German officers have/had a term--fingerspitzengefuhl--that means "finger tip feel" and refers to a commander's situational awareness of what is happening on the battlefield. I think the best football coaches, even the ones who rely heavily on computers and game plans, assistants in the press boxes, etc, have that situational awareness and that it helps them make what are often spur of the moment decisions on who to play and what formation/play should be used.

Baseball used to be that way. Remember Grady Little's decision to keep Pedro Martinez on the mound in the 2003 ALCS game which allowed the Yankees to come back? Grady had lousy situational awareness and was correctly fired after that season. But to my way of thinking those kinds of human errors are the essence of sports and baseball and should be celebrated (unless your a huge Sox fan, which I am).

These days MLB managers rely less and less on understanding what is happening on the field and more and more on what the computer says.

Last night Kevin Cash displayed that phenomenon perfectly. And, by the way, substituting computer sense for situational awareness has worked wonderfully for the Rays. They have a codified system for acquiring players (on a very low payroll), developing them, and now orchestrating how they are positioned on the field, when and how pitching changes are made, etc.

Cash confirmed this last part last night. It mattered not a whit to him that Snell was pitching the game of a lifetime (5.1 innings, 73 pitches, 9 K's, 0 walks, 0 runs, 9 K's) or that Snell had struck out the next three batters (Betts, Seager, Turner) he would have faced six out of six plate appearance.

What did matter is that the computer told him that the third time through the batting order is fraught with peril--indeed, hopeless--no matter how well the starter is pitching. The computer also did not care that Anderson, the guy who came in, was tired and had an ERA of over 7 (which became 9) in this WS. And, if the computer didn't care, Kevin Cash didn't either. And neither does the Rays hierarchy. What was it Humphrey Bogart said near the end of the movie, The African Queen? "The Germans have their systems and they sticks to 'em."

Let me hasten to add that all managers use computers today all the time: before games, during games, after games. So it's clearly too late to put that genie back in the bottle. Indeed, I suspect that Dave Roberts relied heavily on computer information to make six pitching changes last night (he used 7 pitchers). It's remotely possible that Kevin Cash was resentful that he couldn't pull Snell out sooner because these days that's how managers show how smart they are--they bring in a new pitcher. Only dumb managers rely on players (more than computers) to win the games.

Speaking of situational awareness, I thought the Dodgers displayed far more of it than the Rays, who in one game had men on 2d and 3d and no outs when the batter hit a grounder to the third baseman. That resulted in both runners being thrown out and the batter ending up on 1B. On the other hand, whenever Mookie Betts was on base, it usually spelled trouble because he knew when to gamble, plus the Rays players routinely made the wrong defensive play under pressure.