I have to start off by saying that part of me understands and sympathizes with the situation Brewers manager Ned Yost faced regarding his pitching in the late innings of the Brewers 9-1 victory over the Pirates on July 4th. He was less that 24 hours removed from watching three relievers cough up 6 runs and the lead in the 9th inning of the loss to Arizona on Thursday afternoon. That is going to play with the head of any manager, and cause them to at least rethink their use of certain relievers in certain spots.

What a manager cannot allow is have a loss like the one Thursday cause him to start using his best relievers in situations where they are not necessary to ensure a win because of fear of his other relievers. From my perspective, that is precisely what Yost did in pitching Carlos Villanueva for 3 1/3 innings, despite the fact that they team had a 7 run lead when he entered and an 8 run lead for his final 9 outs.

Villanueva has been one of Yost's best relievers since being removed from the rotation. Coming into the game on Friday the 4th, Villanueva had pitched 20 1/3 innings in relief, posting a 2.66 ERA and striking out 20 while only walking 4. He's also gone from giving up a HR about once every 4 innings when starting to about once every 10 innings in relief. The fact that he pitched well early in starts and crumbled the second and third time hitter saw him lends some credibility to the theory that he is best suited to relief and that he is a pretty good reliever.

It is somewhat understandable that Yost would go to Villanueva in the middle innings. When he called on him with 2 out and 2 on and a 7 run lead in the 6th to get the final out of the inning, he was clearly trying to stave off any sort of momentum the Pirates may have been able to build. Using a good reliever there makes a lot of sense. In fact, many managers would not have made that sort of move, and more probably should. It is even somewhat justifiable that Yost would send Villanueva back out there for the 7th after another run had scored in the bottom of the 6th. CV had thrown only three pitches in the 6th and he at that point he might as well go a full inning since he's already up and in the game.

Where it gets much dicier is when Yost allowed Villanueva to hit for himself with two outs and a runner on second in the bottom of the 7th. This would have been a very good time to lift him in favor of a pinch hitter instead of allowing him to stay in for a number of reasons:

1. It increases the chance of adding to the team's lead.
   
2. It makes Villanueva available to pitch a few days sooner. He now has to sit out the remainder of this series and possibly longer, and lifting him in the 7th would have certainly left him ready for Sunday, and probably available in an emergency on Saturday.
3. A reliever only has so many innings he can reasonably be expected to pitch before the performance suffers. While there is no concrete number to point to, there is certainly a limit to what the human body can tolerate. Using up 3 innings of one of your best relievers when your team is leading by 8 runs is not something that a team can do with regularity and keep that reliever fresh enough to pitch in close games.
4. Right now, Villanueva is the only reliever on the the team who can be reasonably expected to be able to go more than 2 innings at a time. Should Dave Bush or Jeff Suppan get torched early in the following two starts, Yost would have to burn though a series of relievers to get to the end of the game. That would likely leave the team short relief options in the days following that game.
   

Like I said at the top, I get that Yost was in a tough position. Coming off an epic bullpen collapse the day before, he is understandably gun shy of going back to those same relievers a day later. Had he lifted Carlos in that situation and the worst happened, it would be a major catastrophe for this team. Yost faces constant scrutiny and second guessing for not pulling struggling relievers fast enough, and there is a general sense in the fan base that he doesn't know how to manage a bullpen. Any disaster would have heightened that scrutiny.

In the end, this is just one game and there were some special circumstances (the game the day before and the huge holiday crowd) that had to have pushed him to leave Villanueva in there longer than he might have otherwise wanted to. Still, he is going to have to get over this fear of catastrophe in a hurry, because big league managers cannot use their best relievers in blow out wins very often and have them available when they are really needed, to hold close leads.