NEW YORK -- Pity poor Bob Brenly. He can't win for losing.

First, he got ripped for going with Curt Schilling too soon. Then, he was ripped for not staying with him long enough.

Would everyone kindly make up their minds? Brenly couldn't have been wrong twice, even if Game 4, a crushing 4-3 10th-inning loss, turned out all wrong for his Arizona Diamondbacks.

Brenly opted to pitch Curt Schilling against the New York Yankees on three days' rest, setting off a debate like no other in recent World Series history.

Depending on your viewpoint, it was either a bold, assertive move designed to disable the champion Yankees while they were down, or the clear work of a panic-stricken neophyte.

When Schilling carved through the Yankee lineup with the same relative ease he displayed in Game 1, yielding just one run on three hits through seven innings, it seemed like a stroke of genius.

If Schilling was tired from the short rest, he did a magnificient of disguising his fatigue, allowing just one baserunner -- Shane Spencer, whose solo homer in the third was the lone mark against him -- through the first five.

His last pitch in the seventh, a blazing fastball thrown past an overmatched David Justice, seemed to be a 97 mph I-told-you-so. It was his 88th pitch of the evening.

When Arizona scraped together two runs off Mike Stanton in the top of the eighth, that seemed to be Brenly's signal. With an eye toward a potential Game 7 Sunday, he turned to closer Byung-Hyun Kim.

"It was an easy decision to take (Schilling) out," said a stunned Brenly, who seemed dazed in the minutes after the loss, like a man who had held a winning lottery ticket, only to have it snatched from his hand. "Considering he was starting on three days' rest."

The strategy seemed sound enough when Kim fanned the side in the eighth. But in the ninth, with two outs and Paul O'Neill on first, Kim's first-pitch fastball to Tino Martinez caught a little too much of the plate and way too much of Martinez's bat. The Yankee first baseman crushed the pitch to straightaway center, touching off a delirious celebration in Yankee Stadium and wiping out the lead that Schilling and his teammates had worked so hard to forge.

"We had a lead and we insisted all along we could go to BK for two innings if necessary and try to close the game out," Brenly said. "It just didn't work out."

Derek Jeter's game-winning solo homer an inning later, also off Kim, while equally dramatic, was in some ways almost an afterthought. Who thought the Yankees were going to lose a game they had tied up after using up 26 of their allotted 27 outs?

In defeat, Brenly became an easy and obvious target. If only he had allowed Schilling to finish, goes the argument, his club would have three oportunities to beat the Yankees once and unseat them as champs.

But in lifting Schilling, Brenly were merely playing the percentages and being consistent. Recall that in Game 1, when Schilling had thrown 102 pitches through seven innings, Brenly had lifted him, albeit with a far more comfortable eight-run margin.

The same logic drove Brenly last night. Realizing that he still might need Schilling Sunday to pitch a winner-take-all Game 7, he again minimized his ace's workload.

Had Schilling thrown the final two innings, he likely would have added another 25-30 pitches, bringing him over 110 and perhaps close to 120 for the night.

"It doesn't surprise me, pitching on short rest," said Joe Torre of his counterpart's hook. "(Schilling) gave him seven innings, gave up one run and pitched a hell of a ballgame. We were fortunate to stay in there and be able to deliver at the end."

Delivering at the end is what the Yankees, great champions that they are, do. The heroic seems merely routine when it's done by someone wearing pinstripes -- the Yankees are undefeated in their last six extra-inning World Series contests.

The contention that Brenly erred in going to Kim, making his World Series debut, is made with classic hindsight. Kim certainly didn't look unnerved when he was striking out the side in the bottom of the eighth, or racking up a fifth strikeout, against Bernie Williams, before Martinez struck in the fateful ninth.

If anything, the Diamondbacks, for all of Kim's inexperience, seemed to have an edge since the Yankees had never faced his submarine-like delivery.

The unfortunate aspect of all this is Brenly may never get a chance to fully test his theory on Schilling. If the Diamondbacks can't find a way to win one of the next two games, we'll never know if he made the right choice in setting up his rotation to have his two best pitchers pitch five of his club's seven games.

Only if a Game 7 is played can Brenly's decision be properly evaluated. For now, it seems like he made the right move; he just suffered the wrong result.

Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal is a regular contributor for ESPN.com.