The Genius Maker #49

Houston came into this game surprisingly winning 8 of their last 10 games.

Andy pitched another good ball game. I thought the pitch selection was very good and I was going to compliment Cervelli (and I still will), but Andy was calling a lot of the pitches and surprisingly doing so by mouthing what he wanted. He did this while the batter was not looking, but that is not something you see very often. Good movement and command for Andy and he allowed 2 ER or less for the 10th time in 12 starts (now 8-1). 3 runs did come in, but 1 in the 8th was on a bad error by Jeter that could have been very costly, but Joba did the job holding the 8th inning down. Girardi had a tough call with Andy in the 8th and throwing 98 pitches; Keppinger (righty) and Berkman (switch) coming up. Michael Kay said (paraphrasing) that Keppinger is hitting .283 against righties and .313 against lefties and .290 overall, so not much difference. To that, I said, how can you tell from that stat? How about giving us OPS Mike? So, I went and looked... coming into the game Keppinger had an OPS of .907 against lefties and .683 against righties...a HUGE difference. That is just lazy announcing...honestly it is embarrassing. Joba got keppinger to hit a sac fly and then struck out Berkman, who incorrectly barked at the 3rd base ump when he punched him out on a (non) check swing.

The Yanks got a huge 2 out 2 RBI hit from Cervelli who has been slumping, but still is getting some big hits.

In came Mo for the 9th and his cutter was dancing. He had great movement and used it to strike out 2 batters in the 9th, although admittedly he got a big break on Pence who seemed locked in on Rivera, but called out on a pitch far outside...The Genius Maker looked good though in this 4-3 win.

TB lost so the Yanks are only 1 game out.