Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Peter Gammons is on the train

From his Insider blog:

The Web site "Fire Ned Yost" will be happy. To be honest, the view from afar was that Ned Yost got increasingly tight as the fight for the wild card got tougher.

But the day Yost got fired -- with less than two weeks remaining in the regular season -- general manager Doug Melvin backed his departed manager."Ned did a good job," said Melvin. "I should take a lot of the blame, because we lost our closer [Francisco Cordero] and Eric Gagne hasn't worked out the way I hoped he would. We're 16 games over .500 and have the second most wins in the league. We have the youngest middle three in the [batting] order of any contending team.

"If we do make it into the playoffs, [Yost] deserves a lot of credit for bringing these young players along. He gave a lot of guys their opportunities, and we've had two very good years. We haven't played well over the last 12 days."

It should also be noted the Brewers have the lowest payroll of any of the six teams still in contention to play in the National League playoffs.Melvin is loyal and would never stab Yost in the back on his way out the door. In fact, Monday afternoon the Brewers' GM went out of his way to place the non-playing blame on himself. So if the Brewers do not make it into the playoffs, even with CC Sabathia, there may be speculation about Melvin's job security with owner Mark Attanasio.

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