Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash made the questionable decision to pull Blake Snell amid a dominant start Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 6 of the World Series. The move ultimately backfired, as the bullpen blew the lead and the Rays went on to lose by a score of 3-1, sealing the team’s elimination.
After the Dodgers secured their seventh championship, Alex Rodriguez unloaded on the methods that led to Cash arguably making the most regrettable managerial decision in World Series history, one that is likely to be ridiculed for years to come.
“At a macro level, these front offices are really ruining our game,” Rodriguez said on the FOX postgame show, per the New York Post. “The Ivy Leaguers keep getting an ‘F’ in this class called playoff baseball.”
A-Rod woke up surly over the entire situation Wednesday morning following an evidently sleepless night. He took to Twitter to again rail on Cash’s analytics-based decision-making, even sharing footage of his rant the previous night in the process.
“He does not want to be a chess piece. He wants to be a baseball player,” Rodriguez said of Snell during his diatribe. “You want to be like John Smoltz, you want to be like Andy Pettitte, you want to be like Jack Morris.”
Snell was visibly upset over getting yanked in the sixth inning after surrendering only two hits and striking out nine while staking the Rays to a 1-0 lead. The pitcher, who admitted he was “definitely disappointed and upset” over being pulled, nevertheless refused to throw Cash under the bus.
Meanwhile, the presently embattled Cash defended the move while calling how things played out “gut-wrenching” given the disastrous results. He went on to defend the analytics-inspired decision, however, saying he did not want Snell to face Dodgers slugger Mookie Betts for a third time.
Suffice to say, A-Rod is not the only one who blasted the move — not to mention make the argument that analytics are ruining the game of baseball — and there are presumably countless Rays fans who reluctantly agree with his analysis.
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