Congratulations Cleveland

The Indians did a wonderful job of stifling the Yankees for the better part of four games and taking full advantage of the Yankees' mediocre starting pitching for a well-deserved series victory. However, it's still pretty obvious to me that manager Eric Wedge should not have started Paul Byrd, who was very fortunate to give up only two runs in five innings of mediocre work. I actually said before the game that Byrd should have refused to pitch and forced Wedge to start C.C. Sabathia instead, but I guess that never could have happened.

Later in the game, Wedge made another mistake by inserting Joe Borowski to pitch the ninth inning. Rafael Betancourt had just pitched a brilliant eighth inning using only twelve pitches. He is a far superior pitcher to Borowski and should have at minimum started the ninth. Borowski flirted with disaster, but survived, so Wedge still looks "smart." Unfortunately his general strategy is indicative of a conventional/conservative managing style that may or may not come back to bite him in the ass against Boston. It truly amazes me that managers still make so many basic mistakes, but I guess if the market is choosing people like this to manage baseball teams then maybe I am the fool.

Finally, this looks like the end for Joe Torre in New York. He seems like a nice guy, but he has also been a corpse in the dugout for the past five or six years.