Managing to relieve all chance of victory

IF YOU were a baseball fan just released from a gulag after 20 years and the first game you saw was Wednesday’s DiamondbacksYankees, you’d have hollered that Aaron Boone was trying to throw the game!

Then you’d have hollered that opposing manger Torey Lovullo was trying to throw the game!

Boone, with the Yanks up, 2-0, pulled Masahiro Tanaka with none out in the fifth, after 82 pitches. Of course he did. After all, the first two batters of the inning had singled, the second a dink to right.

So in comes Chad Green and soon the Yanks are down, 3-2.

But Lovullo showed Boone. He pulled reliever Yoan Lopez with two out in the seventh. Lopez had faced five, retiring all of them, two on strikeouts. But the two relievers who followed couldn’t get one out before Austin Romine hit a two-run homer to make the Yanks winners.

Such is modern “Game Has Changed” baseball. In both cases, it was a shame both couldn’t lose; they tried so hard.

And on YES, Ryan Ruocco and Paul O’Neill didn’t think enough about it to mention it.

The race between Rob Manfred and Roger Goodell to win “Most Full of It” is intense. Last Saturday, despite Manfred’s solemn declaration that kids are MLB’s top priority, there was not one 1 p.m. game scheduled. The earliest start was 3 p.m.

The Yankees played at the Red Sox at 4:15 p.m. for Fox money and the Mets, who no longer even schedule Saturday afternoon games, played at home and at night.

This Saturday? There are just two 1 p.m. starts. The rest begin no earlier than 6:10 p.m.

You can call them Rays or you can call them Jays:

Sunday, the Rays won 10-9 over the Jays, in a game with the DH. The Rays had 10 hits, but 17 strikeouts against six pitchers.

Two nights later in Boston, the Rays won 10-9 over the Red Sox. The Rays struck out 15 times against seven pitchers to make it 58 strikeouts over four consecutive games!

Total pitchers, Tuesday: 14. Time of the game, on a weeknight: 4:05.