Aaron Boone's J.C. Escarra decision made sense for Yankees (but it also didn't)

Ask two different people — the analytical viewer and the seasoned fan — to describe for you the decision-making process ahead of the final out of Sunday's Yankees loss to the Marlins, and you'll receive two completely divergent answers. The main difference? The objective, analytical viewer won't be able to put much passion behind their defense, while the fan operating emotionally will somehow also be operating more logically.

With two outs in the ninth inning of a 7-4 ballgame (which had been a 1-4 ballgame, but who's counting?), the Yankees had runners on first and second with two outs for Jazz Chisholm Jr., a scenario that had already been a repeated death sentence in the contest. Instead of going down meekly in the frigid cold, as he'd done so many times before, Chisholm ripped one into the gap and plated both. With no time to think, Aaron Boone called Jose Caballero back for a pinch-hitter, with a full bench of four options to choose from.

All Boone needed to tie the game and extend things — extend them to Cade Winquest! — was a single. If you're managing by gut? That means calling on someone who won't be afraid of the moment. Someone who's been there before. Someone who, notably, has enough experience to be able to maintain their focus coming in cold at the end of a 3.5-hour rain delay and a 3.5-hour game and deliver. The right call, more than likely, was an experienced name like Paul Goldschmidt, followed by Amed Rosario and Randal Grichuk.

But, alas, there was a by-the-book answer that defied those emotional checkpoints. Reliever Anthony Bender, on the ropes at the moment, has rarely been solved by right-handed batters. Lefties, in a vacuum, have a far higher chance of producing against him. And so Boone went with backup catcher J.C. Escarra, who swung at the first pitch, took a bad strike call (out of challenges), and swung over the top of the third pitch.

Ballgame. Pinch hitting is hard. Someone who's done it before probably should've been asked to do it again.

Aaron Boone played the clear percentages with J.C. Escarra decision and lost the Yankees' second game

If the Yankees are truly the "least analytically inclined organization" in the AL East — nay, the game! nay, the WORLD! — then they probably should've gone with Goldschmidt or Rosario in this situation. The game, of course, was not played in a vacuum. It was played in an extremely improbable and hard-to-solve environment. It was cold. It was windy. It was wet. The game almost didn't get played, then was somehow played forever. The bullpen punched the Yankees in the gut after the offense punched itself in the gut for two hours beforehand.

The Yankees probably needed the equivalent of Joe Torre calling for David Cone to retire Mike Piazza midway through Game 5 of the 2000 World Series there — a move that makes no sense on paper, but all the sense in the world if you trust the experienced humans you've hired to win baseball games. Instead, they got the paper move — and it backfired quickly.