waking his club out of their funk. Whether or not it will work is to be seen but with the way things were going in Milwaukee, Melvin clearly felt like he had to do something to keep this season from going down the drain.

Quick update: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer Tom Haudricort guesses that Melvin didn't have much to do with this and it came down from owner Mark Attanasio.