Short rest, no relaxation

Lose the right way.

For years, I heard veteran players and managers explain their decisions by a kind of inverted logic. Their phrasing changed, but their meaning didn't. They worked backwards, inverted the question, and gave as much weight to figuring out what they should avoid doing as to what they should do.

"Don't lose the game with your third-best pitch."

"Don't let Barry Bonds beat you. Make somebody else do it."

And, in my favorite bit of practical advice, not just in baseball, "Lose the right way."

Don't be a control freak. Don't pretend you can't lose. Respect the game and the talent of your opponents. Work backwards. Figure out a sound strategy that -- even if it doesn't work -- allows you to sleep at night in defeat.

Apparently, nobody ever said, "Lose the right way" to Joe Girardi and the Yankees. Or at least they weren't listening.

One of the game's truisms is that you should avoid using your pitchers on short rest in the postseason. Some succeed and become famous for it. But most don't. Above all, don't put an entire rotation on short rest unless there is simply no alternative.

To opt for short rest, especially for a whole rotation, when it is not necessary, when you hold what will probably be a winning hand without doing anything radical, is the definition of putting yourself in position to "lose the wrong way."

But the Yankees have gone and done it in this World Series. They might escape Girardi's blunder. They have two games in which to win just one. They have the home crowd. They have Mariano Rivera in the bullpen. The Phillies have Brad Lidge.

However, the Yankees also have one bludgeoning stat looking them in the face, which they should have known and respected more: Since 1999, according to Fox's broadcast, pitchers starting a postseason games on three days' rest against pitchers on full rest have a combined 12-36 record.

That's not bad; it's abysmal. Yet stark as this statistic is, its message may be even more blunt. Most of those 48 pitchers who started on three days' rest were star hurlers or close to it. Nobody warps a postseason rotation so a donkey can start on short rest. You only do it for the studs.