The New York Post e-Edition

Cash pays for analytic loyalty with Rays defeat

WITH credit to the late Soupy Sales: Knock, knock. Who’s there? Sam and Janet. Sam and Janet who? Some enchanted evening!

In that song, from “South Pacific,” we’re asked: “Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.”

The musical’s lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, died in 1960, long before he could apply those lines to baseball as it’s being knocked senseless by the scourge of analytics, a junk science that blends vats of hocus with pocus.

Last year, Rays manager Kevin Cash gift-wrapped the World Series to the Dodgers when in the sixth and final game, he pulled starter Blake Snell in the sixth inning after he’d allowed his second hit of the game. At the time, Snell was totally in control and the Rays led, 1-0.

But Cash was one of those sensedefying bullpen roulette managers. Soon, against reliever Nick Anderson, the Dodgers took the lead and won the Series. Cash learned the hard way, but he’d never do that again.

But he didn’t learn and he did it again — Monday, in the fourth and final game of ALDS vs. the Red Sox.

In a game with a DH, starter Collin McHugh threw 18 pitches, allowing one hit in two innings. He was then removed by Cash, perhaps because he wanted McHugh well rested for spring training.

In came Shane McClanahan, who quickly allowed five hits, a walk and five runs.

So the epidemic of lunacy does not begin nor end with Aaron Boone. Hardly. It’s a sustaining, MLB-wide, self-inflicted disease. And for no good reason, they’re acts of treason as they provide aid and comfort to the forces intent on destroying baseball.

SPORTS

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2021-10-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://nypost.pressreader.com/article/282896618813945

New York Post