Girardi’s latest screwup: No Severino

So how does Joe Girardi redeem himself for that indefensible decision not to challenge the now-famous missed call in Game 2?

I’m not sure he can, to be honest. Certainly he took an important step on Saturday at his press conference by taking responsibility for it, saying, “I screwed up,” a dramatic shift from the excuse-making on Friday night in Cleveland.

But it doesn’t change the impact on the series.

If anything, then, his players are going to have to bail him out, and winning three straight games against a superior team like the Indians is probably asking too much.

Even if the Yankees win two games in the Bronx, only to lose Game 5 in Cleveland, in some ways that will make Girardi’s mistake worse, raising the obvious question of whether they would have closed out the Indians at home if they hadn’t given away Game 2.

As much as I hate the “if George were still alive” rhetoric that is trotted out all too often, this is a case where it’s too hard to ignore.

In his heyday The Boss might well have fired Girardi before Game 3 over such a preventable misstep, and while Hal Steinbrenner has shown no such impulsive behavior, the outcry among fans and media is such that you have to wonder if he’ll feel the need to act.

Girardi’s contract expires when the season ends, and the Yankee brass is well aware that he’s not terribly popular among fans — though that shouldn’t be a basis for evaluation.

With a young ballclub on the rise, it’s not out of the question Steinbrenner could decide the time is right to change managers.

Personally, I don’t think Girardi deserves to be fired over the way he managed one game — big as it was — a la Grady Little.

Overall Girardi has proven to be a solid tactician and well-prepared manager in his 10 seasons, even if he is easily lampooned for relying too much on his famous binder, even if he lacks the charisma that would get him better press at times.

I’m not sure he has the type of relationship with his players that would make all of the criticism after Game 2 a rallying cry for them, but it sure would help Girardi’s cause if they play inspired baseball the rest of this series.

And I do expect them to dig deep here and respond with the same resilience they’ve shown all season. If anything, once they get past the exasperation of letting Game 2 get away, these Yankees actually might just feel emboldened a bit knowing they tattooed Corey Kluber, the seemingly invincible ace.

But they’re going to have to tighten up their game to have a real shot. It wasn’t only the manager who made costly mistakes, to be sure, and they can’t beat the Indians over a five-game series playing that way.

So how does the comeback begin?

Here’s where I think Girardi has already missed another opportunity: I’d start Luis Severino in Game 3 and push Masahiro Tanaka back to Game 4.

Sure, they both have to pitch if the Yankees are going to get this thing back to Game 5, but I wouldn’t want to lose the series without ever giving the ball to my best starting pitcher.

And I have to believe Severino has a gem in him after what happened in the wild-card game,

when he clearly was overwhelmed by the moment, pitching his first post-season game.

If nothing else, the Yankees should want to find that out because if Severino somehow were to struggle badly again, it would be cause to wonder about his ability to handle big-game pressure.

As it is, Severino has already proven his mental toughness by bouncing back from his disastrous 2016 season and all the questions about whether he was more suited to be a reliever than a starter.

Furthermore, in two starts against the Indians this season he has mostly locked them up with his overpowering arsenal, allowing only six hits over 13 1/3 innings while racking up 18 strikeouts.

He lost one of those starts because of mistake-pitches that resulted in three solo home runs, but even in that game he mostly dominated their lineup.

Tanaka, meanwhile, didn’t pitch against the Indians during the season, but he hasn’t fared particularly well against them in his career, going 1-2 with a 4.63 ERA.

More significantly, with Tanaka you never know what you’re going to get, especially this season. When he was on his game he was brilliant, never more so than in his final start of the season, striking out 15 Blue Jays’ hitters while pitching six shutout innings.

But when he was off his game he got rocked too many times, to the point where it’s hard to trust him on any given night.

Bottom line, I think Severino would give the Yankees a better chance of bouncing back from disaster and getting back into the series.

But Girardi is going with Tanaka, and the manager can only hope is decisionmaking turns out better than it did Friday night. If not, well, his job security figures to become a hot-button topic. At the very least.