Well, the day has finally come. Since the beginning of this season, Ned Yost's job has been on the line, at least according to most major media outlets. Yesterday, with 12 games left to play, he was finally canned.

Yost's interim replacement will be Dale Sveum, a former utility infielder that was best known as a utility man for the 1997 79-win "Freak Show" Pittsburgh Pirates squad. His managerial experience includes a 3-year stint with Pittsburgh's AA Altoona Curve, a job as the Red Sox third base coach, and this year a job as Milwaukee's third base coach.

The general reaction of fans is: "why now?" Over at AOL Fanhouse, Pat Lackey of Van Slyke handles this story from two different viewpoints. My opinion: probably a good move on their part.

Look, I'm not one of those fans who believes that a baseball manager has a very large role. In reality, they don't do much. They fill out line-up cards, they make substitutions, they occasionally call for bunts or squeeze plays or other such non-standard plays, and they yell at umpires. Other than that, they just have to stand with one foot on the dugout steps and look like a leader. Their biggest off-the-field responsibility is that of a locker room motivational speaker. That's why I've always thought that "manager" was such an adequate term for them...they're not coaches, they're not players. All they do is manage things. They put the players in the best position to succeed. After that, it's up to the players on the field. As such, managers in baseball are pretty interchangeable, and unless they're extraordinarily bad at the few responsibilities they DO have, they're probably not hurting the team much. I'm not even going to begin to blame the Milwaukee's recent skid on Yost. These things happen in baseball, and it's happening to the Brewers at a very inopportune time.

So why do I think this was a good move? It's not because of Ned Yost's inadequate managerial skills so much as the fact that he was a distraction for the team. As Pat said on the second link up there, Ryan Braun has publicly expressed displeasure with Ned Yost twice this season. In all likelihood, Braun isn't the only one that feels this way, but the culture of sports says that you leave these things in the locker room. Whether the team's displeasure with Yost affects their play on the field is debatable, but when you're the Brewers and you've mortgaged your future to get CC Sabathia and a chance to win the World Series THIS YEAR, why take that chance? When some of your key players like Ben Sheets and Sabathia are all but guaranteed to leave next year, why take even a slight chance that their play is being affected by a manager that they dislike? When your manager is more focused on getting a one-hitter in the books as a no-hitter than the playoff hunt, why should he keep his job?

In fact, that one-hitter is probably what did Yost in. What he should have said after that game was something like "CC Sabathia pitched an excellent game to get a big win for us today. As far as I'm concerned, he pitched a no-hitter. Regardless, a one-hit shutout is still a mighty fine feat, and more importantly he put our offense in the perfect position to win this game today."

What he said instead was "That's a joke. That wasn't even close. Whoever the scorekeeper was absolutely denied major-league baseball a nice no-hitter, right there. That's sad. It's just sad. He accomplished a no-hitter and wasn't given what he deserved. We had a great game today. It's too bad the scorekeeper had to put a damper on it. I feel horrible for CC." He then continued to whine for days and got the war-drums going to have MLB review the play...which stood as a hit. Talk about a distraction...when your team is in the midst of a playoff push, an individual achievement should be pretty low on the "things I'm concerned with" list.