October 2009
19 posts
Yanks in (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 3,...
2. I don’t care if the moves “worked,” with Hairston dinking a single to right and Jose “the Burnett Whisperer” Molina working a seven-pitch walk (his best at-bat of the season?) and picking off Werth after backhanding an errant curve. Girardi still left a few hundred points of leftylicious Posada/Swisher slugging percentage on the bench against a pitcher with...
tomorrow's Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence, early...
1. Any batting order that includes both Jerry Hairston Jr. and Jose Molina is a [obscene adverb] [obscene and egregiously offensive adjective, one that might prompt calls for my excommunication from several advocacy groups] batting order.
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Phillies 6,...
1. Cliff Lee pitched as precise and unafraid a game as anyone did against the Yankees this season. That’s your recap right there.
2. Sabathia’s line looks fine - two runs in seven innings - even though he was less sharp than he was in his previous 2009 playoff outings. The dummyheads will focus on the two cupcakes to Utley, but Sabathia was behind in the count all game long and had...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 5, Angels...
1. The better team won.
2. This series won’t go down as the tactically bold managerial clinic that some expected it to be. Mike Scioscia might be a classy leader-of-men sort with one of the greatest moon-pie faces since Flounder, but he made any number of decisions that defied both the numbers and common sense. Newly double-happy Jeff Mathis may have enjoyed the series of his life, but...
Yanks addenda
10. A-Rod should never, ever be taken out of the game for a pinch-runner. Never ever ever ever never. A-Rod in an iron long suffering from hysterical blindness > Freddy Guzman.
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Angels 7, Yankees...
1. The calm, analytical instinct is to say “hey, tough loss, we’ll get ‘em tomorrow. We’re still up by a game.” The less rational instinct, and the one I’m currently leaning towards, is to say “they didn’t just shit the bed. They shit the pillows, duvet, alarm clock, slippers and bathroom sink.”
2. The seventh-inning seizure screws things up...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 10,...
1. Could a two-man team of Alex Rodriguez and C.C. Sabathia beat the Angels without any assistance from their peers? Last night’s evidence would suggest that they could.
2. There’s not much to say about this one, just as there wasn’t much to say about Game 1 of this series. When Sabathia pitches like that, the Yankees win. Always. He didn’t locate his fastball as well as...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Angels 5, Yankees...
1. We’ll get to Girardi’s ADD management style in a minute, but to me this game was lost when Nick Swisher blew two chances with a runner on third and only one out. If he gets the ball into the outfield one time between those two at-bats, this dispatch has a distinctly different tone to it. Solo dingers and opponent-facilitated rallies aside, this offense has been flat since the...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 4, Angels...
1. The for-dummies take on this one is “what an epic!!! The ghosts of old Yankee Stadium have relocated across the street!!! This Yankee team has the grit and refusal-to-lose moxie that recent editions have lacked!!!” But really: it comes down to the fact that a supposedly elite reliever made a horrendous pitch at the worst possible moment and that the Angels couldn’t get a hit...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 4, Angels...
1. This one was all about C.C. Sabathia. He pitches like that, the Yankees win.
2. But wait! This can’t be! The Angels are a fundamentally sound team with sound fundamentals that never, ever kicks the ball in the outfield or delivers pick-off throws behind the runner or whips the ball to invisible cut-off men or forgets to call “mine!” on pop-ups! We’ve been misled! With...
bummed out about this →
Trying to find NRBQ’s “Captain Lou” now as a tribute.
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 4, Twins...
1. Hey, the Twins made it much closer than I expected, thanks to the way they pitched. That said, in situations where one team has more talent than the other, the more talented team tends to come out on top. Baseball is funny that way.
2. Girardi’s over-managing the bullpen will become a problem before this post-season is over. Last night Pettitte was at 81 pitches and had just navigated...
Yanks In (More Than) A Sentence: Yankees 4, Twins...
1. A-Rod, huh?
2. In all the post-game banter, in all the recaps and the morning-after second takes, I haven’t once seen or heard the word “luck.” The Yankees were very, very lucky last night, with big assists from the Twins and the umps: Carlos Gomez running the bases like the Met he once was, Phil Cuzzi blowing the call on Mauer’s double, etc.
3. Re. the Gomez screw-up:...
Yanks in (more than) a sentence: Yankees 7, Twins...
1. Sabathia calmed down eventually, but a legit batting order would’ve taken him for 4-5 runs when he was leaving everything up in the zone early. All things considered, he got them into the sixth inning. Given how the bullpen is going nowadays, that’s plenty.
2. The pitchers-hate-throwing-to-Posada thing won’t become an issue against the weak-sister Twins, but that...
