You've gotta be kidding me

I don't know what just happened.  I'll admit it - I didn't stay up for this.  I dozed off sound as a pound.  Slept like a baby assuming the same thing that every other logical person did - that the game would be called and that the Yanks had won.  Then I wake up to like ten notifications telling me Kirby Yates came in to pitch in the middle of the night and plunked everyone who stepped up to the plate until the Rangers took a 9-6 lead.  That the umpires decided to resume the game at 2:15 in the morning after a three and a half hour rain delay.  How is that possible?  How are those conditions safer or more fair than playing in the middle of a monsoon?  Asking these guys to wake up and jump into the 9th inning of a one-run game is lunacy and had the Yankees pulled out a win I'd have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever.

I'm not actually mad at the umpires.  I'm not mad at God for the rain.  I'm not even mad at Kirby Yates.  Joe Girardi lost the Yankees the game this morning.  The decision to go to Kirby Yates instead of Aroldis Chapman once play resumed was basically capitulating to the Rangers.  You didn't get him up again because he warmed up and threw nine pitches a few hours ago?  What planet are we on Joe?  This guy can throw six days in a row in his sleep.  He doesn't take days off.  Not only that, what are you protecting him from?  You have him on the books for three more months and he's going to be the first guy out the door once you torpedo this season making dumb decisions like that.  Try to win a game for me one fucking time.

You think Desmond and Mazara were chomping at the bit to see 104mph at 2 in the morning?  Here are some facts - pitching Chapman there gives you about a 95% chance of winning the game.  Waking Kirby Yates up in the middle of the night and asking him to rub the sand out of his eyes to throw to one of the best lineups in baseball gives you a 2% chance of winning the game.  That's the actual math.

This is eerily similar to the loss in Baltimore a few weeks ago after a rain delay (Chapman's only blown save of the year).  The only problem was, that was then and this is now.  The Yanks were supposed to have made some progress since then.  They haven't, and now they're a game under .500 with three more games to play against the best team in the American League.  The hole the Yanks have dug themselves has given them almost no margin for error and this game was an absolute back-breaker.  I hate to say it, but there may be no coming back from this.