The Good
The Yankees took 2 of 3 from Boston this weekend, but the highlight was last night's game. Last night was easily the most exciting game of the season. The Yankees rallied behind A-Rod after he got thrown behind, and eventually plunked. A-Rod hit a homerun, and Gardner hit a triple with the bases loaded, to help get the Yankees ahead. Our bullpen pitched 4 shutout innings, and Mariano locked down the save. Every player who started the game in the lineup had a hit with the exception of Soriano, who basically won us every game last week so he gets a pass.
The Bad
After 5.1 innings and 6 runs, Sabathia had this to say:
“Throwing the ball pretty well and I felt good. I just got behind some
guys and wasn’t able to make pitches, but I’m glad we got the win.”(Source)
Threw the ball pretty well? 6 runs is not throwing the ball well. Nor is loaded the bases, and walking the next batter. If you're not able to throw strikes, the least you can do is hit a guy, which takes me to the ugly section...
The Ugly
A-Rod got hit by Dempster with clear intent. Dempster had thrown behind A-Rod, then threw inside, and then finally hit him. The umpire issued warnings, which was entirely awful umpiring. Dempster needed to get warned after he threw inside, not after taking 3 attempts to finally hit the guy. But the real issue is what happened after A-Rod got hit. Girardi said:
"As I’ve said all along, you may not agree with the way Major League
Baseball is handling this or that — that’s everyone’s opinion, and I
respect that; I’m OK with that — but that’s your teammate, and we don’t
allow people just to get plunked." (Source)
The problem is, the Yankees do just allow their people to get plunked. Where was the protection? Where was the fastball in Ortiz ribs? Where was the pitch down and in on Pedroia to get him scrambling to the ground? It never came. 4 Yankee batters were hit yesterday, 1 of them intentionally, the others due to bad control. You can have bad control, just know that if your bad control ends up pegging one of our guys, then one of your guys is getting hit too. That's the unspoken rule of baseball. Instead we see 4 of our guys get hit, and despite what Girardi said, we did nothing. Sabathia of all people knows how to do this well, and even he failed to take this step. The closest he came was throwing inside on Ellsbury, which isn't enough to send a message. Sabathia couldn't find the strike zone all night, he's going to throw a bunch of balls, and not hit a guy? Protect your players!
Children Find Hope
On Friday, the second coming of Adam Dunn: Mark Reynolds, hit a homerun, as did Soriano. Last night it was A-Rod. That's 3 homeruns this weekend, and the Yankees look like they have some muscle again, which should give the children a lot to hope for.
Travis Hafner 12hr = $24
Vernon Wells 11hr = $22
Brett Gardner 8hr = $16
Kevin Youkilis 2hr = $4
Jayson Nix 2hr = $4
Robinson Cano 22hr = $44
Ichiro Suzuki 6hr = $12
Lyle Overbay 13hr = $26
Brennan Boesch 3hr = $6
Francisco Cervelli 3hr = $6
Chris Stewart 3hr = $6
Ben Francisco 1hr = $2
David Adams 2hr = $4
Curtis Granderson 3hr = $6
Mark Teixeira 3hr = $6
Zoilo Almonte 1hr = $2
Derek Jeter 1hr = $2
Alfonso Soriano 8hr = $16
Austin Romine 1hr = $2
Eduardo Nunez 1hr = $2
Alex Rodriguez 2hr = $4
Mark Reynolds 1hr = $2
Total 109 hrs = $218
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2 comments:
The umpiring is the worst part. The Yankees have shown admirable (through frustrating) restraint despite Sox pitchers throwing at Yankee hitters for years. The umpires should do everything they can to stop what the Sox are doing, but instead they make it even harder for the Yankees to avoid getting hit by issuing warnings after the Sox come after them. The Yankees are barely clinging to contention and can't afford to lose any of their players to suspensions. Not even Sabathia.
And I absolutely hate this singling out of ARod. You don't throw at players because off the field stuff. You also don't get three chances to hit a guy, you get one. I guess the Sox figure that if MLB can disregard its own rules in suspending ARod, the Sox can disregard baseball's unwritten rules.
I also hope that Sunday's game turns into the opposite of the game in 2004 when Varitek hit ARod in the face while still wearing his mask and magically transformed the Sox into a championship team, as Sox fans think of it. Then I hope ARod is completely exonerated of all charges of cheating, destroying evidence, and ratting out other players. Then I hope his failed drug test from the Rangers years is revealed as a false positive, and ARod realizes that he thought he was taking steroids all those years, but they were really syringes full of Capri Sun and the power they gave him was all in his mind. And that World Series MVP thing too.
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