Sam Borden of the Journal News:

You want to call him an idiot? Fine. You can call him that. Maybe Joe Girardi made a dumb decision yesterday. Maybe.

He’s not apologizing though. He’s not calling what he did a mistake. It wasn’t like he and his coaches didn’t think about having Mike Mussina walk Manny Ramirez with a base open and a one-run lead in the sixth inning. They thought about it. And they talked about it. And then they decided not to.

This is how the new manager of the Yankees works. He is – clearly – not afraid to make an unorthodox or unpopular choice. He is not afraid to ask his players for their opinions. He is not afraid to deal with the consequences of his choice. Results aside, that has to be a good thing.

Now, Borden is just going off what he thinks and not really any information, but he still raises an interesting question. (Actually, he is just answering the question with no info, I’m raising the question). Anyway, is it really a good thing for a manager to ask his players for their opinions on in-game decisions?

I would lean towards no because it is very difficult for players in the middle of game to evaluate situation without bias. Also, at the end of the day it is the manager’s decision. Nobody went over to Moose after the game and said, “Why didn’t you walk Manny?” It was, “Why didn’t Joe have you walk Manny?”

Regardless, Girardi should’ve realized that it wasn’t a situation to ask Moose anything. It was a situation to come out to the mound and say, “Walk Manny, there are two outs and Youkilis is the guy we need to get.”

Or, even if he wanted to know what Moose was more comfortable with, Girardi should’ve tossed Moose a throw pillow and told him to walk Manny.