Ned Yost fired

You don't fire your manager when you're in first place, no matter how bad you've been playing. Yost took the Brewers from 94 losses and last place in the NL Central in 2003 to 83 losses and second place last year. While I've never been a fan of Ned, nor the entire Brewers community for that matter, he's been able to turn a sorry franchise into a team built for winning now and in the future. You can probably guess how surprised I was to find out the Brewers fired Ned Yost yesterday, on the heels of a four-game sweep by the Phillies and losing 7 of their last 8 overall.

The whole deal seems like a case of the scapegoats, as GM Doug Melvin wasn't exactly sure why he fired Yost, except for the fact that Yost didn't have the answers that Melvin didn't have either. Did you get all that?

"[Yost] didn't have all the answers for what is going on the last two weeks and I'm not sure I have all the answers," general manager Doug Melvin said during a news conference at a hotel in Chicago. "I'm not sure this is the right one, either."

If Ned was Doug Melvin's boss, the same thing probably would have happened, but either way the matter seems like a defensive move in which no one is certain how it will play out.

"We just felt a managerial change at least gives us a chance to see if we can turn it around," [Melvin] added.

In other words, we don't know what else to do, we might miss the playoffs after sacrificing a major part of our farm system to get CC Sabathia, we need help. The pressure to perform must be pretty elevated in Brewerville. Not only did the Brewers trade one of their best prospects for Sabathia (Matt LaPorta, who, by the way, went on to rake for the Indians Double-A affiliate), they traded a total of 6 prospects for two guys who are going to be gone at the end of the season (Sabathia and Ray Durham). Not to mention the likely free agent departure of Ben Sheets. If the Brewers continue to collapse, it's going to be one of the most embarrassing downfalls of the decade.

The Brewers certainly needed to do something to shake up Milwaukee, but they didn't make the right move by firing their manager. Maybe that button got confused with the "fire Eric Gagne" button. Hey, it happens.

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