Now, if this alien possessed a basic understanding of mathematics, it might begin to wonder whether any of this mayhem was really the manager’s fault at all.
Between June 23-26, five different Phillies relievers blew saves on Girardi’s watch, resulting in three Phillies losses in a five-game stretch.
All of this followed a week that had served as an infinite blooper reel of Girardi’s penchant for putting the wrong guy in the game. On June 30, Girardi was the one who left Aaron Nola in too long, and then tried to save himself by inserting a guy whose only other major-league appearance since 2017 had come two days earlier, when he’d allowed three of the six batters he faced to score. Last week, Girardi was the one who turned a win into a tie when he tried to get four-out save from a guy who walks or hits one out of every four batters he faces, and then tried to rescue himself with a guy whose fastball exists in name only. If an alien landed in the Delaware Valley and turned on the radio, and waded through the comments, and scrolled through the social media accounts, he/she/it would emerge on the other side as an alien who, 1) Badly needed therapy, and, 2) Was convinced that some fellow named Joe Girardi was responsible for a considerable amount of the local baseball team’s misfortunes. In the absence of obvious solutions, we often invent devices that allow us to believe that self-determination is closer than it seems.
The more things feel outside of our control, the more paralyzed we feel. Evolution has programmed each of us with a need to feel some sense of mastery over our environments. The more that I go through life, the more that I think that its fundamental animating force is a desire for control.