Buster Olney does some backseat driving

Kudos to Buster Olney, author of The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, for his willingness to come out and publish his analysis of the Yankees-Red Sox game as it was happening. Even so, it serves as a great example of what happens when sports reporters take their own turn in the driver's seat.

For example, his post in the second inning:

37 pitches so far for Lieber, 37 mistakes in this series for Bellhorn. Why he's playing is inexplicable, at this point ... The guy was getting himself out in that at-bat, leaning into the pitch and jamming himself ...

Expert analysis of the guy who won the game for the Sox in his next at-bat with a 3-run homer. Olney, of course, was not the only critic of Bellhorn; as Schilling snidely remarked after the game, all the Boston "experts" were saying he shouldn't even be in, too.

And don't think I'm leaving him off the hook on the Lieber comment, either. Olney obsessed over Lieber's pitch count all game long. In the fourth inning he says:

Lieber at 75 pitches, and now, down 4-0, Torre has an interesting decision. He's probably got another inning, but after that, Torre will need relief. Do you use any of your prime guys to keep the game close...[etc. etc.]

In the fifth:

Lieber starting to get the ball up in the strike zone, based on those swings in that inning. He's at 85 pitches and entering his danger zone. Yankees should start the sixth with somebody warming up.

In the sixth:

Lieber at 107 pitches, and he's retired 7 straight batters. I bet that given the condition of Joe's bullpen, he'll send him out for the seventh and go batter to batter the rest of the way...

In the seventh:

[Nothing about Lieber]

In the eighth:

[Nothing again! Hmm...]

Lieber, of course, made it into the eighth. However, Olney did have some comments about Schilling in the eighth:

Wow -- I am absolutely shocked that Schilling is being yanked out of this game ... The way he finished? Jeez ... A reverse Grady ... maybe. We'll see.

Hey Buster, I'm pretty sure that Francona did not say after the 7th, "We're pulling Schilling now--maybe." The sports pundits are still obsessed over Grady. As it turns out, Schilling himself told Fox after the game that he was definitely done after the 7th. Olney also tried the old "Hey--only 100 pitches!" angle, but y'all may remember that Schilling's arm isn't the problem here--it's that blood-soaked ankle.

Olney always has some digs to get at the Moneyball guys (maybe he's jealous of Michael Lewis making so much more than he does), and he does tonight in the 3rd:

I do not understand why the Red Sox wouldn't try to force the issue, especially after seeing Posada's long drive die in the cold.... But the Red Sox play that Moneyball station to station stuff; just not sure if the calculations include 35 degree windchill factor, 36 innings of baseball in three days, huge pressure on the other team.

This would be exactly one inning before Bellhorn's home run with runners on first and second. Has anyone ever been proved wrong in so many different ways by one swing?

I will give Olney huge props, though, for this eighth inning comment:

A-Rod tried to pull a Reggie, '78 World Series, and it didn't work.

He's the only reporter I know of who thought of this highly apt comparison. Perhaps if the umps had huddled together back in those days like they do now, the Dodgers wouldn't have been jobbed out of that Series.